Stirring and covering

“Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.” Proverbs 10:12
This is a contrastive proverb, where two opposite things are contrasted. Let’s take the two lines one at a time.
First, hatred stirs up dissension. That is, when there was no dissension to start with. Have you noticed that if you don’t like someone, you will look for any little flaw or fault so that you can point at it and say, ‘That’s why I don’t like them!’ Hatred towards people wants to start an argument so that the hatred is justified – when there was no cause for the argument at all. We need to be careful that we aren’t doing these things, because the Bible tells us that hatred towards someone is equivalent to committing murder (1 John 3:15).
In contrast, we have the second line: love covers over all wrongs. Hatred stirs up dissension when there was no wrong; love covers over when there is. Love doesn’t just refrain from stirring up dissension, it is active in covering it. Love is the primary fruit of the Holy Spirit working in the life of a believer. Do you find it easy to be a peacemaker? We are supposed to become more and more peaceable as we grow in the Lord (Matt. 5:9). Our lives are so short, we shouldn’t spend our time making enemies. This is reiterated in the New Testament: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). Love doesn’t ignore the sin, but it seeks to cover – just as Shem and Japheth covered their father Noah as he lay in his tent in a position of compromise (Gen. 9:21-23). We cover the person to protect them from attack, while they sort things out.