All things in the church must be carried on in love.

God is love. He loves himself as the highest good and seeks his own glory. God loves Jesus Christ and the elect in Christ. In love God predestinated his people. In love God reconciled his people to himself. Being reconciled, God pours his love into their hearts; and they love God, Christ, and the saints.

Love for the saints is what the apostle has in view in this text. Love for the saints is the infallible fruit of our free justification. Knowing the love of God, we love the people of God. That love suffers long, is kind, does not envy, does not vaunt or puff up itself, does not behave unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, and does not rejoice in iniquity but in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

In the church alone there is true, genuine, sincere love of the saints.

Let love be without dissimulation! We need to hear that admonition!

Yes, in our hearts there is that true and sincere love of the brother and sister. But we have a lot of flesh. And the flesh does not love the neighbor but hates him. It belongs to the hatred of the neighbor that we dissemble with him. We hate our neighbors, but we pretend that we love them.

Hypocrite! That is the word for dissimulation.

We are actors who play that we love our neighbors, but there is hatred in our hearts toward them. That pretending is a pleasant smile, a warm handshake, and a kind word, but we loathe our neighbors. That pretending is a word to the poor to be warmed and to be filled, but we give him nothing with which to warm and to fill himself. That pretending is to come to church, sit in the pew, pray together, listen to the word together, and sit at the table of the Lord together, but there is loathing in our hearts.

Dissembling love! Let love be without dissimulation!

Necessary root! Abhor that which is evil. Cleave to that which is good.

The apostle means evil in the widest sense of the word—evil in our relationships to God, to the world, and to one another. When we dissemble with our love, then we do that because we cleave to that which is evil and shun the good. In our relationships with one another, we slander and backbite and have malice. Abhor these things. Not merely that we do not do the evil but that we abhor evil with our minds and hearts.

Cleave to the good—good as it is that spiritual, ethical, and moral goodness in relationship to God, to the world, and to one another, especially truth, righteousness, and honesty. Dissimulation is a species of the lie. Abhor the lie. Cleave to the truth.

For dissimulation—hypocrisy—is the leaven of the Pharisees. And a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Once dissimulation enters the church, dissimulation takes over every aspect of life in the church. No one is true to each other or with each other! Church-life becomes an act.

Let love be without dissimulation! Yes, love one another with a pure heart fervently!