I Corinthians 13:6 says Love “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” The Greek word translated first as rejoice is chairo which means “to rejoice, be glad, thrive”. As I was studying this week I could not get away from two questions, what makes me glad and what makes God glad? What is it that we find happiness, refuge, amusement and escape in? I found many things in my life that make me glad, but the alarming thing was I began to see that many of those things were less than “the truth.” Love is not glad in iniquity, but it rejoices with the truth. So what makes God glad? If I find that then I can find where my joy and “gladness” should come from.
In Luke 15 Jesus taught three different parables that all had the same lesson, all of heaven rejoices when a lost soul comes to redemption through Jesus’ blood and sacrifice. Redemption makes God glad, but it is not the act of redemption nearly as much as it is the people being redeemed. God loves us, every man and woman evercreated was created by God for His pleasure, because we make Him glad. When we sinned He did not start again, He did not give up on us and He did not forget the idea of men made in His image, He created a way for redemption. We were not created to be redeemed, redemption was created so that we could continue to make God glad. May we sing together, “He has made me glad, He has made me glad, I will rejoice for He has made me glad!”
The second time we read rejoice in I Corinthians 13:6 it is actually a different Greek word, it is similar to the first with a major difference. The Greek word is sygchair and it means “to rejoice with, take part in another’s joy, to rejoice together.” The word translated truth in this verse is the exact same word that was used when Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life.” If I can use a little liberty here, I don’t believe it is a stretch to say that “Love is not made glad by sin, but it rejoices with Jesus, in Jesus and in what makes Jesus rejoice.”
Know this today, you have made God glad, He loves you, rejoices in you and longs to be near you in and through redemption. Find your gladness in God, in Jesus’ sacrfiice and victory. Let’s reconsider our thirst to be entertained and choose the gladness of God, of His presence, His Word and His great love. Don’t let the sin of this world fool you into finding pleasure in and with them, rejoice with Jesus and because of Jesus. As the