Love Expects the Best of Others

David W Palmer

(1 Corinthians 13:7 TLB) “If you love someone, you will … always expect the best of him …”

This Holy Spirit inspired passage obviously describes the way God loves us; his love is pure and perfect. However, now that we are born again, filled and led by his Spirit of holiness; and now that we have his love poured into our hearts, he expects us to show this love to others. In other words, God wants us to expect the best of them.

For us, this is very challenging. We feel we are clever and “street-wise” to be aware of just how dark and deceitful human behavior, and indeed the human heart, can be. We feel justified to be on the watch for deceptive and wicked motivations held secretly in the hearts of others. So, we can easily believe that everyone has evil motivations and desires lurking inside them. After all, the Old Testament prophet said:

(Jeremiah 17:9 NLT) “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

Experience in life teaches us that this is true. Even the most holy person can have an off day or moment:

(Ecclesiastes 7:27–28 NLT) “This is my conclusion,” says the Teacher. “I discovered this after looking at the matter from every possible angle. {28} Though I have searched repeatedly, I have not found what I was looking for. Only one out of a thousand men is virtuous, but not one woman!”

We could easily feel Scripturally vindicated to believe that there is evil in [nearly] everyone. Therefore, we seem justified in reserving something in our opinion of others that will not—always and under all circumstances—expect the best of them. Furthermore, if we don’t expect the best, we won’t ever be disillusioned when they are not perfect in their behavior or fail to love as God does.

If this is the case, and we humans have this evil lurking in us, why then would God expect the best of us; and indeed, why would he tell us to expect the best of others? After all, for every born again person there is an old nature:

(Ephesians 4:22–24 NKJV) That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, {23} and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, {24} and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

We may have buried the “old man” at baptism, but then we become amazed or deny how often it tries to resurrect itself through us so it can live again. And doesn’t John say, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”? (1 John 1:8 NKJV) Why then would God risk being viewed as naïve to “expect the best” of us? And what’s more, why would he ask us to expect the best of others? Surely this will leave us completely unprepared for what we all know they are capable of? Won’t that leave us naively vulnerable to being sinned against, hurt, or mistreated?

I will let the apostle Paul explain:

(2 Corinthians 5:16–17 NLT) “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! {17} This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

Through Paul, the Holy Spirit is saying that in the new birth, God has brilliantly come up with a completely new creation. Now “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.” What’s more, their “old life is gone” and “a new life has begun.” This is the truth and reality of the new creation in Christ. The Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have all pinned their hope for us in this miraculous new creation; they believe that the “new man” is now our true identity, and not the old sinful one.

God is a faith God. He believes he changed us to the new man at our new birth. Period. God will never speak against his faith, or hold onto any other image than what he believes the new birth has