How can we above all love each other deeply (1 Peter 4:8)?

(1 Peter 4:8,) "And, above all things, have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." The apostle now turns to what is very helpful for us who are within. Towards those who are outside, there is to be sobriety and watchfulness, coupled with prayer to God; but now among ourselves, what is there to be? Fervent charity. Why? Because that is the thing that God delights in — "Love covers all sins" (Prov. 10:12). This is the reason why he presses that this fervent charity should work in them, because it not merely keeps people going on well with God, but happily with each other.

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, outside human systems. They are flung much together, all the old barriers broken down, and they are simply brought together on the ground of the Church of God. Unless grace thoroughly works, there is no place where people can so pain and wound each other, and therefore Peter says we need this fervent charity, not only for going on together, and for the restraint of what is not lovely, but also for the activity of divine love in the saint of God, and finding the very opportunity for its activity in the naughtiness of some one else!

The worse a thing is in another the more lovely an opportunity it gives you for covering it up. "Love covers a multitude of sins." Not one or two, but a multitude — a thousand little things that the devil would like to tell in every quarter, in order to upset the saints, and thus introduce a dead fly into the ointment, and produce a stinking savour. What is the cure? says Peter. Oh, this divine love; you cover it up. Peter says, God has His eye on you, and if you are keeping up another's fault, you are keeping it up for God to see, and He cannot like that.

"But before all things" (for it ought in practice to take precedence of all), he adds, "having your love toward each other fervent, because love covereth a multitude of sins" (ver. 8): this last clause an application of Prov. 10:12. As hatred makes the worst of everything, love is entitled to bury things out of sight; and God endorses it as answering to His own nature. Needless to say that holy discipline retains its needed but sorrowful action.

Next (ver. 9) the apostle would have them, as another form of love, "hospitable unto one another, without murmuring." Surely grumbling and grudging did not become a holy and a royal priesthood. Practical outgoing of heart in this way promotes fellowship, and strengthens the bonds of grace. It yields a fine contrast to man's selfishness, which seeks its own things, and complains of all else.

And of greatest importance is fervent love among the saints. 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. It is certainly not that we are to count-enance or protect what is evil, but love will lead another to Judge his own sin, and thus it is covered, not emblazoned abroad, God delights is such warmth of love.

Hospitality too, with a free heart, is a precious virtue. Let us be glad to show this to others, and never think of it as being an irksome duty. Abraham's example is most refreshing (Gen.18:1-8).

This leads the apostle to the inner position of Christians their relations among themselves, not with God's general government of the world. They follow, because they are Christians, Christ Himself. The first thing that he enforces on them is fervent charity; not merely long-suffering, which would prevent any outbreak of the anger of the flesh, but an energy of love, which by stamping its character on all the ways of Christians towards each other, would practically set aside the action of the flesh, and make manifest the divine presence and action.

Now this love covered a multitude of sins. He is not speaking here with a view to ultimate pardon, but of the present notice which God takes — His present relations of government with His people; for we have present relationships with God. If the assembly is at variance, if there is little love, if the intercourse among Christians is with straitened hearts and difficult the existing evil, the mutual wrongs, subsist before God: but if there is love, which neither commits nor resents any wrongs, but pardons such things, and only finds in them occasion for its own exercise, it is then the love which the eye of God rests upon, and not the evil. Even if there are misdeeds — sins — love occupies itself about them, the offender is brought back, is restored, by the charity of the assembly; the sins are removed from the eye of God, they are covered. It is a quotation from the book of Proverbs 10:12: "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins." We have a right to forgive them — to wash the feet of our brother (compare James 5:15, and 1 John 5:16). We not only forgive, but love maintains the assembly before God according to His own nature so that He can bless it.

Christians ought to exercise hospitality towards each other with all liberality. It is the expression of love, and tends much to maintain it: we are no longer strangers to each other.

(V. 8). If lust marks the world sphere (verse 2), love is the outstanding mark of the Christian company. Other qualities will shine in that circle, but the crowning quality — the one without which all else is vain — is love; therefore, says the Apostle, “above all things have fervent love among yourselves”. For the third time in the course of his Epistle, the Apostle presses love as the outstanding quality of the Christian company. (See 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 3:8).

