Verse 6 of 1 Corinthians 13 is a single sentence with two halves, balanced against each other. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. Paul did not give them separate verses, and he did not give them separate chapters in our book either. The two halves are the same teaching said from two directions, and to take either half without the other is to miss what Paul was saying.
The first half is the negative. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness. The Greek verb is chairei, the ordinary word for being glad, for taking pleasure in something. The object is adikia — unrighteousness, wrongdoing, what falls short of what God requires. Paul is forbidding a particular kind of pleasure: the pleasure a believer can take in wrong being done — in the wrong done by another, in the wrong exposed in another, in the wrong that finally catches up with another. The word the world has invented for this pleasure, because the world has practiced it long enough to need a name, is schadenfreude — joy at another’s harm. The believer is being told that joy of that kind has no place in him.
The second half is the positive. But rejoices with the truth. The verb here changes. It is synchairei — the same root word chairei, with the prefix syn attached, meaning with. Love does not just rejoice over the truth; love rejoices with the truth. Love is on the same side as truth. They are partners. Where truth is honored, love claps. Where truth is hidden or twisted or covered up, love grieves. The believer is not just being asked to avoid the wrong pleasure. He is being given a new pleasure to learn — the pleasure of standing alongside what is true, even when standing alongside it costs him.
The chapter is doing both halves together because they are one teaching. The man whose pleasures still include the small satisfaction of his brother’s downfall has not yet been given the larger pleasure of the truth winning regardless of who delivered it. The Christian who has tasted that larger pleasure no longer needs the smaller one.
What was happening in Corinth
The Corinthians had been rejoicing in the wrong things.
The most appalling example came in chapter 5. We have looked at it before; it surfaces here because it touches the very nerve verse 6 is naming. A man in the congregation was sleeping with his father’s wife. The sin was so blatant that even the pagans of Corinth would have been embarrassed by it. And the church was puffed up about it — proud of how broad-minded they had become, proud that they had not made the man uncomfortable, proud that they were free of the old narrowness that would have removed him from their midst.
You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.
1 Corinthians 5:2 (NASB)
You have not mourned instead. The right response to the unrighteousness in their midst was grief. The actual response was inflation. They were taking pleasure in a wrong. They had crossed from tolerance into celebration of a sin God hates, and the celebration was the costume their pride had put on. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness is the sentence aimed at exactly that posture. Paul wrote it knowing the church reading it had just been doing it.
In chapter 6 the same disordered pleasure showed itself differently. Believers were suing other believers in pagan courts, and the suing required a certain hunger for the brother to lose. The Christian who hauls his brother into court is not, in his secret heart, hoping for a just outcome. He is hoping for his outcome. He is hoping the brother will be publicly proven wrong. The verdict will be a small unrighteousness if it goes the way he wants it to go and the brother is innocent — and he is praying for that verdict anyway, because the satisfaction of being vindicated is more important to him than the truth of the case. Paul confronts this directly:
Actually, then, it is already a defeat for you, that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?
1 Corinthians 6:7 (NASB)
Why not rather be wronged? That sentence reorders the believer’s loves. The wrong outcome — the one that costs you something — is preferable to the right outcome that you have hunted at the cost of your brother. The Corinthian believer who is content to win in court at the price of his brother’s loss has rejoiced in unrighteousness without ever calling it that, and Paul names it before they can dress it up.
The same disordered pleasure showed itself in the gift settings of chapters 12 through 14. The believer who envied his brother’s gift secretly hoped the brother’s gift would fail — that the prophecy would land flat, that the tongue would be uninterpreted and shame the speaker, that the teacher would stumble in his teaching. None of that was said out loud. None of it had to be. The Corinthian who could not rejoice in his brother’s gift was the Corinthian who would quietly enjoy his brother’s collapse. Paul does not write the line love rejoices when your brother fails not into the chapter — he names the deeper version instead. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. That covers it.
What was happening in Corinth on the positive side
Paul is also calling them — calling all of us — into the positive pleasure of rejoicing with the truth.
The Corinthians had been doing the opposite of this too. They were ranking truths by who delivered them. The truth from Paul they accepted. The truth from Apollos they ranked higher. The truth from a brother whose gift they had envied they discounted, even when the truth he spoke was the very word the assembly needed to hear. The truth that conflicted with what they had already decided they were going to do they pushed aside. They were, in plain words, not rejoicing with the truth. They were rejoicing with their own preferences, and calling the rejoicing devotion.
The positive form of verse 6 was already laid out, before chapter 13, in the apostle’s own life. Paul could write to the same Corinthians:
For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth.
2 Corinthians 13:8 (NASB)
The believer who is on the side of the truth has no agenda other than that the truth be heard. He does not have to be the one who said it. He does not have to be the one credited with it. He does not have to be the one whose interpretation turned out to be right. He has been freed of all of that, because the only thing he cares about is the truth landing where God means it to land. The Corinthians had not yet learned this freedom. They were still ranking truths by who got the credit for them, and the ranking was costing the whole congregation.
