There are all sorts of aggravations and acts which irritate people. But among believers, so much as we can, we divide first of all, between the trivial and the important. There are all kinds of trivial things, which are not actually moral offences. We have them at home. Maybe your husband when he leaves the bathroom leaves the top off everything. Or maybe it's your wife. Or they do something quite trivial like squeeze the toothpaste at the wrong end. Someone can pass someone else in a corridor of the church and not acknowledge that other person, because they are pre-occupied with something else. There is a bit of hurt or offence. But love hardly notices it. Love passes a lot of these things by. Someone fails to return a borrowed item. What happens? Well, unless it’s something of great value, you overlook it, you don’t think about. Little things! They’re trivial, so you will dismiss them, because you love him, and you love her, and they will become lovable foibles, idiosyncrasies. ‘Oh, she always does that’, you accept it. And that's how we are with one another in the fellowship. And then we make excuses as much as we can, and we explain away as much as we can, and we try to understand as much as we can, because we are commanded to love that person. That person is loved by my Saviour, and my Saviour loves that person as much as loves me. I cannot talk about this, broadcast this, gossip about this. We have a friendly spirit and disposition, and we make ourselves approachable, and we support each other constantly. Why do we find it hard to love some fellow believers? Self-love. That's the ugly truth. Self-love takes up so many units of emotional energy, that you haven't got any left to love the other very much. As I magnify the offence, or the sin, or the defects – imagined, perceived defects – in somebody else, what is really happening is that my rotten self-love is exercising itself and obscuring my view. That's what we need to tackle.
Sometimes you get a church of earnest Christian people and you know the mistake they may make, and it is easily made. It has turned the church into an introspective, self-serving club. ‘The Lord has saved us; we are Christians and we are here to love one another.’ But that is not all we are here for, and so you note that the focus of this church is to have endless fellowship meals, love-ins, doing enjoyable things together. They are all quite wholesome occasions, but where is the Sunday School, where is the outreach, where is the mutual admonition, stirring one another up to good works and to witness? Where are the efforts to bring in the lost? They are not there. They have made the mistake of having the love really only for their own benefit. Ultimately, our mutual love is to have the effect of stirring us to bring glory to God. So it should actually strengthen and inspire service to God. So fellowship should never get in the way of service.
Love – why, it doesn’t look for trouble, it isn’t suspicious. We ignore offences, we forgive one another freely. Love shall cover the multitude of sins. Of course, if something serious is committed, it must be dealt with but the little offences, the little personal aggravations … love covers it all and tolerates it all.