[From Part II, Chapter
V: “Love Hides a Multiplicity of Sins”]
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a
multitude of sins.”
~ 1 Peter 4:8 (NASB)
I honestly never really thought about what this verse meant
until now. After all, how can love cover a multitude of sins? I know how Christ’s
love covers my sins, but Peter is not talking about Christ’s love for me. He is
talking about our love for each other. How can my love cover someone else’s
sin? What does that even mean?
For Kierkegaard, one of the ways that love covers up sin is
through forgiveness, which actually removes or erases sin. This is a path that
most of us probably don’t want to follow, however, because we like to be
pragmatic. We like to focus on what we can see happening, and you cannot see
sin being erased. As Kierkegaard argues, it requires faith:
“The lover sees the sin which he forgives, but he believes that forgiveness takes it away. This of course, cannot be seen, although the sin can be seen; and on the other hand, if the sin did not exist to be seen, neither could it be forgiven. Just as one by faith believes the unseen in the seen, so the lover by forgiveness believes the seen away. Both are faith. Blessed is the man of faith; he believes what he cannot see. Blessed is the lover; he believes away what he nevertheless can see!”[1]
To forgive is an act of faith: the evidence of the sin
persists; the consequences persist; and yet we believe that the sin is gone,
and so by forgiving we remove sin from the world. It sounds good, and yet
Kierkegaard observes that by our actions we reveal that we don’t really believe
in the power of forgiveness to erase sin:
“But why, I wonder, is forgiveness so rare? Is it not, I wonder, because faith in the power of forgiveness is so small and so rare? Even the better person, which is not at all inclined to carry malice and rancor and is far from being irreconcilable, is not infrequently heard to say: ‘I should like to forgive him, but I don’t see how it could be of help.’ Alas, it is not seen! Yet, if you yourself had ever needed forgiveness, then you know what forgiveness accomplishes—why then do you speak so naively and so unlovingly about forgiveness? For there is something essentially unloving in saying: I don’t see what help my forgiveness can give him.”
To deny forgiveness because I don’t believe it would change
anything is essentially unloving because I know it does change things: that’s why I crave forgiveness myself when I’m
the guilty party. If being forgiven
makes a difference to me, then why shouldn’t forgiving others make a
difference? To deny that to my neighbor is unloving.
But, of course, simply forgiving is not enough. It is
possible to use forgiveness in an unloving way. People crave forgiveness, and
so with all human needs we often exploit that need. We often use our
forgiveness as leverage or emotional capital to manipulate others or keep them
in our power. “I forgive you, but you owe me one!” we might say. To use
forgiveness as a power-play is also unloving, and it does not have the same
effect. In order to cover over a multitude of sin, Kierkegaard argues,
forgiveness must come from love:
“Only love is—yes, it seems playful, but let us put it this way—only love is handy enough to take the sin away by forgiving it. When I hang weights on forgiveness (that is, when I am laggard in forgiving or make myself important by being able to forgive), no miracle occurs. But when love forgives, the miracle of faith occurs…: that which is seen nevertheless by being forgiven is not seen.”
When we forgive in love we perform a miracle. Instead of
moving a mountain, we do something far more important and miraculous: we cover sin.
A mountain can be moved with enough equipment and enough time, and there would
be nothing miraculous about it. But to cover sin through loving forgiveness—that
is a true miracle that only God can accomplish.
Dear Father,
To be honest, I find that I don’t really want to cover my
neighbor’s sins. Especially when I’m the injured party, I would rather hold it
over them. I would rather expose their sin to the whole world. I would rather
take revenge. And yet you have granted us the ability to cover over sin—to reduce
it, to erase it even, by forgiving as you have forgiven. Make me always mindful
that forgiveness matters. Remind me that I can speak love into another person’s
life by forgiving them—and you have commanded us both to forgive and to love.
Make me into an agent of your forgiveness, and overcome my pettiness for the
sake of your kingdom.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who forgave all of my sins,
Amen.
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