Love always protects
1 Corinthians 13:7
It is helpful here at the outset to know that the Greek word used for protects is the word stegō. When used as a verb it means “to cover” or “to pass over in silence”.
I reference it in the recognition that it would be easy to look at the word protect and draw our understanding from the outside in and not from the inside out. From the outside in we would take its meaning to be that of a barrier standing between the world and the ones that we love, as a parent would their child. And it is indeed that but if we examine carefully we will understand that it is much more than that.
In John 8, John offers us the encounter with the woman caught in adultery as a window into how love operates to protect from the outside in and to cover from the inside out. We find a woman who is clearly morally compromised who is brought before Jesus, not because of her sin but because the Pharisees wish to catch Jesus in a blasphemy by which they intend to ensnare him.
Much is made of the moment that follows and how Jesus masterfully evades the hangman’s noose but there is more at work here. Notice what Jesus doesn’t do, he does not reflect at length (or at all) on the nature and detail of this women’s sin. Bare in mind that he is the Son of God and his encounter with the woman at the well tells us he knows exactly who she is and what she’s done. But he doesn’t mention it. At all. Why?
Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8)
Why? Because love’s way is not just to protect this woman from her accusers but to cover her from her own sins and to love her back to life. In one simple moment he navigates the judgment of the crowd and the self judgment of the woman. She does not get away without an admonition from Jesus, but again this is a masterclass on love’s way. His call to go free and sin no more is a small, quiet moment between the two of them. It is not heaped with judgment and detail, nor is not carried out in the court of public hearing lest love’s work be undone. Jesus is not covering up, he’s covering. There is a profound difference.
Love does cover a multitude of sins. And the people that need covering are indeed the imperfect people (which of course is all of us). Protection from judgment from the outside and covering from the judgment from the inside. Not so that we may go on sinning but so that love has its chance to work its way in our worlds.
Your husbands and your wives, your pastors, your friends and family, all need you covering their imperfections, in word, in action, in prayer. We know these people most intimately and it would be easy to leave them uncovered in our annoyance or disappointment with them. That is not love’s way. Let’s be a people that covers and protects always, church. For this is how people are loved back to life and brought and kept in the knowledge of Christ.
Praying and believing with you toward a greater love
Stephen