THE EPISTLE: I PETER 4:7-1277
What is it that makes a person great, admired by creation, well pleasing in the eyes of God? What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it that makes a person unwavering, more unwavering than a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? —It is love!78 What is it that is older than everything? It is love. What is it that outlives everything? It is love. What is it that cannot be taken but itself takes all? It is love. What is it that cannot be given but itself gives all? It is love. What is it that perseveres when everything falls away? It is love. What is it that comforts when all comfort fails? It is love. What is it that endures when everything is changed? It is love. What is it that remains when the imperfect is abolished? It is love. What is it that witnesses when prophecy is silent? It is love. What is it that does not cease when the vision ends? It is love. What is it that sheds light when the dark saying ends? It is love. What is it that gives blessing to the abundance of the gift? It is love. What is it that gives pith to the angel’s words? It is love. What is it that makes the widow’s gift79 an abundance? It is love. What is it that turns the words of the simple person into wisdom? It is love. What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love; and that alone is love, that which never becomes something [III 274] else.
The pagan, too, extolled love, its beauty and its power; but his love could turn into something else that he extolled almost more. Love was beautiful, more beautiful than everything; but revenge was sweet, sweeter than everything. So inferior was the pagan’s thinking about love and about the heavenly, so selfish was everything both in heaven and on earth, that the power who benevolently gave human beings the joy of love enviously reserved revenge for himself because it was the sweetest. No wonder, then, that revenge concealed itself in all the pagan’s love, that anxiety was not driven out even if it was forgotten. No wonder that the enemy worked quietly even when love slept most securely, that anger secretly lay in ambush and watched for its chance. No wonder that it suddenly rushed out in all its wildness; no wonder that it filled the pagan’s soul, which imbibed its forbidden sweetness and thereby assured itself of its kinship with the heavenly! No wonder that no love was happy, just as no one in paganism was happy before the last hour had come,80 which in turn could only bitterly mock a person with the idea that he had been happy! No wonder that sorrow infiltrated all joy, that the next moment, even in the moment of joy, incessantly walked by as alarming as the figure of death! How could a pagan succeed in overcoming the world; but if he did not succeed in that, how then would he be able to gain the world!
What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love, and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else. The devout Jew also gave witness for love, but his love was the child of changeableness and variation, and he knew how to hate his enemy. Even though he left revenge to the Lord, because it belongs to him,81 his soul still was not unfamiliar with its sweetness. This consciousness is also sweet, that the Lord’s revenge is more terrible than any human revenge, that a person curses his enemy, but the Lord curses the ungodly one and the ungodly one’s family through many generations.82 No wonder, then, that anxiety continually kept one eye open even when love was most free from care; no wonder that anger, even when love least dreamed of it, sat quietly and reckoned everything given and received, reckoned what was yours and what was mine! No wonder that no love was happy until its final hour, because not until then was love’s uncertain claim perfectly met.
What is it that is never changed even though everything is [III 275] changed? It is love. And only that which never becomes something else is love, that which gives away everything and for that reason demands nothing, that which demands nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, that which blesses and blesses when it is cursed, that which loves its neighbor but whose enemy is also its neighbor,83 that which leaves revenge to the Lord because it takes comfort in the thought that he is even more merciful.
It is of this love that Peter speaks in the text just read, and just as this love many times and in many ways84 received an apostolic witness, so he witnesses here again to its power when he says: Love will hide a multitude of sins.
It is these words, this witness, that we shall look at more closely as we deliberate on how love hides a multitude of sins.
