How Does Love Cover a Multitude of Sins?
00:00:00.000 | Good Monday morning and welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:06.640 | Thanks for making us a part of your weekly routines, maybe your commute to work, whatever
00:00:11.040 | it is you're doing right now.
00:00:12.520 | We don't take it for granted that you welcome us into your life, so thank you.
00:00:16.800 | Well, if you listened on Friday, we looked at 1 Peter 3.8.
00:00:20.520 | There Peter calls Christians to strive towards a unity of mind, he says.
00:00:26.160 | But we also saw that this unity of mind is not uniformity.
00:00:31.400 | We don't all think identically, which means that Christian unity must hold together by
00:00:36.400 | love, not simply by uniform thinking.
00:00:39.920 | And without this critical heart of love, unity simply cannot happen.
00:00:46.840 | And speaking of love and how love unifies, Peter goes on to say in the very same letter,
00:00:52.200 | just a little later, a chapter later, that love "covers a multitude of sins."
00:00:59.240 | Our love covers sins.
00:01:02.200 | Peter makes that point in 1 Peter 4.8.
00:01:04.560 | But what does it mean?
00:01:05.680 | Two listeners want to know.
00:01:07.600 | Dustin in Atlanta asks Pastor John, "How does love cover over a multitude of sins?
00:01:14.200 | What sins?
00:01:15.200 | Whose sins does it cover?
00:01:17.200 | Mine or the person or people I'm loving?"
00:01:20.600 | In the same vein, Alan in Brisbane, Australia writes in to ask this.
00:01:25.080 | Pastor John, what is Peter driving at in this text?
00:01:28.640 | Are we covering over our inclination to sin by loving or covering over their sins by not
00:01:35.360 | reacting to them, that is, forgiving them rather than taking revenge?
00:01:40.800 | Pastor John, what would you say to Austin and Alan?
00:01:44.200 | Here's 1 Peter 4.7-8.
00:01:48.920 | The end of all things is at hand.
00:01:51.640 | Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
00:01:57.200 | Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, and here comes that key phrase, since love
00:02:05.320 | covers a multitude of sins.
00:02:10.000 | So let's begin by mentioning, observing a few Old Testament texts that lie behind Peter's
00:02:20.280 | language of covering a multitude of sins.
00:02:24.900 | For example, here's the closest parallel, Proverbs 10.12.
00:02:28.640 | Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
00:02:36.000 | That's really close to what Peter says.
00:02:38.720 | Love covers all offenses.
00:02:40.880 | So you can see how close the parallel is to love covers a multitude of sins.
00:02:48.280 | So what does this proverb mean?
00:02:51.200 | The contrast is between hatred and love.
00:02:54.640 | What hatred does is stir up strife, and what love does is cover offenses.
00:02:59.520 | So the opposite of covering offenses is to stir up strife.
00:03:05.820 | So I take the strife, then, to be what happens when you don't cover offenses, but rather
00:03:14.440 | you try to uncover as many as you can.
00:03:17.000 | You're on the lookout for people's flaws and failures and imperfections, and you draw attention
00:03:22.620 | to them, and you stir up conflict by pointing out as many of a person's flaws as you can.
00:03:28.320 | That's what hate does, according to the proverb.
00:03:31.560 | So the opposite of this would be you're not eager to draw attention to people's flaws
00:03:38.560 | or failures.
00:03:40.080 | You're not eager to create corporate blame and conflict.
00:03:44.880 | Instead, love seeks to deal with flaws and failures and sins another way, more quietly.
00:03:54.760 | Of course, you're not ignorant that some sins must be dealt with publicly, as in the case,
00:04:02.280 | say, of sexual abuse or some kind of violence.
00:04:06.980 | But you also know that there are hundreds of things that people say and do that are
00:04:14.480 | offensive or selfish or prideful or off-color, and they need to be dealt with quietly and
00:04:22.360 | kindly.
00:04:23.360 | I think this is what Paul was getting at in Galatians 6, where he said, "Brothers, if
00:04:29.440 | anyone is caught in a trespass or a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in
00:04:38.040 | a spirit of gentleness.
00:04:40.440 | Keep watch over yourself, lest you too be tempted."
00:04:43.600 | So you don't blow a trumpet and try to placard the person's transgression all over the community.
00:04:51.800 | You do your best to bring about repentance quietly, personally, or if there are reasons
00:04:58.240 | that it's not your place to confront the person, you simply give the person slack and you hope
00:05:05.000 | and you pray that the kindness that you show by overlooking would have a good effect in
00:05:12.760 | due time.
00:05:14.400 | So cover offenses can have two meanings, can't it?
00:05:19.800 | One is to simply let it go, overlook it, as we say, and that's referred to in Proverbs
00:05:29.000 | 19.11, "Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is the glory to overlook an offense."
00:05:37.040 | So that's one meaning of cover, overlook.
00:05:41.160 | You see it, but love inclines you not to take offense or to be angered or hurt, but to hope
00:05:48.800 | that your endurance of the injury, perhaps, against you and your forgiveness and patience
00:05:54.900 | will bear fruit in change.
00:05:57.760 | The other meaning is that under that cover of patience, you may be quietly and actively
00:06:05.680 | dealing with the person in one-on-one ways that actively and quietly seek repentance.
00:06:15.040 | We shouldn't jump to the conclusion that when love covers a multitude of sins, it's not
00:06:18.920 | in there talking to anybody.
00:06:21.280 | Love wants peace, not conflict.
00:06:23.520 | Love wants holiness, not sin.
00:06:26.080 | Love wants the good of the sinning person, not public vengeance.
