Fear.
We’ve all experienced it at one time or another in our lives. Sometimes for valid reasons, sometimes for invalid ones. But whatever the reason, I believe we all would agree that fear is not a fun emotion.
But what is fear, anyway?
The Bible has a definition of fear: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18 NIV)
In other words, because perfect love and fear cannot coexist, fear is the opposite of being made perfect love!
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?
Or does it?
But what does “made perfect in love” mean?
When you begin a relationship with Christ, you start to know Him. It’s a process, but as your relationship grows, you experience Him more and more in your life, and a natural consequence of this is that your realization of how much God loves you will begin to grow, and you will begin to understand how complete that love is.
Over time, you come to understand that God’s love for you is so complete and so perfect that you can trust Him to know what is best for your lives. And if you have 100% confidence in God, in His supremacy, in His power, in His ability to guide your lives, if you have 100% confidence that no matter what happens to you, whether you see it or not, it reflects a far deeper love for you that you can even fathom, then there is truly no reason to fear.
We experience this, on a human level, with our children. Especially when they are little. There are many things that little children fear. Injections, doctors, going to school, punishment… But we, as adults, know that children need these things. If they are sick, they need doctors, injections, and medicine. They need to go to school to learn so that they will be successful in life. They need punishment, guidance and direction in order to learn right from wrong. These things aren’t pleasant for young children, because their minds are too immature to grasp the meaning behind it.
On a much larger scale, it is the same with God. He, as our loving Father, knows what we need in life. In our spiritually-immature states, what we must go through may seem like torture, but if we could see the end from the beginning, we would know that these things we fear are for our best good.
If we understood this, if we thoroughly understood God’s love for us, we would no longer fear these things. We would simply trust that God knows best, and we would trust Him to give us the courage, strength, and desire to get through.
This is what text means when it says: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear …” It means that when we come to trust God enough to realize that His love directs our paths, then we have no need to fear. Perfect love drives it away!
In summary then, the answer to the “What is fear” question is simple: Fear is the absence of perfect love!
Has anyone on earth ever achieved this kind of a close, trust-filled relationship with God?
I suspect that though we all are at varying levels of closeness and faith with God, perhaps none of us have achieved this state.
Therefore, does this text say it is wrong to be afraid?
No. It simply says that we don’t need to be afraid, and that when we do, it’s because we haven’t yet achieved the highest level of relationship with the Lover of our souls! It is meant to be like a monitor – a thermometer so to speak – of where we stand in our relationship with Christ, a display of how much we have been made perfect in love!
But what about the rest of 1 John 4:18? What does ” … because fear has to do with punishment …” mean?
Join us next week, for FREEDOM FROM FEAR, Part 2: What Does Punishment Have to do with Fear?
In His love,
Lyn
Lyn Chaffart, Mother of two teens, Author and Moderator for The Nugget, a tri-weekly internet newsletter, and Scriptural Nuggets, a website devoted to Christian devotionals and inspirational poems, www.scripturalnuggets.org, with Answers2Prayer Ministries, www.Answers2Prayer.org.
(To access the entire “Freedom From Fear” mini-series, please click here.)