7The end of all things is near. Therefore, be sensible and self- controlled for prayers. 8Above all, have constant love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. 9Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. 10Each of you should employ whatever gift he or she has received to serve one another as faithful administrators of the many forms of God’s grace. 11If anyone speaks, that person should speak as one speaking words from God. If anyone serves, that person should serve with the strength God supplies, so that in all things God might be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet 4:7- 11)
An answer to this question “Whose love covers the sins of whom in 1 Pet 4:8?” is not readily discerned by the syntax of the text. Four primary explanations are possible:
1) God’s love covers human sins
2)human love for others covers the sins (through forgiveness) of the objects of such love
3)human love for others suppresses sins in the sense that loving action prevents the occurrence of future transgressions among the people of God
4)human love for others atones for the sins of those who demonstrates such love, with atonement for sin coming either in the present or at the time of future, eschatological judgment
Of these options, 1) and 3) are possibilities for a Protestant to take to avoid the implication that human love can somehow cover or atone for sins.
On option 4), John Calvin have this to say:
“Peter confirms his exhortation with the view that nothing is more necessary than to cherish mutual love. . . . This is the plain meaning of the words. It appears from this how absurd the Papists are, in seeking to deduce from this passage their own satisfactions, as though almsgiving and other duties of charity were a kind of compensation to God for blotting out their sins. It is enough to point out in passing their gross ignorance, for in a matter so clear it would be superfluous to add many words” (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and the First and Second Epistles of St. Peter [Calvin’s Commentaries 12; trans. William B. Johnston; ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963], 304)