What does rejoice mean?
According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, it means to feel joy or great delight
So what does truth mean?
According to Oxford Living online dictionary, it means in accordance with fact or reality. From Cambridge online dictionary it means the real fact about a situation, event, or person.
So love is to feel joy or great delight in dealing with facts or reality about a situation, event, or person.
Now if I combine it from yesterday’s post, you get “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” This ultimately means :
Love does not feel or show great happiness, joy, or delight in immoral, cruel, bad, or harmful conditions or acts but feels joy or great delight in dealing with facts or reality about a situation, event, or person
Another way to put this is, is love does not delighted in any behavior, choice, or conversation that is in conflict with God. Instead it is grieved by these acts. If you are living in love then you will delight in choices that are consistent with God.
Remember this:
John 14:6 New International Version (NIV)
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Also remember that this:
1 John 4:7-21 English Standard Version (ESV)
God Is Love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Where do you fall? Do you rejoice in evil or truth? Do you want to do what God commands or Satan? Are you seeking the truth?
We all struggle with this concept of love. We want to do what God has commanded us to do, but at the same time we want to go against Him as well. I know that sounds weird, but let me explain.
Do you seek vengeance and are happy when a person is condemned or do you grieve for that person such as David did for Saul? Most want what they consider to be justice, but what we should be is grieving.