Thinks No Evil

A loving person not only does not grow quickly angry in response to a real offense, as we learned in Friday’s study, he or she does not “blow up” over an imagined affront. This is because the loving person “thinks no evil.”

As with several of Paul’s earlier descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians 13, we must take a moment to clarify what he does not mean when he says love “thinks no evil.” The apostle is not advocating a “Pollyanna” worldview that refuses to believe in the existence of evil or sin. We must recognize that the human race is fallen and that people do many terrible things. Also, Paul is not saying that we are without ways to determine what is evil. God has delineated right and wrong for us, and we are not at liberty to ignore those standards in the name of maintaining love. To do so is to embrace relativism or pluralism. Finally, Paul is not saying we are to simply accept evil in others. That, in fact, is an unloving thing. When we see our brothers and sisters engaging in sin, we are to point their errors out to them and call them to repentance.

The attitude Paul is advocating here is sometimes called the “judgment of charity.” It is the conscious practice of looking at our brothers and sisters in the best possible light. Of course, this goes against our sinful natures. We tend to exaggerate the malice behind others’ actions and to reserve the judgment of charity for ourselves. Such is not love. Rather, as Jonathan Edwards put it in Charity and Its Fruits, “Love thinks the best of a person that the case allows.” In other words, the loving Christian knows that other believers have hearts as corrupt as his own, but he refrains from assuming the worst about them. He does not jump to conclusions about the motives underlying their actions. This is what Job’s friends did when, seeing him in the midst of great suffering, they jumped to the conclusion that he had committed some great offense against God. They assumed the worst—and they were as wrong as they possibly could be.

We cannot be certain of another person’s motives. Only God looks on the heart, Scripture declares. Therefore, to the extent that our brothers and sisters commit no clear violation of the law of God, we are to assume the best about them and “think no evil.”