But how should we speak of this? Should we speak in such a way that we do not give ourselves time to dwell on the words, because the mere sound contains a silent reproach that evokes a sorrowful longing for them and produces a striving toward them, toward the goal that is set for every human being to strive toward? Should we speak in such a way that if possible even in this hour the single individual might resolve to take the opportune moment, that if possible the words might move someone they encountered standing still and doing nothing to begin the race, someone they encountered on the track to speed up the race, someone they encountered running the race to run faster and hurry after the perfect.85 Should we speak that way—as if we were speaking to the imperfect! Should we call to mind how rarely, indeed, is found even someone who either never knew or has utterly forgotten “the world’s childhood learning” 86—that revenge is sweet. Should we call to mind that every human being, if he is honest, only all too often catches himself in being able, protractedly, penetratingly, and expertly, to interpret the sad truth that revenge is sweet. Should we call to mind how rare indeed is even the person who left revenge to the Lord, trusting that he had a still more lenient explanation of the guilt, a still more merciful judgment against it, that he is greater than a human heart.87 How often, on the other hand, every honest human being must confess to himself that he did not exactly renounce revenge by leaving it to the Lord. Should I call to mind how even more rare is the person who forgave in such a way that [III 276] the contrite enemy actually was his neighbor, the person who in his forgiveness actually abolished the partition wall and was aware of no difference between them, was unaware that he himself was called in the early morning and his enemy in the eleventh hour,88 was unaware that he himself was fifty pennies in debt, his enemy five hundred.89 Should I call to mind how rare is even the person who loved in such a way that when his enemy prospered his ear heard no whisper of envy because his heart did not know envy, loved in such a way that his “eye did not begrudge the gift”90 when good fortune favored his enemy, the person who loved in such a way that when things went badly for his enemy he forgot that it was his enemy. Should we warn against a certain ingenious common sense that in human eyes is less culpable, that cunningly knows how to discover people’s faults, that admittedly does not misuse its knowledge to condemn but nevertheless by its curiosity does not so much violate the neighbor as hinder itself. Should we admonish everyone to aspire to that Christian love because everyone so often needs forgiveness himself. Should we admonish everyone to judge himself and in so doing forget to judge others, warn against judging and denouncing because no person can quite see through another, because it has sometimes happened that the wrath of heaven did not consume the one on whom it was called down but the Lord in secret graciously and benignly found him well pleasing; should we admonish everyone against zealously calling down wrath upon another, lest by his irreconcilability he focus a more dreadful wrath upon himself on the day of judgment.91
Is this the way we should speak? Indeed, it certainly would often be beneficial for us to be spoken to that way, but it is very difficult to do it so that in his discourse the one who is speaking does not himself act contrary to the discourse and come to judge others. Indeed, even to judge oneself in the discourse is very difficult, lest the one speaking be entangled in a new misunderstanding and thereby play havoc with others. This is why we choose the easier task; we shall dwell on the words themselves, and just as every other love has been eulogized in the world, we shall discuss and eulogize the love that has the power to perform the wondrous feat of hiding a multitude of sins. We shall speak as to those who are perfect. If, then, there is someone who does not feel himself to be perfect, the discourse would still make no distinction. We shall let our soul rest in the apostolic words, which are not a deceitful, poetic [III 277] locution, not a daring outburst, but a faithful thought, a valid witness, which in order to be understood must be taken literally.
Love will hide a multitude of sins. Love is blind, declares an old proverb, and it does not thereby suggest an imperfection in the lover or an original condition in him, since only when love had won a place in his soul, only then did he become blind and then became more and more blind as love became victorious within him. Or did love become more imperfect when, having first deceived itself by refusing to see what it nevertheless saw, it finally did not even see it anymore? Or who concealed better—he who knew that he had hidden something or he who had forgotten even that? To the pure, all things are pure,92 declares an old saying, and does not thereby suggest an imperfection in the one who is pure that should gradually disappear; on the contrary, the purer he becomes, the purer everything becomes for him. Or was it an imperfection in the one who is pure that he, having first kept himself unspotted by the impurity by refusing to know what he nevertheless knew, finally did not even know anything more about it?
It does not depend, then, merely upon what one sees, but what one sees depends upon how one sees; all observation is not just a receiving, a discovering, but also a bringing forth, and insofar as it is that, how the observer himself is constituted is indeed decisive. When one person sees one thing and another sees something else in the same thing, then the one discovers what the other conceals. Insofar as the object viewed belongs to the external world, then how the observer is constituted is probably less important, or, more correctly, then what is necessary for the observation is something irrelevant to his deeper nature. But the more the object of observation belongs to the world of spirit, the more important is the way he himself is constituted in his innermost nature, because everything spiritual is appropriated only in freedom; but what is appropriated in freedom is also brought forth. The difference, then, is not in the external but in the internal, and everything that makes a person impure and his observation impure comes from within. The external eye does not matter, but “an [III 278] evil eye comes from within.”93 But an evil eye discovers much that love does not see, since an evil eye even sees that the Lord acts unjustly when he is good.94 When evil lives in the heart, the eye sees offense, but when purity lives in the heart, the eye sees the finger of God. The pure always see God,95 but “he who does evil does not see God” (III John 11).
