Gossip, the Christian’s favorite past time. It’s usually couched as sharing vital information for the building up or the protection of others; code word, “sharing in love.” This sharing though, destroys instead of protects and the end result is not a feeling of safety. It also doesn’t sound much like Galations 6 where Paul tells us to, “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” “What’s the law of Christ?” you ask with a bit of a ‘tude because you are starting to feel a little guilty from all that gossiping, I mean “sharing in love.” Well, here it is, John 13:34:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

How did Christ love us, what did that look like? 1 John 3:16 expands on this a little more:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Don’t you just love John, applying the Gospel to everything! In 1 Corinthians 13:7 Paul picks up on this idea of what love does;

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

John Gill gives a lovely insight into what “bears all things” means:

Beareth all things,…. The burdens of fellow Christians, and so fulfils the law of Christ, which is the law of love; the infirmities of weak believers, and the reproaches and persecutions of the world: or “covers all things”, as it may be rendered, even a multitude of sins, as charity is said to do, 1 Peter 4:8 not by conniving at them, or suffering them to be upon a brother; but having privately and faithfully reproved for them, and the offender being brought to a sense and acknowledgment of them, he freely forgives them as trespasses against him, covers them with the mantle of love, and industriously hides and conceals them from others;

“Freely forgives, covers them with a mantle of love.” After all of that, Poppets, does it look like gossip would be compatible with love? Hint: the answer is, “no.” I would go so far to say that most of the conversations we have about our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, in our own church or in others, could benefit from placing the template of these passages over them.

Charles Spurgeon writes quite plainly about gossip, or “tale-bearing,” as he calls it. It’s to both the bearers and the hearers of gossip that he aims his rebuke:

“Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.” He is a fool if not a knave who picks up stolen goods and harbours them; in slander as well as robbery, the receiver is as bad as the thief. If there were not gratified hearers of ill reports, there would be an end of the trade of spreading them. Trapp says, that “the tale-bearer carrieth the devil in his tongue, and the tale-hearer carries the devil in his ear.” The original may be translated, “endureth;” implying that it is a sin to endure or tolerate tale-bearers. “Show that man out!” we should say of a drunkard, yet it is very questionable if his unmanly behaviour will do us so much mischief as the tale-bearers insinuating story. “Call for a policeman!” we say if we see a thief at his business; ought we to feel no indignation when we hear a gossip at her work? Mad dog! Mad dog!! is a terrible hue and cry, but there are few curs whose bite is so dangerous as a busybody’s tongue. Fire! fire!! is an alarming note, but the tale-bearer’s tongue is set on fire of hell, and those who indulge it had better mend their manners, or they may find that there is fire in hell for unbridled tongues. Our Lord spake evil of no man, but breathed a prayer for his foes; we must be like him, or we shall never be with him. 

Painting titled, ‘The Gulf Stream,’ 1899, by Winslow Homer.