00:06:32.640 | And in both of those meanings, the overlook one and the quietly deal with the sinner,
00:06:39.800 | in both of those meanings of cover, there is a forgiving spirit at work.
00:06:46.160 | We see that in Psalm 32.1, "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven," and
00:06:53.320 | then parallel, "whose sin is covered."
00:06:57.280 | So cover parallels forgive.
00:07:01.440 | To cover is to work toward forgiveness, where the sin doesn't break the relationship anymore.
00:07:08.800 | So now back to 1 Peter 4.8, "The end of all things is at hand.
00:07:14.120 | Therefore be self-controlled, sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
00:07:17.720 | Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins."
00:07:23.880 | So against the Old Testament background, as well as the New Testament parallels that we'll
00:07:29.440 | see in just a minute, the sins that are being covered here are the sins of fellow Christians,
00:07:36.560 | not your own sins and not those outside the church, but the failures of Christians to
00:07:43.240 | live up to the biblical path of righteousness.
00:07:47.400 | And with that in mind, we start to see this work of love all over the New Testament.
00:07:54.960 | That covering idea is everywhere.
00:07:57.920 | For example, 1 Corinthians 13.5 says, "Love is patient and kind.
00:08:04.840 | It does not keep an account of wrongs."
00:08:08.640 | That's the old King James translation, and it's good.
00:08:13.480 | Isn't that the same, not keeping account of wrongs?
00:08:16.800 | Isn't that the same as saying love covers wrongs?
00:08:20.760 | It doesn't keep an account of them.
00:08:23.280 | Or he goes on in 1 Corinthians 13 and says, "Love is not easily irritated."
00:08:29.560 | Huh.
00:08:30.560 | That's like overlook, right?
00:08:32.640 | It's like a covering.
00:08:33.640 | Isn't that the same as saying love covers irritations?
00:08:37.600 | Or verse 7, same chapter, he goes on and says, "Love bears all things, endures all things."
00:08:45.080 | Well, bears and endures means that love doesn't throw your flaw and your failure back in your
00:08:52.480 | face.
00:08:53.760 | It bears it.
00:08:54.760 | It endures it.
00:08:56.880 | That's a covering rather than a flag waving over it and saying, "Hey, everybody, look.
00:09:02.760 | What I found.
00:09:03.760 | Jim's a loser.
00:09:04.760 | He offended me.
00:09:05.760 | Mary's a hypocrite.
00:09:06.840 | She hurt me."
00:09:07.840 | That's not bearing and enduring.
00:09:10.560 | It's not covering.
00:09:12.720 | Or we see this covering work in Colossians 3 where Paul says to believers, "Bear with
00:09:19.520 | one another, and if one has a complaint, forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven you."
00:09:29.520 | So enduring, forgiving means that people have offended me, hurt me, irritated me, and I
00:09:36.700 | choose not to retaliate.
00:09:39.040 | Instead, I cover the offense of the hurt or the irritation.
00:09:45.040 | Now, the closest parallel in the New Testament to 1 Peter 4.8, which sheds even more light
00:09:53.400 | on what's going on with this covering, is James 5.19.
00:09:56.720 | "My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth," you've got a believer who's
00:10:03.440 | straying off, about to make shipwreck of faith.
00:10:06.680 | "If any of you wanders off from the truth and someone brings him back," so you go after
00:10:12.360 | your brother, you quietly plead and deal and pray and share, and you win him.
00:10:17.720 | "Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from
00:10:24.320 | death and cover a multitude of sins."
00:10:28.800 | In other words, when we mercifully pursue a wayward brother or sister and win them back
00:10:36.240 | to the path of faith and obedience, they are saved from making shipwreck of their faith,
00:10:44.760 | and when they take their place under the blood of Jesus, all their sins are not only covered
00:10:53.360 | by our own patience and endurance and forgiveness, but they're also covered by the blood of Jesus,
00:11:01.760 | which is why Peter says, "You will save their souls."
00:11:06.080 | So, I think it is fair to say as we cover the sins of those who offend us, rather than
00:11:14.000 | retaliating, we are offering them an expression of Christ's covering by his blood, so that
00:11:23.440 | if they rest their faith in Christ because of our kindness, our covering, they will experience
00:11:32.600 | the ultimate kindness and the ultimate covering of the forgiveness of the sins in Christ.
00:11:40.240 | Amen.
00:11:41.240 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:42.800 | And speaking of a straying believer or a wayward brother or sister who is on the path of shipwrecking
00:11:48.640 | their faith, that was a theme that we addressed just a couple of weeks back on the podcast,
00:11:53.200 | you might remember.
00:11:54.200 | Those proved to be very popular episodes, no surprise.
00:11:57.640 | See APJ's 1849 and 1850 for more on what it means to shipwreck the faith.
00:12:03.760 | Thank you for joining us today.
00:12:06.360 | You can ask a Bible question of your own.
00:12:08.080 | You can search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast, all at askpastorjohn.com.
00:12:15.680 | Speaking of covering sin, at the center of our faith, we celebrate the cross of Jesus
00:12:21.800 | Christ, his horrific suffering and death by crucifixion.
00:12:27.600 | His blood truly covers our sin in the most profound way, and his death was no accident.
00:12:34.620 | It was not a fluke of history.
00:12:37.320 | It was not merely an end result of mob violence unstopped.
00:12:42.280 | His death was designed.
00:12:45.200 | It was intentional, divinely intended, intended from the beginning of time.
00:12:53.620 | This is a somber and significant point to grasp from Acts chapter 4, verses 27 and 28,
00:12:59.040 | the text we're going to look at next time.
00:13:00.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:13:02.000 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:13:04.280 | Have a great weekend.
00:13:04.960 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:13:13.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]