MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 10:12
LOVE AND HATRED
The lawfulness or unlawfulness of hatred and strife depends upon the subject or occasion of such feeling. God hates sin, and we know that this hatred is the fruit of one of His highest attributes. The divine and Incarnate Son of God foretold that He had not “come to send peace on earth, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), and therefore even He was an occasion of strife because He was a hater of sin. There is then a holy as well as a wicked hatred, a lawful as well as an unlawful strife. But the hatred of the text being placed in contrast with love is evidently the malicious hatred of a wicked man.
I. The hatred of the wicked is—
1. Insatiable. It has been said that those who hate have first injured. This is doubtless true, but there must have been some amount of hatred to prompt the injury. But after the injury has been inflicted, the hatred is not diminished, but is generally increased. Herodias prevailed upon Herod to put John the Baptist into prison, but this did not lessen her malice. It was such a devouring flame as could be quenched by nothing but his blood. The pain which conscience inflicts upon him who has injured another is put to the account of the injured person, and goes to increase the bitterness of the anger against him.
2. It is generally impartial. Wicked men generally begin by hating good men, but they come in time to a habit of hating bad men too. The blind man will be as likely to strike his friend as his foe. Hatred is blind, and those who begin by hating those whom they consider their enemies, generally end by hating their so-called friends.
II. The effect of hatred. It stirs up strife. This implies that the materials for strife are already in existence. There are no signs of mud upon the surface of a peaceful lake, but it only requires some disturbing element to be thrown in to show that it is lying at the bottom. The spirit of the most sanctified man has some evil tendencies within it, which may be stirred up by undeserved hatred. Only One who ever wore our human nature had within Him no germ of strife which might be stirred up by hatred. Only One could say that temptation found “nothing” in Him (John 14:13). The elements which may be stirred up to strife have a lodging place in the most sanctified human spirit, and when strife is thus stirred up by hatred the whole soul or the whole society is influenced for evil. When the lake is stirred up from the bottom all the waters are more or less troubled, and when the elements of contention are at work even in a good man or in a Christian community the whole man or the entire community is ruffled and disturbed. In contrast with this hatred, which is not only sin in itself but, by stirring up strife, is the occasion of sin in others, is placed the love which “covereth” or does away with sin.
I. Love covers sin by forgiving it. Malicious hatred, even when it is directed against sin, will but incite to more sin. But forgiveness of the sin may lead to its being forsaken, and the mere fact of being forgiven may give the sinner an impulse after a better life in the future, and thus enable him to efface the remembrance of the past. If a man is deeply in debt to another, and that other gives him a discharge of his debt, the very fact of his being legally free may give him such new energy to work as may enable him to pay that which he owed. And a sense of being forgiven a moral debt will sometimes have this effect upon the soul. God’s covering up of sin by forgiveness is the beginning of a new life to those who are willing to accept His pardon (Psalms 32:1; 1 John 1:7).
II. Love covers sin by forgetting it. It is in the nature of love not only to forgive an injury, but to forget that the injury has ever been done. And a consciousness that our sin is covered by being forgotten is very healing to the spirit. For a soul that has lived a sinful life is like a man that has passed through a campaign and received many wounds. He requires skilful treatment and gentle nursing; and when the wounds have been bound up, and have, perhaps, begun to heal, care must be taken that no rough hand re-opens them, and causes them to bleed afresh. A word spoken which shows that the sinful past is still remembered by those who have professed to forgive, may re-open old wounds with a fatal effect. Love covers sin as God declares that He covers it. His promise is not only “I will forgive their iniquity,” but, “I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
III. Love covers sin by making active efforts to recover the sinner. Love will not be content with forgiving when forgiveness is sought, but it will go out of its way to recover the erring. The godly man will walk in the foot-steps of Him who came to seek that which was lost. God did not wait until man returned to Him before He held out hope of forgiveness. As soon as Satan’s hatred had led man into sin, He held out hope of return to holiness by the promise of Him who “Should bruise the serpent’s head” (Genesis 3:15). And in the fulness of time, by the gift of His Son, He showed the depth of His love and His desire to cover the “sin of the world.” And as in many human homes there are those who owe their present moral standing, the recovery of all that makes existence worth having, to the love that followed and sought them when they were outcasts, so those who people the heavenly home—that multitude which God alone can number—are the fruit of that Divine love which not only covered a multitude of sins by forgiving and forgetting the sin, but sought out the sinner in order to forgive him.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
“Love covereth all sins,” saith Solomon, covers them partly from the eyes of God, in praying for the offenders; partly from the eyes of the world, in throwing a cloak over our brother’s nakedness; especially from its own eyes, by winking at many wrongs offered it.—T. Adams.
Hatred disturbs the existing quiet by railings; stirs up dormant quarrels on mere suspicions and trifles, and by unfavourable constructions put upon everything, even upon acts of kindness. As hatred by quarrels exposes the faults of others, so “love covers” them, except in so far as brotherly correction requires their exposure. Love condones, yea, takes no notice of a friend’s errors. The disagreements which hatred stirs up, love allays; and the offences which are usually the causes of quarrel, it sees as though it saw them not, and excuses them (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). It gives to men the forgiveness which it daily craves from God.—Fausset.
To abuse the precept in 1 Peter 4:8 (where this text is quoted) into a warrant for silencing all faithful reproofs of sin in others, would be to ascribe to charity the office of a procuress.—Cartwright.
First, it makes us to cover and pardon the wrongs that others do us. Secondly, a loving carriage maketh others pardon the wrongs that we do them. Thirdly, it maketh God to pardon the offences which we commit against Him.—Jermin.