These
truths are not discovered while looking in a mirror. It is far too common to
see the person in the mirror with a great experience of fear and little
experience of love. At the same time, we have many examples of fear driving
love away, or people running from love out of fear of the hurts and
disappointments often associated with trying and failing to experience such a
thing.
However,
the problem is not with love, but with the condition of the human soul. When
the Scripture says that there is no fear in love, it does not immediately
conclude that anyone who feels fear is unable to feel love. Rather, it presents
this hope-filled wonder, that those who have only known fear in our inner
selves, and have only known a love that is constantly riddled by the
insecurities of relentless fear, can come to know something far better, the
love of God that is without fear.
In
this same book of the Bible, John tells us that, “God is love”.[2] When he then tells us that there is no fear
in love, he means that there is no fear in God. The redemptive work of Jesus
Christ makes God’s children so righteous that they are also fearless in his
presence. Why? Because God is love, and when we come to God there is no room
for fear. Fear and love cannot coexist. If we are “in Christ” as the Scriptures make abundantly clear, we are in
love, not in fear.
Another way John says this is, “God is light,
and in him is no darkness at
all.”[3] These are two parallel thoughts. God is love, and in him there is
no fear at all. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. When we
come into his light, there is no darkness to ruin our experience of God. When
we come into his love, there is no fear to ruin our experience of God.
To
keep us from falling into the trap of hopelessness, believing that because we
have fear in us we could never know this love that is without fear, John adds
this clarification: “but perfect love
casts out fear.” In the same way that light casts darkness out of a room by
simply filling the room with itself, love casts fear out of our hearts by
filling our hearts with love.
So,
when we hear that there is no fear in God because there is no fear in love, we
are being invited to the most wonderful thing we can know. Yes, we have fear in
so many experiences of love in the world, but God invites us to know this love
that is without fear. Yes, we know what it is like to grow up in darkness, but
in Jesus Christ, the people living in darkness have seen a great light that
drives out the darkness,[4] a
great “for God so loved the world”[5]
that drives out our fear.
When
I read this, that God’s perfect, fearless, love casts out the fear within the
human heart, I am quite ready to admit that my heart is filled with fear if it
means that, in coming to God through faith in Jesus Christ I will experience
his love casting out my fear.
In
fact, instead of letting fear keep me from this love because it is afraid it
won’t work (which only indicates that I am full of fear, not that God is
lacking in love), I can bring my fear-based soul, my fear-based identity, into
the life-giving love of God, and let God do whatever he has to do to bring me
to know this love that surpasses knowledge.[6]
It
does not matter whether it takes me a lifetime to know this (although I can
testify to the fact that this lifetime holds much opportunity to experience
these things in a “from one degree of
glory to another”[7]
kind of way), God says that knowing his love means to know a love that has no
fear, a light that has no darkness. I feel within myself a hunger and thirst
for this righteousness,[8]
and so I enjoy the daily experience of God increasing my experience of his
love, and so casting out one increment of fear after another (sometimes in
really big increments!).
One
day I will declare what has already been promised, that the God who began a
good work in me has most certainly brought it to completion at the day of
Christ.[9]
Praise be to the name of Jesus Christ my Savior for making it so.
From
my heart,
Monte
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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