1 John 4:16-19
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world.
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.
19 We love Him because He first loved us.
As a discipler, I have often encountered believers - new believers, especially - who struggle with an abiding fear of God's wrath. They worry constantly that God will drop the hammer on them if they step wrong; that He'll withdraw their membership in His family if they don't live in perfect holiness. Though they never see that this is so, their fear comes from a preoccupation with Self, with wanting to serve and protect themselves - in this case, from God. Such selfish fear prevents the love-relationship God wants with us (Matthew 22:36-38; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3), however, and is, in fact, highly offensive to God; for it implies God is not loving and cannot be trusted.16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world.
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.
19 We love Him because He first loved us.
Because God wants us to walk with Him in "newness of life," freed from the power of Self and sin (Romans 6), He urges us in His word, to die to Self (Matthew 16:24-25; John 12:24-25; Romans 6:11). Only when Self and the fear and self-interest it provokes in us is forsaken can we fully know and enjoy God. So long as we are focused on ourselves and protecting ourselves from the threatening object we see God to be, we cannot recognize the great love, peace and rest that there is in Him (Matthew 11:28-30).
What's incredibly ironic is that the Christian who is obeying God out of fear is, in doing so, disobeying Him, however carefully they try to do what He has said to do. "There is no fear in love," the apostle John wrote "Perfect love casts out fear." In other words, it is impossible to obey God both from a craven fear of His punishment and from a love for Him. These two things are mutually-exclusive in the life of a Christian and any Christian who thinks otherwise and lives like they can co-exist is powerfully deceived. There is, then, no way to obey the First and Great Commandment, which is to love God with all that one is, and live in fear of Him as the One who can "cast both body and soul into hell" (which, by the way, was said to non-Christians prior to Christ's atonement for sin on the cross).
Paul makes this point very clearly:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Fear has to go. In making the case that this is so, I wrote the following in a post on CF:
Meganbaker1984 said: ↑
Here is the problem I am having ever since I have first believed in God I was afraid he was sending me to hell. I feel like I do everything I am suppose to, to not go to hell and I still feel like that a lot.
This fear has its place in bringing us to God. But when it does, when the fear of hell brings us to the Gospel and God, we should see that God is good, that He loves us incredibly, that He offers us Himself as our Heavenly Father, not as our wrathful Judge.
Romans 2:4
4 Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
A person can get so occupied with the threatening danger of hell, they can't see anything else. God's kindness, tolerance and patience can get crowded out of view by a fixation on the jeopardy of hell. It's impossible to admire the beautiful forest around you while you're watching the huge grizzly nearby sniffing the air, right? Although the danger of hell is real, and an important part of the Gospel of salvation, it ought to be fully relieved by the awesome love of God revealed to us in the sacrifice of His Son for our sin. The Gospel is ultimately about God's love for you, not about His anger over your sin.
It was when you were still in your sin, far from God, an enemy toward Him in your mind by your wicked works (Colossians 1:21-22), bound under the power of the World, the Flesh and the devil (Ephesians 2:1-3; Titus 3:3-5), that God moved toward you, enlightening your mind and heart to His truth (2 Timothy 2:25), drawing you to Christ (John 6:44), and making it possible for you to repent of a life lived apart from Him. Your sin did not keep Him from doing all of this for you, enabling you to see and understand the Gospel and to choose Christ as your Saviour and Lord.
If God did all this when you were not His child, mired deep in sin and rebellion toward Him, what do you think His attitude toward you is now as His adopted, redeemed, justified and sanctified child (1 Corinthians 1:30), accepted by Him in the Beloved, Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:6) when you sin?
God is your Heavenly Father, not your wrathful Judge, if you, by faith in Christ (Romans 10:9-10), have become one of His. And if God was willing to go to the astonishing, astounding lengths He did to save you when you were His enemy, how much more does He extend Himself to you as His beloved child? He has promised that He will "never leave you nor forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5); He has promised no one - that includes you - can snatch you out of His hand (John 10:26-29); He has promised that nothing can separate you from His unending, glorious love (Romans 8:35-39). There is no place, then, if you are God's child, for you ever to fear hell again.
It is because this is true that the apostle John wrote:
1 John 4:15-17
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
Have you come to know and believe the love God has for you? Are you fully convinced that God loves you as enormously as Scripture says He does? When you are, fear of divine punishment will dissolve and in its place you will have "confidence in the Day of Judgment" because you know, really know, you abide in God's love, in Christ himself, in fact, not under God's wrath.
1 John 4:18-19
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.
19 We love because he first loved us.
Fear and love just can't co-exist in the life of a Christian. Oh, we have a reverential awe of God, what the Bible calls "the fear of God," but a craven terror of judgment, of God's wrath, cannot exist in tandem with a confidence in God's unending love for you. As John wrote, the more we are confident in the love of God for us, the more a fear of Him as our Judge is cast out. When one is a born-again child of God, fear of Him as a wrathful Judge just shows one doesn't properly understand His love. It is such a sad, unnecessary thing for a child of God to labor even for a second under such fear. As the apostle Paul wrote,
Romans 8:15
15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
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