The Whole Truth

Today's passage:  I Corinthians 13:6
     Often I am so busy learning about myself, that I forget it is not the only reason to read the Bible.  It is also to learn about God.  The things God has been reminding me about Himself has renewed me.  Not that He has ever needed me to have confidence in Him, I have always been confident of His love for me, of His watchfulness, of His provision.  I have always been sure of His infallible Word, of Holy Spirit conviction, of the law of sowing and reaping.  I am certain that He wants me to lean on Him, worship Him, serve Him, in that order.  Yet, even though I stand firm on all these, God still shows me more about Himself, not because He needs to instill that confidence, but because when I am confident in who He is, I am confident in who I am.  And honestly, I've needed that a little the last couple of weeks.  I have had inner wrestlings in my spirit.  I have been bearing  weights when I should be allowing God to flex His muscles.
     This has little to do with the verse today, but this chapter has reminded me so much about my loving God.  It has been refreshing to dwell on Him, and not on me.
    "{Charity}Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;"  Brackets are mine.  This seems like an obvious characteristic of God's love.  It is not ground-breaking revelation that God is not joyful about our sin.  In my prayer time this morning I thanked Him for having this quality because it was what prompted Him to plan our salvation.  As much as the Lord Jesus loathed sin, He was willing to come close to it, to have it put upon Him, so that it could be taken from me.  That is true love.  He took hateful, despicable, detestable sin upon Himself.  The Holy Spirit does not rejoice in sin. He does not hurrah every time He has to point it out in my life.  He isn't cheering when the sin I didn't know was there is revealed to me.  He doesn't wave each transgression in my face.  Sometimes it hits me hard, unveiled like a rabbit in a magician's hat, but He doesn't say "I told you so".  Sometimes He shows me in a quiet way, quivering my calm, off-balance steps, which provokes me to see the cause. 
     God also rejoices in the truth.  He is The Truth.  So does He rejoice in Himself?  I know He rejoices in His Son.  Remember at Christ's baptism and at the Transfiguration when God says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."?  He rejoices in His Son, who is the Truth.  In Roman 13:17, Paul says, "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."  He is also referred to by Christ in John 17 as the Spirit of truth.  Very little here on earth or in man is truthful.  Which would leave only one answer as to what truth would cause rejoicing.  Him.  I should rejoice in Him here, but when everything points away from Him, away from the Truth, it gets very difficult.  How marvelous it will be in Heaven when everyone will rejoice in the Truth.  None of us will have hidden motives or secret agendas.  God says charity is rejoicing in the truth, and the only real truth exists in Him. When I rejoice over every sinner who has been found by Christ, I am rejoicing in the truth. 

Courtesy of http://breadsite.org

     I may give my money to many "charities" but true charity is found when I give that money to organizations that give out the truth.  Since there is only one truth, it would be better to invest my money not in humanitarian causes, but in spiritual ones.  Giving money to fight cancer, to save children in the Sudan, to political candidates is fine.  Will we ever find the solution through those?  Will there ever be a day when cancer is cured, children are no longer hungry, politics solves our problems?  I know the answer to the last two.  And while I don't condemn anyone for donating to these needs, if truth is not being revealed through all of these fine and noble organizations, it isn't true charity.  If God allows the doctors to eradicate cancer from the body, but the soul has never been touched, I don't see the cause for rejoicing.  Trust me, I want to see a cure, I'm just saying we call them "charity", but unless it somehow points to God, it is not.  Should Africa conquer malnourishment in every child on that continent, unless each little life is presented with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have only prolonged the inevitable.  I'm not heartless.  I don't want to see those children die.  But I know that they are hungry for something more substantial.  They need to be filled with the truth.  If all the political bickering subsided, if our nation were to somehow fix unemployment, education, the deficit, foreign policy etc., etc., etc., we might think it time to celebrate.  But in our material health, our spiritual selves would lean less on Him, and more on us.  We would seek our own truth instead of the real Truth.  So as much as I would like to see members in my church family gainfully employed, as much as I would like to see the housing market rise again, I know that sponsoring a candidate to deliver us from these woes will not deliver us from our eternal ones.  I would never discourage anyone from giving to these needs, but we label them wrong.  They are not true charity unless with the earthly cure they are giving out the spiritual one. 
     God does not rejoice in iniquity, and did something about it.  He rejoices in the Truth that was sent long ago to deliver me from my iniquity.  He rejoices in every wayward sinner, trudging with Bunyan's burden, eyes opened at the Cross for the first time.  He rejoices when that burden falls from our backs and He gives us a scroll of Truth to exchange in that Celestial City.  I love God's way, when I sorrow for people in sin, and I give out the Truth of God.  I love the way God loves when I give my money to disease fighting physicians who also tell about the Great Physician, when with the morsel of bread they give out the Bread of Life, when in the political debate they offer The Way, The Truth and the Life.  Charity is God's love in action.  His actions tell the whole story, a story of the whole truth.