No Fear in Love

In his first inaugural speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” And most of us know that quote even though we were not alive on March 4, 1933 when he said it. His words were not original. This is a common theme in literature. Henry David Thoreau said the same thing in 1851. He wrote, "The thing I fear most is fear," And before Thoreau, in the 17th century, Francis Bacon said something very similar when he said, “Nothing is terrible except fear itself." And if you will tolerate one more quote. The noted philosopher, mathematician, and writer once said, “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” All of these quotes reflect the idea that fear is one of our great enemies. Few people on earth if any can completely conquer fear. So, how can anyone have joy or peace if they live with fear.

But the Bible tells us something different. Solomon says in Proverbs 1:7 that “the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom.” So, to conquer fear is not the beginning of wisdom, fearing Yahweh is.

However, the Apostle John tells us something else about fear in our text. In 1 John 4:17-21, the Apostle says:

By this, love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not bperfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for dthe one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

So, the natural man tries to conquer fear in his imperfect strenght, Solomon tells us to fear God, but in our passage John tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. Now please remember, or notice that in the preceding verses that John has been telling us all about God’s love and the love that He places in us so that we can love others in Christ’s body, the Church.

We are not surprised that fallen human nature seeks to conquer fear, but God’s Word tells us that perfect love (what love could be perfect but God’s divine love) casts out all fear. How do we resolve this seeming contradiction? Should we fear God or should we not fear Him?

Well, as we look together at our passage we will see that there is a wonderful sense in which we should fear God, but there is another wonderful sense in which we do not need to fear Him. We will also see that there are two distinguishing qualities of God’s love in every person who has been born of God. The first quality is confidence before God.

Follow along with me as we look at the first part of verse 17, where John says, “By this, love has been perfected in us.”

At this point, we should ask “By what? By what has love been perfected in us?” Well look up at the preceding verse, where he writes, “And we have come to know and have believed that the love which God has in us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.”

So the person who dwells in love, now (that is God’s love) that sent the Savior to die for sinners like us so that we might live in Him. It is in Jesus’ cross that we see God’s love on display. John has already told us that Jesus came to be the propitiation for our sins. He came and died in our place. There is no greater love than this. And when you believe this love and abide in Christ, the love of God abides in you.

When you were born again, God sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in you. The Holy Spirit is a co-equlal person of God who has all of God’s attributes. So God’s perfect love dwells in You. Peter tells us in his second epistle that every believer is partaker of God’s own nature. Therefore, you are a partaker of His love.

So, now you might ask, “What does having God’s love in us have to do with fearing God?” Look with me now again at verse 17. John writes, “Love has been perfected within us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment.” Now the mutual love that we enjoy, that is God's love of us, our love of God and thenion that we have in that love leads to boldness in the day of judgment. We have no fear of the day of judgment. If it is true of us that we dwell in love then we dwell in God and God dwells in us. This is God’s divine love, agape love, a love not based on our loveliness. It is not romantic love, not sentimental love, but divine lovethat sent the Son to be the propitiation for our sins. I keep saying this because I really believe that many of us fail to grasp the significance of that point when we think about God's love.

Now the purpose of this, the love of God, the purpose of our mutual indwelling in love, hesays, is to give us confidence. He says, "That we may have confidence in the day of judgment." Perfected love results in confidence on the day of judgment. That's the ultimate blessing for God’s people. The day of judgment will result in shame and terror for the wicked, but it's the day of confidence for those who believe and abide in Christ’s love.

On what is our confidence based? Why should we be confident? Well, John explains it in the final statement of the verse, "Because as He is so also are we in this world."

In other words, our Savior, Redeemer, our Divine Substitute, the final Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ acts in our behalf in His resurrected glory by standing at the Father’s right hand as our Advocate and our Righteousness. When we stand before the judgment seat the Father will look away from our sins and instead look at Christ and He will accept us.

Why? John says because as He is (not as He was, not as He will be) so we are in this world. In this world, Jesus was perfect in thought, word, and deed. His obedience to the Father lacked nothing. And the only reason God lets anyone into heaven is if they are in Christ and trusting in Him alone.