Love is far from being indifferent to sin; but love does not necessarily expose sins, or gloat over the failure of others. If possible, love will deal with sins privately, so that they do not needlessly become public. When they are dealt with, and judged, love will no longer speak of them or spread them abroad. Love does not make mischief, or lead people to act as busybodies. Love covers a multitude of sins, as the wise man says, “Hatred stirs up strifes: but love covers all sins” (Proverbs 10:12).

More than this, we should be marked by fervent love amongst ourselves, and the utilization of every gift and ability to the glory of God, from whom all such things proceed. The world is a cold and critical place, the Christian circle should be a place of warm love. When love amongst Christians exists in fervour it expresses itself passively in covering a multitude of sins and actively in giving and hospitality. There are alas many sins even with true believers. The antagonistic world delights to advertize the sins of believers, proclaiming them upon the housetops. Love in the Christian circle feels them as though they were its own and covers them. When a Christian busies himself in advertizing the sins of some other Christian, he thereby advertizes his own carnal condition. Many of us would be rather careful not to advertize the sin of some other believer who happens to meet with us in our public gatherings. Are we as careful in regard to believers who do not meet with us?

One other thing the apostle emphasizes: "And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." This exhortation clearly reveals that he has the saints in their mutual relationships in view, that he thinks of them as a company called out of the world, and indeed not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. And the Lord also before His departure enjoined His disciples to love one another as He had loved them. Likewise the apostle desires that beyond everything they should be distinguished by mutual fervent love. This shows that Peter, no less than John, had drunk in, and lived in, the remembrance of his Lord's exhortations before He departed to the Father, and that he was now led of the Spirit to write to his fellow-pilgrims, and to press them home upon their hearts, in view of the end of all things, on the ground, as he says, that love shall cover the multitude of sins. God's love has "covered" the multitude of our sins, and that same love, acting through us in the power of the Spirit, will cover the sins of our brethren. In the absence of the manifestation of brotherly love, and when our hearts are chilled, instead of the love which is not easily provoked, which imputeth no evil, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things (1 Cor. 13), we become suspicious, harsh, and censorious; and then envy and strife springing up, there follow confusion and every evil work. Let us then lay to heart this injunction of the apostle's, and especially now that so many premonitions of the end of all things are appearing on every hand, so that we may be marked by this fervent love, and thus be ever striving after unity and its expression in the circle of our fellowship.

Now let us go on to Ephesians. In chapter 1:4 we read, "That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love." And in order to be this we are going to be conformed to the image of His Son. But is God's thought merely that we should be loved by Him? If we turn on to chapter 5 of the same epistle we shall find something further. "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." Christ covered us with His own acceptability, instead of leaving us exposed to what we justly deserved. This is precisely how we are to act. Instead of exposing the delinquencies of others, we are to seek to remove them, and our spirituality is discerned, not in condemnation, but in recovery. "Love covers the multitude of sins." It does not make light of sin, but diminishes every opportunity of the contagion spreading. In this way "love covers the multitude of sins."

Probably at V- one needs to be steeped in love; love covers a multitude of sins, which are necessarily the subject of reproof if they are not covered. For that matter there is no remedy but an increase of love, for if they are not covered, they ought then to be judged; and the spiritual feebleness which leaves them uncovered, shews plainly the incapacity to act aright with regard to them when they appear. We have to seek power from on high for such a condition of things, and Jesus is faithful, perfectly faithful to intervene, and to answer the necessities of His people. The little public discipline is harrowing, and it is most hurtful to piety. But what is to be done if full grace does not sustain holiness? My comfort is that the Lord is watching over these dear friends at - dear to Him, thank God, and through His great grace, very dear to me. I hope that His goodness will cause them to avoid the snares that there are in the separation of the brethren into several meetings, and that it may grant to the brothers to watch as to this by an increase of mutual love and openness at other times, and in seeking each other out.

"But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." After this episode which has to do with men here, not in the unseen world, he returns to the relative duties of Christians, and exhorts them to watchfulness with sobriety, to fervent love, and also to "use hospitality one to another without grudging." And then he takes up what is distinctly spiritual power, which should be used not in charity only but with conscience before God, and for His glory through our Lord Jesus. We saw in a similarly characteristic way in the epistle of James the connection of his moral aim with teaching. But they both suppose an open door for ministry among Christians in the Christian assembly. Why was there the mighty action of the Spirit of God producing such various gifts for profit if they did not create the responsibility to exercise them?