“Love Drives out Fear”
1 John 4:7-21
This passage of Scripture contains so much, so many nuggets that you could probably have an entire sermon series based on these 14 verses.
There is one thing, however, that has always stuck out to me about this passage.
It’s something that has always intrigued me, and I’d like for us to focus on it this morning, if we may.
It comes from verse 18 where it says that true, perfect love drives out fear.
The word used for fear in this verse is your run-of-the-mill Greek word phobos which is the root of all our various English words ending in “phobia.”
In the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, Charlie goes to Lucy’s Psychiatric Help for 5 Cents booth and tells her that he is afraid.
Lucy asks him if he has a fear of heights, a fear of enclosed spaces, a fear of cats…
…she asks him, “Do you have Hynophobia, the fear of falling asleep?...
…Do you have Heliophobia, the fear of the sun…
…to each of these Charlie Brown says, “No I don’t think it’s that.”
Lucy starts to get a little annoyed, and finally says, “Maybe you have Pantaphobia. Do you have Pantaphobia?”
Charlie Brown responds, “I don’t know. What’s that?”
“It’s the fear of everything,” Lucy replies with a smile to which Charlie Brown jumps up and screams “That’s it!” so hard that Lucy goes flying in the air and lands headfirst in a snowdrift.
Many of us have phobias and some may even have the kind that poor Charlie Brown has.
I don’t think John is talking about fears like that in the passage we are looking at for this morning or maybe he does mean something closer to Charlie Brown’s depression-inducing pantaphobia in which fear is the general way of life.
Can you relate to this kind of fear?
Do you wake up afraid?
Do you live your life afraid?
A friend of mine once said, “When I was a child I was afraid to go to sleep because I suffered from nightmares.
Now the nightmares begin when I wake up.”
Life can be difficult, and if we let it, fear can do a number on us.
It’s paralyzing and saps the joy out of life, does it not?
Before the unveiling of the God of Abraham, Jacob, you, and me, the people believed in all kinds of gods and most of them were vindictive, petty, scary and deceitful.
They were immoral and unworthy of respect, but the people feared them, and so they would offer the gods the appropriate sacrifices, but mostly they didn’t want to draw the attention of the gods to themselves.
They didn’t want the gods to become too involved in their lives and they didn’t want to become too involved with the gods because getting involved with the gods was dangerous.
And, you know, on the face of it, this was reasonable way to view things.
Think of how fickle life can be and how vulnerable we are to nature and to changes in our well-being, whether it’s our health or financial status.
Why would we view the hidden forces that operate behind the scenes as anything but erratic, fickle and dangerous—something to be feared?
Many of us live our lives this way today—even those who would say we are Christians.
A lot of people come and ask me to baptize their baby, even though they don’t attend church.
They want to “do the right thing” in order to appease God, get some fire insurance for the young tike, but they keep a careful distance.
They don’t want to get too involved with God.
Others get involved, but have a relationship built on fear.
I had a very close aunt who was diagnosed with lung cancer and was only given a short time to live.
And although she had a very strong faith in God, I was saddened to see that she was absolutely terrified of death.
She would sit on the couch saying over and over again, “Oh, God, forgive me. I’ve been such a horrible person.”
But she had been a saint, really.
Human, yes.
But a saint.
She had been taught, though, by her denomination that if you happen to die while you are in the midst of sinning, no matter how the rest of your life has been, no matter whether you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior or not—you will not go to heaven.
It’s a religion based on following the Law rather than grace.
It’s a religion that believes in a vindictive god that is just waiting to get us.
That’s a scary way to live.
And I’ve met many Christians over the years who, at the end of their earthly journey, ask questions such as, “How can I be sure I did enough for God to love me?”
Or, “What if God plays all the sins of my life on some giant screen for all to see?
How will I ever live down the humiliation of that?
How do I know that God’s grace is sufficient even for me?”
I think this what John is talking about in verse 18 when he says “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
It’s a miserable thing to have the wrath of God dangling over our heads, as if, if we step out of line He’s just waiting to blow us away.
I had a period of time when, even after I had given my life to Christ, I thought I had blown it because I had backslidden and I felt I was too sinful to be loved and forgiven by God.
And this had me in a state of depression and self-hatred.
I know I have shared this story a number of times, but I was walking across campus one day, grappling with this sense of inadequacy, fear, and depression.
I walked into the campus record store.
Playing in the store was the song, “I Love You Just the Way You Are,” by Billy Joel.