To realize this truth is beyond wonderful, because that means that our confidence rests upon the secure foundation of Jesus’ blood and righteouness. But, "as He is," John says, "we are also in this world." He's not in this world now. We are still in this world. But, "as He is," in the full acceptance of the Father, at the right hand of the Father having completed his work, so are we also in this world. If you are in Christ, the Father accepts you and loves you the same way He loves Christ. If that truth doesn’t make you want to shout, “Hallelujah!” I don’t know whatever could. “As He is so are we also in this world." The love of God perfected in us creates confidence before God. The Apostle Paul puts it in his way. He says, "We are accepted in the beloved one."

When the Father looked down at the baptism and said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased," He was not saying something too different from what John says when he says, "Behold, what manner of the love the Father hath given to us that we should be called His children. Jesus is the Son of God in the preeminent sense, but we are sons of God also. John Bunyan who wrote the story of his life in his book, Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, (if you’ve never read this you should), said something that pertains specifically to this. Mr. Bunyan went through a long experience of attaining peace with God. He was up and he was down, and was down and he was up. But finally, he reached a sense of assurance that God had forgiven and would continue to forgive his sins. On day in the midst of a very down time, whe he was doubting his salvation, he was reading Romans 3:24, where Paul says, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ.” Bunyan says that text came to Him as if the Lord were speaking it loudly in His heart saying, "Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and infirmities I cannot save thy soul. But behold my Son, is by me and upon Him I look and not on thee and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with Him." “Christ sees us and will see us at the day of judgment as He sees Christ.

So the Lord doesn’t look upon me. What a failure, what a sinner, what a rebel against God. How many times have I deserved eternal hellfire? But by the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing me to regeneration in faith after the conviction of is; now the Lord God does not look at me. I could never stand in the judgment, and be declared righteous on my own, but he looks at His Son instead of me, so that I too can be accepted as a son. That is beyond marvelous. That's what Paul means when he says we are accepted in the beloved. No wonder a Christian can have confidence in the day of judgment. There is an old hymn by Isaac Watts that says, "When I can read my title clear to mansions in the skies I'll bid farewell to every fear and wipe my weeping eyes." Well, there it is. There's your title clear. If by God's grace you've been brought to Christ “as he is so also are we.” That's your title. That's your title to mansions in the skies. That's your title to all of the blessings of the redeemed. So bid farewell to your fears and wipe your weeping eyes.

Now, in verses 18 -19, John goes on to speak of love and fear.Confidence i s the opposite of fear and so he writes, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." Look, my Christian friend, love and fear are as incompatible as fire and ice. They cannot exist together. The word casts in the original Greek describes throwing someone or something out a door. Perfect love casts fear outside; It throws it out the door. That's the love of God. Well, you might say, "Perfect love?" There's nothing perfect about us in this life. Actually, John says, "Love is being perfect in us." We may not yet be perfect, but Paul tells the Philippians, “He who began a good work, will be faithful to complete it in you.” This is what God is doing in your life right now if you are His.

But why are love and fear incompatible? John says that “fear involves punishment.” Now it is true that God chastens whom He loves. He disciplines us so that we will become stronger in our faith and in our configuration to Christ. And if you’ve ever been chastened severely, you fear going through something that difficult and painful again. But the chastening that we at times endure should not be fearful, because God only disciplines those who are His. Paul says something about this in regards to the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11. After warning the believers in that city to examine themselves by confessing and turning from the sin in their lives and that those who did not do this in the past are sick and some are dead. Now that could really make someone really afraid of taking the bread and the juice or wine. But Paul says in verse 32, that we should not fear. He writes, “But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.” God may chasten us and just as we may of at times tried our best to be obedient because feared the discipline of our parents though it was done in love, we should strive for obedience to avoid being chastened by the Lord. But notice that Paul says, even when the Lord may discipline us as sons and daughters, we are not condemed along with the world. In fact, He disciplines us to make us more like Christ. Now, those two things are incompatible. The sign of imperfection is that we have fear. And we should remember that when it does come and often come legitimately because we have displeasedour heavenly Father, the communion has been broken. Never forget that even when he disciplines us and chastens us it is because he loves us. "God loves us," 

