Holy Saturday – Love covers a multitude of sins.

Holy Saturday – Love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:1-8
4:1 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin),

4:2 so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God.

4:3 You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.

4:4 They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme.

4:5 But they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.

4:6 For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.

4:7 The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.

4:8 Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.

The scripture calls us to obedience, to no longer live by human desire.  Besides, we have already done enough of that, and it doesn’t satisfy the spirit.  During my year of internship at Grace Lutheran Church in Houston, I was captivated by the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was martyred for his faith on 9 April 1944.  I read his works in their entirety from his earliest to his last.  His writing changed overtime; he matured, but the message stayed the same; his call to discipleship spoke to my soul. 

Bonhoeffer writes extensively of the call to obedience in his most famous work, The Cost of Discipleship, first published in 1939.  Bonhoeffer's major issue is that of cheap grace. This is grace that has become so watered down that it no longer resembles the grace of the New Testament, the costly grace of the Gospels.

By the phrase cheap grace, Bonhoeffer means the grace which is the intellectual assent to a doctrine without a real transformation in the sinner's life. Bonhoeffer says of cheap grace: It is the preaching of forgiveness without the requisite repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.  

Real grace, Bonhoeffer writes, will cost me my life - yes, me, Cynthia, my life.  Yes, I continue hear that call.  Here I am, Lord.  And Christ whispers words for my many failures:   I Peter, 4:8 Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.  Love of God and love of Christ satisfies the spirit; nothing else provides fulfillment.