but before all things having fervent love among yourselves, because love covers a multitude of sins;
Peter is writing about how believers should treat each other. He puts one thing above everything else. The command is not simply to love but to keep love at full heat — and to know what love does with the failures it finds.
Love comes first
The verse turns from the outside world to the circle of believers. One writer marks that shift and gives the reason for it.
The apostle now turns to what is very helpful for us who are within. Toward those outside, we are to be sober and watchful, and to pray to God. But among ourselves, what should there be? Fervent love. Why? Because that is the thing God delights in — "love covers all offenses" (Proverbs 10:12). So he urges this fervent love on them. It keeps people going on well with God, and going on well with each other too.
The word "fervent" is not decoration. It points to something that belongs to God's own nature.
Most important of all is fervent love among believers. For love is the warmth and energy of God's own nature, in which believers by grace have a share. Light may expose sin, but love covers a multitude of sins.
What covering does
Peter is quoting Proverbs, where love stands opposite hatred. That contrast explains what covering means. The same writer adds the limit that keeps it from turning into carelessness.
Peter says, "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly." In practice this should come before everything else. Then he gives the reason: "love covers a multitude of sins" (v. 8). That last clause applies Proverbs 10:12. Hatred makes the worst of everything. Love is free to bury things out of sight, and God approves of that, because it matches His own nature. Of course, holy discipline still has its needed but sad work to do.
Covering has a practical opposite, and it exposes the one who does it.
The world is a cold and critical place; the Christian circle should be a place of warm love... The hostile world loves to publish the sins of believers and shout them from the rooftops. Love in the Christian circle feels them as though they were its own and covers them. When a Christian spreads the sins of another Christian, he only puts his own poor spiritual state on display.
The pattern comes from Christ
Christ has already done for believers what they now owe each other.
Christ covered us with His own standing before God, instead of leaving us exposed to what we deserved. This is how we are to act. Instead of exposing other people's failures, we should work to remove them. Our spiritual state shows in recovery, not in condemnation. "Love covers a multitude of sins." Love does not make light of sin. It cuts off the chances for the infection to spread.
Covered in God's sight now
Covered from whom? One writer answers: this is not about final pardon, but about how God deals with His people now.
Now this love covers a multitude of sins. Peter is not speaking about final pardon here. He is speaking about what God notices now, and how He governs His people day by day... suppose there is love that does no wrong and resents none. It pardons such things. It even treats them as its own opportunity. Then God's eye rests on that love, and not on the evil. Even where there are real sins, love goes to work on them. The love of the gathered believers brings the wrongdoer back and restores him. God no longer has those sins before His eye. They are covered.
Where love is cold
If love does not cover, the matter does not disappear. It has to be handled a harder way.
Love covers a multitude of sins. Sins it does not cover have to be rebuked instead. The only remedy is more love. Sins that are not covered must be judged instead. And the weak spiritual state that leaves them uncovered will fail to deal with them when they surface.
Those living closest together feel this most.
There are no people who have such opportunities of irritating each other as those who are seeking to walk in faith and in the truth... Unless grace is at work, no other place produces so much pain and wounding between people. That is why Peter says we need this fervent love. It keeps believers going on together. It holds back what is unlovely. And it gives God's own love something to do — it finds its opportunity in someone else's bad behaviour.
Summary
- Cause — God delights in love, so believers meet the world with sober prayer and meet each other with love at full heat.
- Copy — Christ covered us with His own standing before God. That is the pattern for how we treat each other's failures.
- Cover — hatred makes the worst of everything. Love buries things out of sight, never making light of sin, and works for recovery instead of condemnation.
- Consequence — covering affects how God deals with His people now, not final pardon. Where love covers, God's eye rests on the love, not the evil.
- Cost — what love fails to cover must be judged instead. Coldness that leaves sins uncovered cannot deal with them either.