And in the 19th verse of this section on love and cringing fear the apostle writes, "We love because He first loved us." I want to ask you a question. Do you think that Apostle John is an individual who thinks that we conjure up our acceptance to God by the exercises of our free will? Do you think so? Do you think that he loves us because we have of our free will begun to love him? Do you really think that? No. Look, the apostle has already stated in verse 10, "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." We love because he firstloved us, first loved us. The beginning of all of the work of God in our hearts is with God. Never forget that. When we exercise our will, and we do exercise our wills, do not think for one moment that I'm suggesting we don't have a will or that it should not be exercised. But be clear, we love Jesus because He first loved us. When we were lost their was emnity between us and God. Paul says that we were hostile towards God in our minds. Isaiah said, “No one seeks for God, all have turned aside.” Paul says that we were dead in our trespasses and sins until Jesus made us alive. Peter tells us that God caused us to be born again. We love because he first loved us.

We learn the true meaning of love from God's love. We love whether it's God, or our fellow believers. He's the fountain of love. He first loved us. The initiative in the great reconciliation was entirely by Him, as the apostle has said. It's not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The love began there. As a matter of fact, love was dead in our hearts, dead to the Lord God. God first loved us, after that we learn to love Him and each other. The exchange of love begins with Him but it doesn't end there.It includes all those in Christ’s body, the Church.

Now, we're talking about something that's difficult, to love the brethren. Look, my Christian friends, you've got to love me. and I must love you too. We're in the family of God. We should aspire that our love and your love to be as wide as the body of Christ. We're not talking about just the believers at Forest Park Bible Church, but all genuine believers where ever they may be. When we do not love our brethren we confess that we still have a relationship with Cain who did not love his brother but murdered him.

Finally, the apostle states in verses 20-21 that love must include the brethren. He writes, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, ecannot love God whom he has not seen. And athis commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”

There's but one way by eewhich the world will know that we have had a saving encounter with Christ. There is but one way that the reality of the new birth can be tested before the world and that is love. If you really love God you have to love His children. Now some people may be really unlikeable, but you have to love them because they have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The father sent the Son to die for them, so you must love them. Just as Jesus said “if God were your Father you would love me”, so in the believing man there is something of the Lord God there. Of course, he's in the image of God as a human being. And that's enough for us to have a feeling of affection for him. But when we realize that we are speaking of a brother who is the recipient of the love of God, to whom we are related, who is precious to Jesus Christ, who is loved with a love that is as Jesus’ love for me, an undeserved kind of love surely then we cannot look at our brethren and not love them.

There is the evidence of the Lord God in us when we love the brethren. We cannot say we love God, we do not love them. In fact, the cardinal hypocrisy is to pretend to love God and not love those who belong to the Lord. We must, my Christian friend, we must love them. To say you love God and you don't love the brethren is self-deception. Your love is make-believe love. It's notthe real love. You need confession of your sin and reception of the real source of love, the Lord God himself,. The apostle goes on to say, "And this commandment we have from Him that the one who loves God should love his brother also."

You know, you can see what he's saying is it's logical for you to love the brother who is loved by the Lord but we also have an addition, an order from the Lord God. We're under orders and we cannot take the first commandment, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” unless you love your neighbor as yourself. The two great commandments define love. One toward God, the other toward our brethren and you cannot take one and forget the other. So I don't love my brother because of what he is or because of what I am by the grace of God, a child of God. Not because he deserves to be loved, I surely don't deserve to be loved, but because the love of God goes out to the undeserving. It went out to me and it goes out to my brother. I love him because he belongs to Christ. I love him because he's been bought with the precious price, the precious blood of our Lord. I love him because his name is in the lamb's book of life. And I love him because I love the Lord. I love him because it's the divine nature to love and Scripture tells me I've received the divine nature. So I must love him if I have truly received the divine nature.

Now, I must say something in conclusion. What John has said, essentially, is there is no assurance for the loveless heart. Love God and love His children is what the Scriptures command. We live in an age of anxiety and we live in an age of fear, they're closely related. But the believer who loves God and loves His neighbor as himself has no need to fear the day of judgment and every reason to have confidence at the moment of death. Perfect love casts out all fear. Do you love God this morning. Perhaps you don’t even know Him. There are plenty of people here who can make the introduction. You will never be free of fear until you trust in Christ’s who died so that you could live with God forever. Trust in Him today.