Love and Fear

Introduction

Yesterday the world reveled in all things scary, frightening, and fearful. But what is fear exactly? What puts knots in our stomach, gets our heart going, and gives us nightmares? From a physiological perspective, fear is the reaction to what you mind or body perceives as a threat. Your heart picks up because you are ready to get up and run or fight whatever that slasher flick had jump up at you with intense music that you’ve come to associate with fear. But there are other fears that are not so reactionary and yet perhaps even more scary. Fear of death, even far off, hangs behind the curtain of the subconscious of the average person. This is a natural fear for those under the curse of death, because whether they realize it or not, everyone’s fear of death is based on the knowledge that God has put on our hearts of judgement. What is beyond death cannot be controlled, because it is just God. Such fear is genuinely founded, but is overcome by a confidence in God’s love.

Thankfully, John tells us that God is love and we know that God sent his own son to save those in the world who, through sin, were under the condemnation that death would bring. But how can we have that confidence that such love is for us? How can we overcome the fear of God’s wrath and know that God’s love is indeed for us? There is nothing else that we so urgently need to get right, because the consequences are indescribably important.

We are as He is (Love Perfected)

John’s Logic: When the Spirit abides in us, we abide in God and thus we abide in love. Whoever abides in love has the Spirit and abides in God, whoever does not abide in love does not have the Spirit.

If we have Love, we have the Spirit and thus we have confidence, the same confidence that John talked about in 2:28 “And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” While this section that began at the end of chapter 2 and has continued until now has talked a lot about love, it has always been in this broader context of abiding in God. It may be interpreted as John expounding on Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John 15. What does it mean to abide in Christ? Well John has been explaining that: it means to have a correct understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what he has accomplished on the cross. It means to obey what the word of God says, demonstrating love and faith towards our covenant Lord and heavenly father as an act of worship not of self-righteousness. And finally, it is to love other Christians as your own spiritual family with the same self sacrificing love that God loved us with.

When all these things are true of us, it is the proof that the Spirit of God abides in us, and that we abide in Christ. To encourage these things in our hearts is the natural working of the Spirit in us, and so the Apostle Paul commands us in Galatians 5:16, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” If the Spirit of God dwells in you, walk in it because that is the way of your new nature. You are in Christ, and walking in the Spirit will give you the confidence you need to know you are his.

So what does John means when he says that love is “perfected” when you abide in love? When John says that God is love, he very much is speaking of how abiding in God and abiding in love are directly connected. If you are abiding in one, you are abiding in the other. The Bible doesn’t have a category for an unloving Christian, nor does it have a category for a loving unbeliever, at least not loving in the Christ-like sense that John is talking about. When you are abiding in God you love is perfected in you, and it’s perfection is what gives you this confidence. Perfection in Scripture usually refers to completion rather than purity. When we think of purity. we think of flawlessness rather than completion. So John is not saying that God’s love is flawless only when you abide in it, God’s love is flawless without you. What he’s saying is that God’s love for you has reached its full goal when you abide it in and in him. God showed you love so that you may show him and his loving character to the world, and so his initiative of love for you has reached its fruition when you abide in and practice that love. The purpose of God’s love, like everything God does in his creation, is so that his name may be glorified and his character made plain in all creation. He loves you because he is love and he wants to show the world who he is. That purpose is completed when you love as he loves, and because his purpose of love has been completed in you, you are not bound to fear, but rather have this confidence that John wants his readers to have in the Lord.

Verse 17 ends, “because as he is so also are we in this world.” This once again establishes the connection of our love and God’s love. God’s love in us is meant to be like a hand in a glove, so that when we love others we are actually causing them to experience the love and kindness of God. As he is, so also are we in the world. This affects how we treat both the believer and the unbeliever. God treats every believer with covenant love that is based, not on their works but on his. God’s love is based on his character, not on the one he is loving. God doesn’t love us because we were just so irresistible, he loves us because he is really us just that loving and kind. But if our love is the love of God working through us, it must consistently reflect God’s character. God’s love doesn’t wink at sin. God’s love doesn’t approve of what is vile. God’s love cares for the unborn who are legally put to death in our country and around the world. God’s love convicts of sin and offers free and gentle grace through repentance. Don’t let anyone tell you you have to affirm gay marriage or gender fluidity to be loving. Don’t take offense when a brother or sister points out sin in your life, but instead consider whether the Spirit is using it to convict you and bring you closer to him. They may very well be doing it in love, not in condemning judgement. Remember that love is defined by God, God is not defined by our faulty definitions of love.

Fear and Love

John then takes an interesting turn in his speech about love and our relationship with God in verse 18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." So John has just told us how we are perfected in love by abiding in God and in his love, and that through this we have confidence. It seems that John is once against drawing a black-and-white contrast between two opposite concepts. This time, he’s naming fear as the opposite of confidence. Completed love leads to confidence, therefore the presence of fear signals an absence of this completed love. God’s will is for you to abide in him, abide in love, and therefore have confidence without fear. But what exactly is this fear that we are talking about?

