God Does Not Cover Up Bad Things; He Covers Us

I Peter 4:8 tells us, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.”  But what does this mean, and how do we walk it out in a healthy way?  Does it mean dismissing sin, hiding abuse and allowing it to continue, accepting ongoing mistreatment without ever setting a boundary?

Covering has several dimensions, and God is our example in all of them.  One aspect of covering is forgiveness, which is always associated with love, and the supreme example of this is Jesus taking our sin on Himself and dying for us.  In this way, God did more than just cover our sin; He completely did away with it.  He destroyed it.  He paid for it and satisfied what had to be done in response to it at a cosmic level.  God’s forgiveness of our sin is never a dismissal of its significance; justice and mercy meet in the cross.  So, when we follow His example by loving one another and forgiving as God, in Christ, forgave us, we do not dismiss the significance of how another has harmed us.  We acknowledge it, and we forgive, allowing the God Who alone can bring together justice and mercy to be the One to Whom vengeance belongs – After all, He is the only One Who can be trusted with it.

I Peter 4:8 addresses interpersonal relationships.  It gives us directions for dealing with each other day by day in a world where we really mess things up for each other sometimes.  What does it mean to let love cover “a multitude of sins” in our daily lives together?  Well, sometimes it means we let the little things go.  Sometimes as adults we have to learn not to “snag on” everything, or we will unravel. Human beings are so imperfect that addressing every little thing all the time just isn’t practical.  If we are going to have any kind of relationship with one another, we have to learn to let a few things go.  (In fact, Cinthia recommends doing this physically to help ourselves address things with a sense of humor: Cock your head to the left, and say, “Ignore;” then cock your head to the right and say, “Delete.”  This is the Cinthia Hiett Ignore/Delete Button for humans.)  This is particularly applicable when we know the person’s heart was not to harm us, when no malice was intended, when we are not deeply wounded or are simply able to let God heal the scratch without having to address it.  It means that we can refuse to let pettiness rule the day.

Some of us are genuinely more sensitive than others, and things may hurt more.  It is okay to acknowledge this pain, but we have to be careful not to overuse our sensitivity or require others to constantly tend to slights we could handle well.  Even if we are highly sensitive, we still have adult brains.  We can use logic, talk ourselves through things toward forgiveness, and differentiate between irritation and harm.  Proverbs 19:11 says that good sense makes one slow to anger and that it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.  Love allows us to overlook minor offenses, tolerate provocations, to see what is big and what just bugs us.

Sometimes, though, we do need to address things.  Covering does not always mean ignoring.  Another thing it means is that we can acknowledge the problem but put it into context, taking the other person’s struggles into account.  Love means we can give each other time to allow for the processes of growth and maturation.  Love can acknowledge the reality of what someone has cost us but also allow for undoing and redoing, which can be done by the person who takes his own errors seriously.  This is part of what it means that love protects – love does not shame the person but says, “I have your back.  I am praying for you.  You can fix this.”  Protecting is not sweeping sin under the rug; it just means we don’t throw people out.  The title of today’s show is “God Does Not Cover Up Bad Things; He Covers Us.”  God’s covering on earth is not intended as a ticket to do whatever we want and never consider the consequences for ourselves or others.  Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God is meant to lead us to repentance.  He does not cover to enable sin but to lead us back to Him.  He gives us time to fix, to undo and redo, to learn and to grow.  And this is what we are to do for one another.  Covering does not preclude setting boundaries; boundaries protect love.  Covering does involve ignoring some things, but there are some things that should not be ignored.  In situations where we are trying to be deeply intimate with another person, there is less room to ignore, particularly if advantage is being taken and there is no effort at improvement.

We also have to accept this forgiveness for ourselves, forgiving ourselves as He forgives us; otherwise, our self-hatred takes over our lives and works its way out to others.  God’s forgiveness is not a buffet in which we get to choose forgiveness for ourselves separately from the forgiveness of others, or forgiveness of others but continued vengeance toward ourselves.  God’s forgiveness takes over our lives and changes our approach to all the humans, self and other, by the same Blood and the same Holy Spirit.  It even enables us to accept forgiveness from one another.

Cinthia discussed Matthew 18:3-5 several times today, explaining that Jesus used children to teach us about salvation, simplicity, and humility.  He said that we have to become like children in order to receive His kingdom.  Have you ever given a gift to a child?  Did that child refuse the gift, insisting he or she could not accept such extravagance?  Did the child insist on paying you back, complicating the gift by trying to discern what strings you might have attached?  Not likely.  As adults, we can really complicate things, but the heart and mind of a child has had less time to be hardened by the world.  Children simply receive a gift, showing trust in the giver and the giver’s intent.  This is how we have to accept the Kingdom of Heaven in order to receive it at all.

As God’s children, we receive His forgiveness, and we extend it to those who hurt us (including ourselves).  We accept His gift of covering for ourselves, and we extend that covering to one another.  This covering is not dismissal of our sin or tacit permission to continue doing whatever we want to do, regardless of the consequences; the One Who bore all our iniquities is not interested in glorifying or dismissing the seriousness of those iniquities.  But His prayer from the cross that God the Father forgive the ones killing Him because “they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34) indicates incredible mercy and amazing patience with human beings.  He knows that we do not understand the depth of the harm we cause (though this does not change the fact that we cause it or the consequences for those we hurt), and He not only pays for our sin Himself but walks us through the process of learning to be more like Him.  One of the ways we give back to Him is by not taking advantage of this; we are not to use His forgiveness as an excuse to do more harm.  We accept His carrying our sin for us, knowing that we cannot carry it ourselves, and we receive His mercy and grace daily as He walks us through the process of learning to follow Him.  We learn to love people, including but not limited to ourselves, as He does.  God is not saying that only little children are good, but that the adult part of us causes us to miss out on the love and chances and support God gives us.  Jesus enables us to be God’s children, and we are little children with God.  So practice being His little kid -- it is good practice for eternity.

I Corinthians 13 is often called “The Love Chapter,” and it says that love covers all wrongs.  We misunderstand this verse when we use it to protect sin; it is meant to protect the person, not their sin.  Love does not, for example, hide abuse and enable it to continue in the name of covering all wrongs.  Love addresses what needs to happen next.  Love does, however, refrain from gossiping about the sin; it does not allow us to use our brothers’ and sisters’ offenses as topics for our own entertainment, conversation with others, or superiority over others.  Love provides protection while someone works on fixing, undoing and redoing, learning and growing.  If someone is continually unwilling to do this, it may mean that the relationship is unhealthy.  Intimacy can only grow with a reasonable level of safety.  Putting others before ourselves does not mean that we become irrelevant, though it does allow us to see past a lot of things.  Seeing things in context is not the same as making excuses that justify what must not be allowed to continue.

Remember, God is our example of love because He is love.  He paid for our sin Himself, providing the ultimate Covering -- and He still loves us enough to hold us accountable.  He knows what sin does to us and to the world.  He chooses His battles and His timing, and He focuses on what matters most.  He really is covering a multitude of sins all the time, which is the only way we are all still here.  Receive His love, His mercy, His forgiveness, the covering He has provided -- and ask for His help to receive and accept it if this is a struggle for you!  Then ask Him for help learning to extend love’s covering to others.