Sermon - Exaudi 2026 - 1 Peter 4:7-14

Gossip, Eugene de Blaas, 1903

Covering One-Anothers’ Faults

1. Jesus not only overlooks our sins, but forgives them and covers us up

2. We glorify Christ by forgiving one another, and covering up their shame

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” Strife is all too common among us and it’s hard to get along with others. Some people are really mean, some are really annoying, and some people are both. Sometimes this comes out after just brief interactions, other times it’s with people you are around all the time. Perhaps this happens most often with those whom we love a lot. So today St. Peter instructs us: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”

When considering our sins and the sins of one another, it’s important for us to establish our love for one another in Christ. Jesus teaches us: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” St. Paul says: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Again St. John says: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God… In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” And so it is that our love for others is the result of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus.

God’s love for us is not merely an overlooking of sins, but God in Christ paid the penalty of our sins in His fragrant offering and sacrifice on the cross. This is an important detail. It’s not that God in His superabundance of mercy simply overlooks sins as if they were nothing. Rather, Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. In His body on the cross Jesus suffered the wrath of God against our sins in order to pay our penalty and so earn for us salvation and God’s grace and favor. While we receive God’s forgiveness and grace freely, apart from our works or merits, our forgiveness came at a steep price for our Lord who had to suffer in our stead.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the fragrant offering and sacrifice for our sins. Like the whole burnt offering, like the sacrificial animals, He offered up Himself wholly and completely upon the altar of the cross. His sacrifice is the pleasing aroma that satisfies the vengeance of God’s justice against us and our sins. He is the sinless, spotless, Lamb of God, whose life was given for us in love. Our forgiveness is free for us, but it is not free, there was a cost, and our Lord paid the price with His own life.

And so God’s love for us in Christ Jesus is much more than a feeling or an opinion, but God’s love for us is evidenced by the concrete actions that Jesus took for us. His love isn’t fleeting or cheap, but it cost Him dearly since His own life was required. He who is immortal and eternal, who has existed from before the foundations of the earth were laid, He entered into our mortality and so suffered the pangs of death and the abandonment of God the Father which we justly deserve. His love for us is real and it cost Him dearly.

The reason for this is that our sins ought to be seen like a real expense with a real cost and the cost for them must be paid in blood. Unlike our government budgets, the Lord’s books must balance, justice must be met, God cannot operate with debt to Himself because that’s an impossibility. Someone must pay the bill. In love, Jesus pays our bill, and He pays that with His blood. He balances the books with His life. He gives of Himself, sacrificially, in love for us.

So when Jesus tells us: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another,” this means quite a lot in terms of our love for each other. Afterall, “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” We are not only to love others who love us and treat us well, but we are to love others who hate us. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Just as God loves us when we are hostile to Him, so are we to love others when they are hostile to us.

Within the body of Christ especially we are to love one another when the other is a jerk or obnoxious or insensitive or whatever. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.”

We have been called to forgive one another and live peaceably together. This actually doesn’t mean we ignore sins or pretend they don’t exist, while we secretly hold onto them until we need fodder against them; that’s not Christian, that’s just being a passive aggressive midwesterner. Sins must be dealt with. When another sins against us and harms us, a debt has occurred which must be paid. That debt is eternally paid for by the blood of Jesus. And yet, in our own bodies we must bear the burden of their sin, and it costs us to forgive them.

Practically speaking, this means that when another has sinned against us, we should call them to repentance. We should talk to them and explain how what they did has hurt us in some way, and then when they repent we must forgive them, no longer holding the sin against them, no longer holding onto the grudge, but freeing them from our wrath. We must love each other in this way just as the Lord loves us in this way.

But what is perhaps more complicated in this earthly life is that not only must we call one another to repentance and forgive them, but we must learn to bear with one another just as the Lord bears with us. We must be patient with each other. Not just patient in the sense that we wait for each other, but in the sense that we are long-suffering, we are long in suffering over the foolishness of one another. In this life we are all sinners and sin still clings to us even after we have been redeemed by Christ. Try as we might, we all have an abundance of character flaws. Some of them we can work on and try to improve, and we should, but many of them won’t be fixed until the resurrection.

Therefore, we must bear with one another according to each person’s faults and weaknesses. In love for each other we must bear with one another. Our love must cover a multitude of sins. Husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, children, siblings, members of a congregation, must all learn to do this regularly in order to live together in harmony. He chews too loudly, she’s messy, he’s disorganized, she’s too slow, he always makes the same dumb mistakes, she always forgets to tell me important things. Should they fix their faults? Yes. Will they ever fix all of their faults? No. It is incumbent upon us to forgive them, bear with them, and then cover their faults.

Not only must we suffer their obnoxious habits, but we must also learn to cover up their obnoxious habits. I know we love to complain about and gossip about others, but we must learn to control our tongues and so cover up each other’s faults. Our Lord covers our shame, He clothes us in His robe of righteousness in our baptismal garment, and so conceals our embarrassing faults. If our Lord would do this for us, then we must do it for one another. Of course this doesn’t mean we can’t seek advice from others about various situations we’re facing, nor does it mean we shouldn’t expose evildoers to prevent them from harming others, but the ordinary faults of one another we must learn to cover up.

Within Christ’s church on earth we face many serious obstacles and assaults from Satan. He brings against Christ’s bride many grievous sins and accusations. Satan brings fatal persecutions, fiery trials, against the church. The church is regularly insulted by those who hate us. The devil also seeks to further divide us by bickering over minor faults and annoyances, leading us to hate one another and stir up strife. So among these various annoyances we face let us learn to humble ourselves beneath the almighty hand of God, see that we too are but poor miserable sinners, and so love one another as Christ has loved us. When our love forgives, overlooks, and covers up each other’s faults, Christ is glorified in our actions, and His sacrificial love displayed on the cross is born witness in our lives.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!