The God who never rejoices in unrighteousness and is Himself the truth
The two halves of verse 6 are aimed at the believer because they are first true of God. He does not rejoice in unrighteousness. He rejoices with the truth. Both halves describe the very character of the God we have been called to imitate.
The first half is stated plainly in the prophets:
“As I live!” declares the Lord GOD, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?”
Ezekiel 33:11 (NASB)
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. That is the cleanest single statement of love-does-not-rejoice-in-unrighteousness Scripture contains. God’s justice is real, and the death of the wicked is real, and God is not going to spare any wicked man from what his wickedness has earned him. But God Himself takes no pleasure in the spectacle. The judgment that has to come does not delight Him. He is grieved by it. The believer who has been quietly hoping for some particular sinner’s downfall — the public figure he despises, the family member he has long since written off, the bully from years ago — is taking a pleasure his God does not take. The God of the universe stands over the death of the wicked and grieves; the believer who stands beside Him cannot stand grinning.
The second half — rejoices with the truth — is true of God in an even deeper way, because Christ is Himself the truth:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life…”
John 14:6 (NASB)
The truth is not, in the end, a list of propositions. The truth is a Person. And the Spirit Christ sent into the world is the Spirit of truth (John 14:17), who guides the believer into all the truth (John 16:13). When the believer rejoices with the truth, he is rejoicing alongside the Spirit who is doing the work of making the truth land. He is no longer a free agent with his own commitments to defend. He is on the team that the eternal God has been running since the foundation of the world. The pleasure of standing with the truth, against whatever stands against it, is the pleasure of being on the same side as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The apostle John knew this pleasure and named it twice, plainly, near the end of his life:
I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father. — 2 John 4 (NASB)
I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. — 3 John 4 (NASB)
I have no greater joy. That is the joy verse 6 is calling the believer into. The greatest joy a Christian can have is the joy of the truth winning — in his children, in his congregation, in the brother across the room he has prayed for. That is the pleasure the Spirit has been growing in him. Where unrighteousness is celebrated, the believer grieves. Where truth is honored, he rejoices. The two responses are one heart, oriented the same direction as the God who made it.
From the ledger, the pleasures
The last chapter took up love does not take into account a wrong suffered — the believer’s refusal to keep the running ledger of his brother’s offenses. This chapter takes up what the man who keeps no ledger does and does not enjoy.
The ledger-keeper is the man who is always one offense away from being right. He is collecting evidence for the case he intends, one day, to bring. The natural step beyond ledger-keeping is what verse 6 forbids: the small pleasure of seeing the brother actually fall in a way that justifies the ledger. The Christian who has been refusing to keep the ledger but has not yet been deflated of his pleasure in the brother’s failure has only done half the work. The records are not being kept, but the satisfaction is still being taken. Paul wants both habits gone — the keeping and the satisfaction.
And the positive — rejoices with the truth — is the opposite habit. The man whose ledger has been closed and whose pleasure in his brother’s failure has been laid down is now free to enjoy his brother’s successes, to enjoy his brother’s growth, to enjoy the truth winning even when it wins through a brother he never would have picked to deliver it. The closing of the ledger frees up the heart to take pleasure in things it could not take pleasure in before. Verse 5 cleared the ground. Verse 6 plants what now grows on it.
What it looks like
Freedom from rejoicing in unrighteousness looks like a high-school student whose classmate, the one who has been outscoring her on every test all year, has just been caught cheating — and who does not text three friends about it, does not post a knowing emoji, does not even let herself enjoy the small thought I knew it. She grieves. She prays for the girl. She tells no one.
It looks like a high-school boy whose girlfriend has just broken up with him and is now visibly miserable, and who does not let himself enjoy her misery, does not post anything about it, does not engineer little moments where he can be seen as the strong one and she as the broken one. He grieves the relationship that ended. He hopes she finds her footing. He keeps walking.
It looks like a teenager whose long-running rival on the basketball team has finally injured himself and is going to miss the season — and who, instead of quietly enjoying the open spot, sends a text the next morning: just heard about your knee, hate it for you, praying for a fast recovery. The rival reads the text twice, because it is not the message he was bracing for.
It looks like a young Christian whose Bible class teacher said something last week that the student thought was wrong, and who has now learned, by quietly reading the text, that the teacher was right and the student was wrong. The student goes to the teacher after class, says so plainly, and thanks her for the lesson. The student has just rejoiced with the truth at the cost of his own previous position, and the cost was nothing compared to the freedom it bought him.
It looks like a teenage girl who hears that the popular girl she has been quietly resenting has had a hard week at home, and who, instead of feeling the small satisfaction of karma, texts her: thinking about you, hope your week gets easier. The popular girl does not know what to do with the text. The teenage girl does. She has just laid down the small pleasure of resentment and picked up the larger pleasure of standing with the truth that this other girl is a daughter of the same God.
It looks like a believer who, in a Bible study, watches a brother he has often disagreed with deliver a careful, true reading of a hard passage — and who, before anyone else speaks, says aloud that was helpful, thank you, I had been thinking about this passage wrong. The brother across the room hears the sentence. The whole study hears the sentence. The truth has just been honored, the believer who honored it is no smaller for having done so, and the body of Christ has been built up by an act of small, hard joy.