A person’s inner being, then, determines what he discovers and what he hides. When an appetite for sin lives in the heart, the eye discovers the multiplicity of sin and makes it even more multiple, because the eye is the lamp of the body, but if the lamp that is in a person is dark, then how great is the darkness!96 When the anxiety of sin lives in the heart, the ear discovers the multiplicity of sin and makes it even more multiple, and it would do no good for such a person to be blind, because a rascal looks down and listens with his rascal’s ear (Sirach 19:26-27). When love lives in the heart, the eye is shut and does not discover the open act of sin, to say nothing of the concealed act, “for the one who winks his eye has evil in mind” (Proverbs),97 but the one who understands the wink of the eye is not pure. When love lives in the heart, the ear is shut and does not hear what the world says, does not hear the bitterness of blasphemy, because he who says “you fool” to his brother is guilty before the council,98 but he who hears it when it is said to him is not perfect in love. When rashness lives in the heart, a person is quick to discover the multiplicity of sin, then he understands splendidly a fragmentary utterance, hastily comprehends at a distance something scarcely enunciated. When love lives in the heart, a person understands slowly and does not hear at all words said in haste and does not understand them when repeated because he assigns them a good position and a good meaning; he does not understand the long angry or insulting verbal assault, because he is waiting for one more word that will give it meaning. When fear lives in the heart, a person easily discovers the multiplicity of sin, discovers deceit and delusion and disloyalty and scheming, discovers that
Every heart is a net,
Every rogue like a child,
Every promise like a shadow.99
But the love that hides a multitude of sins is never deceived. [III 279] When stinginess lives in the heart, when one gives with one eye and looks with seven to see what one obtains in return (Sirach 20:14), one readily discovers the multiplicity of sin. But when love lives in the heart, then the eye is never deceived, because when love gives, it does not watch the gift but keeps its eye on the Lord. When envy lives in the heart, the eye has the power to elicit the impure even from the pure; but when love lives in the heart, the eye has the power to love forth [elske op100] the good in the impure, but this eye sees not the impure but the pure, which it loves and loves forth by loving it. Yes, there is a power of this world that in its language translates good into evil, but there is a power from above that translates evil into good—it is the love that hides a multitude of sins. When hate lives in the heart, sin is right there at the door of a human being,101 and the multitude of its cravings is present to him; but when love lives in the heart, then sin flees far away and he does not even catch a glimpse of it. When quarreling, malice, anger, litigation, discord, factionalism live in the heart, does one then need to go far to discover the multiplicity of sin, or does one need to live long to bring it forth all around one? But when joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, meekness, continence102 live in the heart, no wonder then that a person, even if he stood in the middle of the multiplicity of sin, would become a stranger, a foreigner, who would understand only very little of the customs of the country; if an explanation were required of him, what a covering of a multitude of sins this would be!
Or if this is not so, should we shrewdly say: The multiplicity of sin in the world is and remains just as great whether love discovers it or not? Should the apostolic words and the love they describe be left in abeyance as a euphuistic mode of speech that cannot meet the test of investigation? But then would that common sense actually understand love as well as it understood the multiplicity of sin! Or would it admit the opposite, that the multiplicity of sin remained just as great whether the understanding discovered it or not; would it not rather congratulate itself on its own ingenuity in discovering and tracking down sin’s hiddenness? But then it would be equally true that the understanding discovered the multiplicity [III 280] of sin and that love hid it, but the one would not be more true than the other. Or was there yet a third way, whereby a person came to know it without intellectually knowing it or lovingly not knowing it—would not such knowledge be an inhuman knowledge? It is not, then, just a rhetorical expression to say that love hides a multitude of sins, but it is truly so, and this is the power of Christian love, which, unlike other love, is not great because of spectacular achievement but is greater in its quiet wondrousness.
Happy the person who saw the world in all its perfection when everything was still very good; happy the person who with God was witness to the glory of creation. More blessed the soul that was God’s co-worker in love; blessed the love that hides a multitude of sins.
Love will hide a multitude of sins. A multitude of sins—that is a terrible phrase and readily brings to mind another connection in which it is used frequently, the multiplicity of creation, prompting us to think of the countless hosts of generations, the innumerable swarms of living creatures that cannot be numbered because no number is large enough, and because there is no moment when one can begin to count, since countless numbers are born every moment. Is it not just the same with the multiplicity of sin, for just as it is said that to him who has, it shall be given, and he shall have in abundance,103 so also is sin very prolific, and one sin gives birth to many, and it multiplies more and more. But love hides the multiplicity of sin. If the eye of love were not shut, if in its own observation it did not hide the multiplicity, how then could it venture to want to halt the power of sin! So it is precisely by having covered the multiplicity of sin in advance that love covers it.
