The apostle 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 covereth all sins” (Prov. 10:1212Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins. (Proverbs 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 someone 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 savor (Eccl. 10:11Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor. (Ecclesiastes 10:1)). What is the cure? says Peter. O, 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 supposing you cover with a mantle of love my naughtiness, what does God see? The reproduction in you of the same love and grace there was in Christ. Peter says, I expect you to go on smoothly with the saints, no matter what other people are doing.
“Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” Verse 9. This is perfectly beautiful, though some people would grumble at you for doing it; not so, says Peter.
“Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality” (Rom. 12).
First, look out that nobody is in want and secondly, you are to keep an open house free. You are, nay more, enjoined so to do. This is a beautiful divine balance.
God very often not only thus brings His people together, but by these means binds them together. Use your house to get your brethren together, and get to know them, and they you, and that not because you must—not grudgingly, but in love.