What does it mean that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8)?

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.

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.

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?

"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.

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.

(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.

"Hatred" is next brought before us, the precise reverse of God in His love, the transcript of Satan in his malice. So evident is its association, that it is needless to state its parentage; it is "as Cain," who was of the evil one, and slew his brother. But, even if in its lightest form, it "stirs up strifes," resenting all interference with man's will, as God is nowhere in its thoughts. "But love covers all transgressions." Such is the deep feeling of the divine nature in a man of God. Personal resentment is far from the heart. He is pleased to forgive and forget. So the Apostle repeats (1 Peter 4:8) that love covers a multitude of sins, as James similarly concludes his epistle. Yet even Israel, not Christians only, were to be holy; and if a false witness rose up and was convicted, when both stood before Jehovah, then, instead of covering, they were bound to do to him as he meant against his brother, and so put the evil away from among them. Any other course is Satan's work by setting one scripture to annul another, instead of obeying all. To bring human feeling into such a case is as contrary to the gospel as it was to the law. "Do ye not judge them that are within?" "Holiness becomes thy house, O Jehovah, for ever." This is as inalienable as love's privilege to cover all transgressions personally. When our Lord on the mount taught His disciples not to resist evil (Matt. 5:38- 42) according to the law of retaliation, it was for Christian life in its individual walk. The same Lord insisted on unsparing judgment of evil in the Church. So we all know how wrong it is to efface 1 Corinthians 5 in practice by forbidding the uprooting of the tares in Matthew 13:29. How unintelligent and blind!

"The mouth of the righteous is a well of life" (v. 11), for from such a mouth flows living water, words of refreshing value, influenced by the truth of God's Word. But from the mouth of the wicked come words of violence. While hatred stirs up anger and strife, love in contrast serves to cover sins (v. 12). Of course, there are cases where sin needs to be exposed, but if it is not harmful to others, wisdom seeks to cover wrong doing.

"He that covereth a transgression seeketh love, but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends" (verse 9). To cover a transgression does not mean to ignore sin. How he who has sinned and is in transgression is to be dealt with is given to us in Galatians 6:1-5. To act in the spirit of love towards one who has sinned is Christ-like. To repeat the matter, gossip about it, harp on the shortcomings and failure, is Satan-like, for he is the accuser of the brethren.