There is no fear in love; but perfect love

... casts out fear, because fear involves punishment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19 We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:18, 19). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7), but perfect love cast out fear.  There are many who have come to salvation through fear of hell, and there is wisdom in this. But as these verses imply, we are not intended to stay there! In particular, for the believer, the fear of judgement needs to be cast out (verse 17).  Those of us who have heard and believed have passed from death to life and will not come to judgement (John 5:24).  This fear is cast out by “perfect love, ” and if we are still in fear, it is because we “not been made perfect in love.”  You may be objecting that you will never be perfect, let alone perfect in love.  But actually in the very same context of loving others, Jesus tells us to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

But that we will never be perfect in this life is true, for “in many things we all fail” (James 3:2). The point though, is that we are to aim for perfection. In particular, we are to aim to love others as Christ has loved us (John 13:34). It's not about striving, it's about abiding, that is about staying in moment by moment intimate communion with the One whose very essence is love (God is love verse 16).  Love is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and Jesus tells us “He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). In particular, whether we acknowledge it or not,  our ability to love at all is a ultimately a response to His initiating love (verse 19).  To abide in Him is to abide in love.

Certainly we have a part to play in our abiding in love, in our being perfected in it.  This love of which John speaks is not primarily an emotion.  Abiding in love looks like something. It moves us towards sinlessness (3:6), it does no shut up it's heart to those in need (3:17), it keeps His commandments (3:24), it loves the brethren (4:12, 13),  it testifies that Jesus is the Son of God (4:15). And it gives us the authority to ask what we will, with the assurance we will receive it (John 15:7).  The primary focus of this passage however is loving one another, and it is what being perfected in love is all about. Verse 12  reads “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.”

Lord Jesus, I thank You for verse 10 in this passage “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the substitutional sacrifice for our sins.”  We love Lord,  because You first loved us. Help us, help me, to abide in Your love, so that we may be rooted and grounded in it, and that it may naturally flow out of us to our brethren,  and to this wicked and hurting world for whom You died. Continue to perfect Your love in us Lord, in me. And we will give You the glory in Your precious Name Amen