Read with Me
1 John 4:17-18 (HCSB)
In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because He first loved us.
Listen with Me
The words “In this”, point back to the previous few sentences. In order to have love made complete in us, we must acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, so that the Spirit of God can live in us. Then we must actively live in God and allow Him to live completely in us. This is about a living, active, and growing relationship with the almighty, eternal God.
Those who live in that kind of living, active, and growing relationship with God will experience His agape love, not only working in us, but working through us, just as it worked through Jesus, casting out darkness and bringing shalom, wholeness, to everyone with whom He made contact, at least those willing to receive it.
Living in that kind of agape love has the important result of casting out the fear of God’s judgment, because the person living fully in God’s love understands that the end of his or her life, or even the end of the world, simply means making a transition from living in God’s presence, felt but unseen, to living in His presence face-to-face. And that is something to be longed for, not something to be feared, as Paul clearly understood (Philippians 1:21-23).
This is the basis for John’s statement that the one who lives in fear of God’s judgment has not yet been made perfect in love. They are not experiencing God’s love working in them, but they are still wrestling with and often losing to temptation. They are not full of God’s light, but they still see much darkness in the way they think and in the way they feel. They have not experienced the transformation through the renewing of their minds that only comes from surrendering themselves fully to God as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2).
These people also fail to see God’s love working through them. Their lives are powerless, fruitless, little different from the lives of the unsaved masses around them. They see no demonstrations of God’s power and seem to be victims of circumstances much more than they are “more than conquers” (Romans 8:37-39) in the midst of the world’s troubles.
The solution for those who are living in fear of the judgment is not trying harder or forcing themselves to believe more deeply. It is simply confessing those areas in which they know themselves to be falling short. It is full repentance, turning fully away from the ways of the world and fully toward God. And it is a full giving over of his or her life to God for His complete use.
This laying down of one’s life in God’s service as a living sacrifice is the first step of sanctification, and it opens the door to God’s filling of that person with His Holy Spirit, changing out their heart of stone for a soft, responsive heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:25-27), which God can then fill to overflowing with His perfect agape love.
Pray with Me
Father, it is tragic that so many Christians today really are living powerless lives, lives in which and through which Your agape love cannot operate, because the pathways of their lives are clogged with sin, compromise, and self-interest. They know that their lives don’t show forth Your love, Your grace, Your power, which leads them to question whether they are really saved, which leads in turn to fear of Your judgment. Lord, help all of us, as Your people, to fully surrender ourselves to You, so that Your perfect agape love can work in us and flow through us, bringing life to all we touch, and casting out every fear. Amen.