And because of how I was feeling and what I was thinking about at the time, it felt as if it was God speaking to me through those lyrics saying, “Ken, I know you.
I created you.
I died for you.
I love you just the way you are.
I don’t necessarily want you to stay the where you are, we’ve got a long journey ahead, You and Me—together-- but trust in Me.
Trust in my love.
Be secure in my love.
Do not fear.
Do not be sad.
I love you just the way you are.”
That made a huge difference in my life.
Paul wrote in Romans Chapter 8 that there is NOTHING in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord—NOTHING.
And yes, to believe this in this crazy world—the way it is—is perhaps counter-intuitive with all the hate, wars and terrible things that happen.
But this is the way it is.
I think we sometimes forget or don’t even realize how radical it is to say that “God is Love.”
It can just roll off our tongues without us really thinking about the implications of it.
But LOVE, PERFECT LOVE is a RADICAL CONCEPT.
It is a really, really BIG DEAL.
The word to describe the love of God is “Agape.”
It’s unconditional and self-sacrificial.
It’s PERFECT LOVE.
And the only way we can love, love ourselves, love God, and love others is by believing that God first loves us!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his One and Only Son that whosoever shall believe in him will not perish but will have eternal life.
For God did not come into the world to
condemn the world but to save it.”
This is radical stuff.
It’s otherworldly.
It’s not made up.
And if we are able to trust in this love, believe in this love it will transform our lives.
As Jesus says, believing in this love causes us to be “born again,” or “born of God.”
It changes our whole worldview.
Do you believe in this love?
Do you believe that God loves you no matter what, sins, mistakes, shortcomings and all?
Do you REALLY believe this?
Because if you do, and if you stake your entire life on this, it WILL change everything.
How wonderful is that?
What good news is that?
What could be better?
We need not fear.
We need not fear anything.
“I am convinced,” writes the Apostle Paul, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus the Lord.”
Who in the world would come up with an idea like that, except for the God of love Himself?
And who could testify to the fact of it, except for someone who has experienced it first-hand?
You know, pagans, both the ancient kind and the modern kind, do get something right about faith after-all: to get involved with God makes a claim on our lives.
To get involved with God makes us vulnerable to God, not because God is vindictive, but because we are opening ourselves up to experience God’s love, to be transformed by it, and to love others because of it.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love,” writes John.
Our mission as Christians is to live in the love of God to such an extent that we are “like Jesus in this world.”
So, yes, understanding God’s perfect love toward us should keep us from the fear of God punishing us.
And yet, a lot of this passage—like so many others—is not about our behavior toward God but our behavior toward other people.
If John is talking about the fear of ultimate divine punishment—and it seems that he is—then how does this relate to our treatment of other people?
Well, fearful people tend to be unpleasant people.
Not always, of course.
But if you can find a group of people who fear that the very foundation of their faith is under attack, they can very often be downright nasty.
It happens too much in the church where one group attacks another viciously, unkindly.
And this leaves a lost world even more lost, as they may have at least believed that some kind of hope may be found in the church, in Jesus, somehow.
But when we are just as mean and angry as the rest, well, that’s not radical…
…it’s worldly…
…it’s proof that this faith of ours does no good whatsoever.
The less we are sure about God’s unconditional love toward us, the greater we fear.
And the greater we fear, the more likely it is that we will find it hard to treat other people with the love of Christ.
But to know God’s perfect love is to be filled with that perfect love for others.
There isn’t room for fear in a heart that is filled to the brim with such joyful confidence.
And from the overflow of that divinely inspired joy there will come rivers of kindness and love toward others.
As the song says, “We will want to pass it on.”
As a matter of fact, it will come naturally to us.
We can’t treat others unlovingly—indeed, we can’t hate anyone—if we are filled with God’s love.
Because if we are filled with God’s love, there will be no room for the kind of fear that can make us lash out at others.
That kind of fear will be “cast out” or “driven out” writes John in chapter 4:18…
…and what will remain will be the love of God in Christ Jesus the Lord.
“We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.
For whoever does not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother or sister.”
Imagine if we were to really, really live this out!!!
Imagine how many people would come to Christ.
Imagine how it would change the world.
It would be the answer to our prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Let us pray:
Oh, please Lord, give us the ability to trust in Your love for us to such an extent that we will live our lives in You and You in us.
For this is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: in this world make us like Jesus.
There is no fear in Your love.
May we allow your Perfect Love cast out all fear from us?
Make us Perfect in Love.
For Your sake and for the sake of this lost and unhappy world.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