A wise man of old has said: Refrain from disputes, and you [III 281] will reduce sins (Sirach 28:8). But the person who reduces sins surely hides a multitude of sins, and hides it doubly by not sinning himself and by keeping another from it. And yet the person who refrains from disputes keeps a person from sinning only momentarily; perhaps the same person may look for disputes in another direction, but the one who turns a sinner from the error of his ways—of him the Apostle James says: He hides a multitude of sins.104
But is it possible to relate properly how love hides a multitude of sins, or is it not even more multiple than the multiplicity of sin? When love sees the bruised reed, then it knows how to hide a multitude of sins so that the reed is not crushed under the burden. When it sees the smoking wick,105 then it knows how to hide a multitude of sins so that the flame is not put out. When it has been victorious over a multitude of sins, then it knows how to cover the multitude again, then it makes everything festive for the reception, just as the prodigal son’s father106 did, then it stands with open arms and waits for the delinquent, has forgotten everything and brings the delinquent himself to forget everything as it again hides a multitude of sins. Love does not weep over the multitude of sins; if that were the case, then it would indeed see the multitude itself, but it covers the multitude. And when sin resists it, then love becomes even more multifarious, never wearies of faithfully pulling in unequal yoke with it,107 does not weary of believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.108 When sin hardens itself against love and wishes to be rid of it, when it returns abuse and scorn and ridicule for kindness, then love does not repay abusive language with abusive language;109 then it blesses and does not curse.110 When sin enviously hates love, when in its malice it wants to bring love itself to sin, then it finds not guile in love’s mouth but prayer and admonition. But when prayers and admonition only incite sin and become a new occasion for the multiplicity of sin, then love is mute but no less faithful—faithful as a woman, it rescues as a woman does: “without a word” (I Peter 3:1). Sin thought that it had managed so that their ways would soon be parted, but [III 282] see, love stayed with it. And sin wants to thrust love away; it forces love to walk one mile, but see, love walked two miles; it struck love’s right cheek, but see, love turned the other cheek; it took love’s coat, but see, love gave also its cloak.111 Already sin feels its powerlessness; it cannot withstand love any longer; it wants to tear itself away; then it insults love as painfully as possible, because it thinks that even love cannot forgive more than seven times. But see! Love could forgive seventy times seven times,112 and sin grew weary of occasioning forgiveness more quickly than love grew weary of forgiving. Indeed, just as there is a power in sin that has the perseverance to consume every better feeling a person has, so there is a heavenly power that starves the multiplicity of sin out of a person—this power is the love that hides a multitude of sins.
Or is it not so? Should we prefer to praise a sagacity that knows how to describe the multitude of sins even more shockingly? Or should we rather ask this sagacity where it obtained such knowledge? Indeed, if it could convince love that this is the way it is, then love presumably would never begin and would achieve nothing. But this is why love begins by hiding a multitude of sins, and this is why it ends where it began—by hiding a multitude of sins.
Blessed is the man whose sins are covered;113 more blessed is the love that hides a multitude of sins.
Love will hide a multitude of sins. If love had been victorious in the world—well, then the multiplicity of sin would indeed be covered and everything would be perfected in love. If love’s legions were numerous in the world, if they were numerically equal to the enemy’s, so that it could struggle hand to hand—indeed, [III 283] how then could love not be victorious, inasmuch as it is the stronger! If, however, the servants of love are but a little band, if each individual is a solitary person, will love then actually be capable of hiding a multitude of sins? Or are not the apostolic words—insofar as by them we think of something other than love’s pious ignorance, its zeal within its boundaries—in that case, are not the apostolic words a beautiful yet futile speech? Should we regard the apostolic words as inspired foolishness and praise instead the sagacity that declares: The course of life follows definite laws; in the time of extremity let love live next door to ungodliness—it is of no benefit to ungodliness. Would the understanding then be just as ready to say the opposite, that it makes no difference if ungodliness lives with love? Will the understanding deny that in life the innocent must frequently suffer with the guilty? Let us ask the understanding.
