Dear Elim Grace,
It’s a Marriage Monday!
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8) Peter likely has in mind Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” “Love” is the antithesis of “hate” in this context. As is “covers all offenses” of “stirs up strife (dissension)”.
Love builds up. Hatred tears down. Love covers and forbears with the sin committed. Hatred attacks and seeks to divide because of the sin committed. In order to prevent hate and sin from tearing down and dividing a relationship, we must with intent and in earnest keep on loving one another. Love must insist on carrying on despite the difficulties it faces.
Hate cannot produce love. Love can and should produce hate — towards the right things and for the rights reasons. Love keeps hate in check; love keeps hate healthy. But hate leaps the bounds and becomes unhealthy, even destructive, when and where we cease to love God and neighbor first. Too often we can hate the right things, but with a hate that is anything but right.
In marriage, we must stretch far and wide to love rather than hate. Love stretches beyond the divide to forbear and to forgive.
God’s loved stretched “as far as the east is from the west” to forgive us of our sins (Psalm 103:12). “As high as the heavens are above the earth” is God’s steadfast, forbearing love towards us in Christ. Paul (with Peter) would encourage and exhort us with these words: “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)
To the extent that we stretch to know God’s love for us in Christ Jesus will we be able to “keep loving” our spouse, to keep stretching towards them in mercy and grace. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) Of course to cover sin does not mean we hide or ignore it. But it means we refuse to let sin come to its fullest and most deadly expression. We interrupt it’s course with love.
Pastor Jonathan