Knowing of God’s Love Casts out Fear of Danger

There is one sense in which knowing that God loves us casts out all kinds of fear. This has to do with faith, believing that the Lord of all creation loves you removes the causes of anxiety and dread of life. Danger, death, loss, and suffering all have extremely limited effects on the people of God because of our assurance of eternal life. Fear comes about when we feel powerless, unable to change our situations or control the perceived threats in our lives. With the knowledge of God and his great love for us, we know that nothing is truly out of control. That our lives are in the hands of a God who loves us and really means to give us joy and rest and the best blessings in Christ. Knowing and being aware of God’s love truly does cast out fear.

Practicing Love Casts out Fear of Judgement

But more specifically, John is talking about a eschatological fear, that is, a fear of judgement and of God’s wrath. We know this because it is put in contrast to the confidence that we have in Christ. This confirms once again in our minds that God does not want his children to be un-assured of their salvation. He wants to drive out fear from his people, and that fear is driven out by love. Here, John is arguing that it is driven out when we abide in the love of God, and that imports all of the implications that we have been talking about up to now. What does abiding in love mean? It’s that logical train, abiding in the spirit, and of course abiding in love for the saints. What this means is that the way God has made to give you assurance of salvation is to actively love other Christians in a Christlike manner; that is how God has ordained we gain this confidence. You love for others is the evidence of a genuine faith, an abiding in the Spirit, and that you have indeed been touched by the love of God in a way that brings his love to completion in your life.

Think about this. Have you ever questioned your salvation? Have you even just felt like a hypocrite and asked yourself, “is this really me? Am I really a Christian? Am I truly among the elect?” If so, what did you do about it? Unfortunately, most Christians who find themselves with those doubts, those fears, don’t go where this text tells them to. Most often, we get stuck in our heads and become even obsessively focused on our thoughts. Those thoughts become a whirlwind that gives way to more fear and doubt. What does this text tell us? If you want assurance of your faith and salvation, and John has made it very clear that God wants us to have that assurance, the answer is not to look for it in yourself, its to love. It’s to intentionally put those thoughts on a shelf, don’t touch them, and then go out and do what a Christian does. If you struggle with assurance, Scripture’s remedy for you is to show the love of Christ more and more. Not as a way to work your way to assurance, but as a way to demonstrate to yourself and to those around you that the love of God has, indeed, worked in your heart and been perfected in you. Do you see that?

Because there is no fear of judgement, of God’s condemnation, of the words “I never knew you” where the love of God is made perfect. The Christian life doesn’t start with your attempts to love others, it starts and is sustained by faith in God’s love. It is hearing the Gospel call that all who come to him he will never cast out and coming and thinking about that love, that sacrificial love of Christ for you. Fear is defeated when, based on that faith, you abide in the Holy Spirit and complete that love by giving it to your brothers and sisters in the way Christ did for them and for you. That is the road to confidence and assurance.

Pursuing and Implementing Christian Love

So that urge that John wants to give his readers is that they would strive for that perfection in love. Do you see how deeply rooted your love for other Christians is in your own private relationship with God? How it has essentially nothing to do with them and how they act and everything to do with the love you have recieved from God that the Spirit won’t let you keep to yourself? Beloved, if we believe John’s words here than we can certainly understand the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans 12:10, “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honour.” The Christian life should be a pursuit of confidence, more and more that we may be assured of our salvation. A lot of Christians treat assurance of salvation like a light switch, it’s either on or off, you either have it or you don’t. I’d venture to say that John portrays it more like temperature. You can be at absolute zero Kelvin, but you can never have a maximum amount of heat. You may be convinced of your salvation and so perhaps think that this text doesn’t apply to you, but you can always have more confidence, more knowledge, more understanding of your place in the love of God.

Knowledge and confidence don’t end with mental persuasion, they go on to a knowledge that changes your life more and more. More confidence will give you more joy in all moments of the day, more confidence will make fighting sin in your life easier, more confidence will make you more zealous for evangelism and the spiritual health of the church. More confidence will make the worldly temptations and distractions grow dimmer and dimmer in the light of the glory of Christ and the good things you know are yours in him for all eternity. The reason assurance is so important in the Christian life is that it is tied to the faith in future grace that propels us into a life of joyful obedience and love for the saints until we see our Lord face to face. The reason a lot of us struggle so much with worldliness so much is that we lack confidence in the love we have been saved by and saved to share. And many of the sins you struggle with overcoming would be put in the grave where they belong if you actively fought it with love for the saints as you ammunition.

The last three verses of our text read:

1 John 4:19–21 ESV

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he 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: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Essentially, John repeats what he has already said in various ways throughout the chapter: loving God and loving your Christian brothers and sisters go together without exception. Whoever says they love God but they do not treat their fellow Christians with the love they supposedly recieved from God is a liar and has no love for God, nor are they loved by him. The command to love your neighbour as yourself, then, is inseparable with the command to love the Lord your God.

Conclusion

How do you think about the love of God? Is it something you go to for assurance, comfort, and confidence? Good! That is God’s intention. But is that love complete in you? Is it perfected in you? Does the love you show the saints preach the Gospel you believe? The love you have recieved? The Gospel is all about how God love the World so much that he sent his son that all who believe in him would have eternal life. The Christian life is all about how God so loves his people so much that he sends his love through the medium of other Christians, that love may abound and fear may be crushed, replaced with a confidence that fuels every Spirit-filled attempt to live for his glory and Kingdom. Abide in faith, abide in the Spirit, abide in God’s love, love God, and love the brethren. Amen.