Paul makes some remarkable statements in his description of love that is born from above. One of them is “love…believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (I Corinthians 13:7). When he says that love “believes all things” he is not saying that we believe everything we hear and, consequently, that we exercise no discernment in what is told us. Rather, he is warning us to keep in check our natural gravitation toward taking delight in the failures and foibles of others as they are related to us. In this sense, godly love is not needlessly suspicious or, we might say, suspicious without warrant. The “all things” here refers to all things good.
When we love others rightly, we do not give credence to the evil we hear about them unless the facts demand otherwise. This aspect of love as Paul describes it runs contrary to our human nature. Our ears “perk up” to the negative in people’s lives. Why else would gossip be such a popular pastime? But this willingness to give the benefit of the doubt is not an easy path. We must choose to not believe evil and believe the good. Doing so requires grace to overcome our own inclinations.
This principle finds application in virtually all of life’s relationships – husband and wife, parents and children, employees and co-workers, etc. (We don’t have to search far for examples.) We even find it necessarily rooted in the very fabric of our legal system. Do we not hold that a man is innocent until proven guilty? No matter the charge, facts must be gathered, examined, and weighed. Society functions best when falsehood is checked. Why is that?
To believe the evil we hear of others without factual support is to lose sight of the image of God which every man and woman bears. Love treats others with dignity and respect for that very reason – each one is made in the image of God. When we give way to unwarranted evil speaking, we diminish that person in our sight and we diminish our view and understanding of God.
Jesus taught “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12). Correspondingly, Paul wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit, “Love worketh no evil toward his neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). Giving heed to evil reports of others amounts to working evil toward our neighbor. It wrongly diminishes the natural respect and honor that is due them as fellow image-bearers of God. We would not want others to believe such evils about us. Consequently, we must be prepared to offer the same practice to others as the Lord taught.
From the Chaplain 