An elderly pagan, named and acclaimed in paganism as a sage,114 was sailing with an ungodly man on the same ship. When the ship was in distress at sea, the ungodly man lifted up his voice to pray, but the sage said to him, “Be quiet, dear fellow. If heaven discovers that you are on board, the ship will capsize.” Is it not true, then, that the guilty can cause the destruction of the innocent? But then is not the opposite just as true? Perhaps the understanding merely lacked the courage to believe this, and whereas it had enough of the bleak sagacity that discovers the wretchedness of life, it did not have enough heart to comprehend the power of love. Is not this the way it is—the understanding, after all, always makes a person only despondent and fainthearted, but love gives unbounded courage, and this is why all the apostles spoke with bold confidence. What if instead of an ungodly man there had been on board that same ship a devout man, an apostle! Did that not happen? A pagan ship sailed from Crete bound for Rome, and there was a storm at sea; for many days they saw neither sun nor stars. On board this ship there was an apostle, and Paul stepped forward and said to his companions on the ship, “Men, I bid you take heart, for not one of you will perish.”115 Or would ungodliness actually have greater power than love; would the presence of an ungodly person on board have the power to alter the circumstances for the others, but an apostle [III 284] would have no such power? Or does not the Lord himself declare that for the sake of the elect the days of tribulation will be shortened?116
Is it an unworthy conception of God to think that love hides a multitude of sins in this way? In our deliberating and speaking, do we perhaps forget that God in heaven is not halted by any deception, that his thought is vivid and present, that it penetrates everything and judges the counsels of the heart?117 Would someone be right in reminding us to stick to the truth when we praise love and to say that it is beautiful and lovely of love to be so eager to hide a multitude of sins and avert wrath rather than to exaggerate grossly by saying that love hides a multitude of sins? Has not the person who speaks this way forgotten what we do not forget, that love prays for the sins of others; has he not forgotten that the prayer of a righteous person avails much?118
When Abraham spoke urgently to the Lord and pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrah,119 was he not covering a multitude of sins? Or is it perhaps commendable perspicacity on someone’s part to say that his pleading was just as much a recollection of the multitude of sins and hastened the judgment, just as his own life was already a judgment, which if capable of constituting a condition would inevitably make the judgment even more terrible? How did Abraham pray? Let us speak of it in human terms! Did he not, as it were, sweep the Lord along in his line of thinking, did he not bring the Lord to forget the multitude of sinners in order to count the number of the righteous—if there were 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, yes, even only 10 guiltless persons? Was not Abraham covering a multitude of sins; does the destruction of the cities prove the opposite, or does it prove anything other than that there were not even ten guiltless persons in Sodom? And yet what was Abraham himself compared with an apostle? What was his bold confidence compared with an apostle’s?
How great is a human being, that his life, if it is righteous, [III 285] will judge even angels;120 more blessed is the love that hides a multitude of sins.
We have praised the power of love to hide a multitude of sins; we have spoken as to those who are perfect. If there is someone who does not feel himself to be perfect, the discourse would make no distinction. Let us dwell once again on this love in order to observe the image of it that clearly presents itself to the soul. If anyone by observing himself in this mirror became convinced of his unlikeness, if everyone felt this way, the discourse would make no distinction.
121When the scribes and the Pharisees had seized a woman in open sin,122 they placed her in the middle of the temple, face to face with the Savior; but Jesus stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground. He who knew all things surely knew also what the Pharisees and the scribes knew before they told it to him. The scribes and the Pharisees quickly discovered her guilt; it was indeed easy, since her sin was open. They also discovered another sin, one of which they made themselves guilty as they craftily laid snares for the Lord. But Jesus stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground. Why, do you suppose, did he stoop down; why, do you suppose, did he write with his finger on the ground? Did he sit there like a judge attending carefully to the prosecutors’ speech, listening and stooping down to note the complaint so as not to forget it, so as to judge scrupulously; was this woman’s guilt the only thing the Lord put in writing? Or is he who is writing with his finger on the ground instead writing in order to erase and forget? There the sinner stood, surrounded by those who were perhaps even more guilty, who loudly accused her, but love stooped down and did not hear the accusation, which vanished into thin air; it wrote with its finger in order to erase what it itself knew, because sin discovers a multitude of sins, [III 286] but love hides a multitude of sins. Yes, even before the eyes of sin, love hides a multitude of sins, because with one word from the Lord the Pharisees and the scribes were silenced, and there was no accuser anymore, there was no one who condemned her. But Jesus said to her: Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more—for the punishment of sin breeds new sin, but love hides a multitude of sins.