This sermon by Greg Boyd shows us that love is more than simply not wronging others. The love of God actually means that we are not delighting or celebrating the wrongdoing. The motivations of our heart are shaped by love and therefore produce the fruit of loving action.
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Love Does Not Rejoice in Wrongdoing
• Greg Boyd
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In this sermon, Greg addresses the claim that love does not delight in wrongdoing. This love is much more than a human emotion or about being nice to people. When Paul talks about love, he’s talking about God’s faithful covenant-keeping character revealed in Christ. Covenantal love goes to any extreme to bring about the wellbeing and right-relatedness of others. This other-oriented, self-sacrificial agape love, that is revealed on Calvary, is to characterize God’s covenantal people – the church.
This love does not merely refuse to engage in wrongdoing. It goes much deeper. It addresses the motivations of the heart because our actions are driven by what is inside. To speak of “delight” is to name what we take pleasure in and celebrate.
The word wrongdoing is adikia, which means the opposite of righteousness. Like love, righteousness is a covenantal concept, as it pertains to our being rightly-related to God and others as faithful covenant keepers. It is summed up in Ephesians 5:1-2, which reads, “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Therefore, adikia identifies any attitudes, words or actions that fracture our loving right-related relationship with God or others.
Greg offers us four practical things that will help us not delight in wrongdoing. First, when angry, act, don’t ruminate. Ephesians 4:26-27 reads, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” The emotion of anger is not itself a sin. But when we ruminate on what makes us angry, it can turn into thoughts, feelings and actions that delight in wrongdoing. When we see wrongs, we must pray and following God’s leading to act and refuse to make room for the devil.
Second, don’t gossip. We must stand against the pattern of this world regarding how we speak about other people, especially those we consider our enemies. We must not delight in their weaknesses or comeuppance. This is a challenge because we need to process our anger with our friends and even share information. However, we must check our hearts about our attitudes that drive what we are saying.
Third, ask the Spirit to search your heart. Spend time each day asking the Lord to speak to you about what lies in your inner being. We cannot see ourselves rightly. We need the Spirit of truth to reveal the truth about what motivates our hearts.
Fourth, abide in Christ. We will always abide in something, and that abiding will naturally flow through us. Kingdom fruit arises out of the experience of the love of Christ. If we want to bear the fruit of Christ’s love, then invest your time in the only thing that can actually produce it.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Judgment, Kingdom of God, Love
Sermon Series: Wholehearted, Love Does
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Focus Scripture:
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1 Corinthians 13:6
Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing.
2 thoughts on “Love Does Not Rejoice in Wrongdoing”
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"Thank you for this ministry! It has transformed my life in some really radical ways. God has broken down so many barriers and exposed so many lies that have taken some serious burdens from my heart. It has given me hope, freedom and purpose I never could have imagined possible."
– Jenny, from Wisconsin
I truly want to love my enemies and the first step is to see them as God’s children. If God can love them, so do I love.
Thanks again, Greg, for a very challenging sermon. I came across this C S Lewis quote some years back that fits in beautifully with the theme of the sermon:
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, `Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.” – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.