It looks like a Christian young person who reads a news story about a public figure she dislikes being publicly humiliated, and who, instead of joining the pile-on, closes the page and prays for the man. The world’s pleasure was the pile-on. Her pleasure has been replaced by another pleasure — the pleasure of grieving alongside the God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
It looks like Christ. The One who, when Mary of Bethany broke open a costly jar of perfume and poured it on His feet and Judas Iscariot publicly criticized the gift as wasteful — why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor? — did not take pleasure in the appearance of righteousness Judas was performing, and would not let the appearance stand (John 12:1–8). He did not even pretend Judas’s question was sincere; the text tells us Judas asked it not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. Christ defended Mary instead. He named her gift as beautiful. He named her preparation as for His burial. He told Judas plainly, let her alone. He grieved the unrighteousness — both Judas’s false righteousness and the disciples’ echoing indignation. He stood with the truth — Mary’s truthful act of love, named for what it was. He rejoiced in the woman’s gift becoming a memorial wherever the gospel would be preached.
The world’s pleasures, and ours
The world has built much of its entertainment on rejoicing in unrighteousness. The gossip column, the reality show, the comment thread, the platform where the public humiliation of strangers has been made into content — all of it runs on the small pleasure verse 6 forbids. The brother who has been caught is the day’s entertainment. The cultural figure who has fallen is the week’s headline. The classmate whose family is falling apart is the conversation at lunch. The whole machinery of public attention has been calibrated for a long time on the assumption that the human heart will keep buying tickets to other people’s downfalls. The assumption has, until now, paid off.
The Christian is called out of all of it. The believer is called to be the person in the room who is not clicking the article, not refreshing the comments, not listening to the gossip with the leaning interest the others are showing. He is called to grieve where the world is enjoying, and to enjoy where the world cannot even see what there is to enjoy. The truth landing in a small Bible class, in a small kitchen conversation, in a small reconciliation between two believers nobody else even noticed had been at odds — that is the pleasure the believer has been given to take. The world cannot see why it would be a pleasure. The believer who has tasted it does not need the world to understand. The pleasure is large enough to live on.
A note for the reader who is not yet in Christ
If you have spent your life enjoying the small pleasures the world serves up — the schadenfreude, the gossip, the satisfaction of seeing the people you dislike finally caught — hear one thing.
These pleasures have been costing you more than you know. They have been training your heart in a direction the heart was not made to go. The human heart was made to rejoice in the truth, and the truth includes the goodness of God toward sinners, and the goodness of God toward sinners is what your enemy needs and what your friend needs and what you need. Every time you have enjoyed someone else’s downfall, your heart has been practicing the wrong response to the very thing God has come into the world to defeat. The practice has been deepening the disposition. The disposition has been pulling you further from the only joy that lasts.
The good news is that the disposition can be replaced. The God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked is the God who has sent His Son into the world for the rescue of the wicked, and you are one of the wicked He has sent His Son to rescue. Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Hear it. Believe it. Repent of the long pleasure you have taken in the wrong things. Confess Him as Lord. Be baptized into His death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4). And as you walk in the new life, you will discover that the pleasures God grows in you are larger and steadier than the small, sour pleasures the world has been pouring into you for years. The trade is the trade of your whole life. It is the best trade you will ever make.
Where this leaves us
Verse 6 is the hinge of 1 Corinthians 13. Up to this point Paul has been writing love does not — does not envy, does not brag, is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness. The list of what love is not doing has been long, and necessarily so, because the disordered loves of the Corinthians required that long a list to be named.
Now the chapter turns. But rejoices with the truth is the first positive verb in the description since love is patient and love is kind at the very beginning. From here on, Paul will write only positives. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The mood lifts. The grammar lifts. The chapter has done the hard work of clearing the ground, and now it begins to plant.
That is the work this attribute is calling you into. Watch the small pleasures you take this week. Notice where you have been enjoying someone else’s downfall — the public figure, the neighbor, the brother in the congregation, the family member, the person who has been a thorn for years. Catch the pleasure. Refuse it. And reach instead for the pleasure verse 6 is offering you — the pleasure of standing alongside the truth, alongside the Spirit who is the Spirit of truth, alongside the Christ who is the truth, and watching what God is willing to do in the lives around you when you are no longer rooting for the wrong outcome.
THINK
Bring to mind one person whose recent failure you have, secretly, enjoyed even a little. The classmate who finally got caught. The neighbor whose marriage hit the rocks. The public figure whose hypocrisy was exposed. The brother in the church whose ministry stumbled. Now ask: what does the small pleasure I took in that moment say about where my heart has been pointed? Sit with the question long enough to be honest about the answer. Then take the next step. Pray for that person, by name, that God would do toward them what He is doing toward you — grow them, restore them, redirect them, save them. The prayer is the practice of rejoicing with the truth instead of with the wrong. The first time you do it, the old habit will object. The fifth time, it will object less. By the time you have done it for a year, you will find that you have been given a different heart, and the pleasure verse 6 calls love into has become a pleasure you actually take.