Tag Archives: fear

God’s love for fearful people

Uncertainty is part of life, but there’s some things God wants us to be sure of. In this chapter of John’s letter (1 John 4:14-21), there are two that he mentions. First, we can be sure we are loved by God (v. 16). And because of this, we can be confident to stand before God on judgement day (v. 17).

Being confident about what will happen to us when we die gives us confidence about life generally. And its God’s love working in us that will make the difference.

It is fashionable in our communities to ridicule the idea of life after death and a judgement to come.  Some think it’s a cruel fiction to keep people under control. Many treat it as a joke.

But a judgement day is coming. Jesus speaks about it often. And the apostles are clear about it. God has raised Jesus from the dead to give us clear evidence that there is life after death. And Jesus is the one to whom we will have to answer (Acts 17:31).

Whatever we think about this, we can’t escape the reality of being responsible to God. He’s made us so that we are always aware that we should be doing good things and turning away from what is bad—even if our definition of this is different to God’s. We have a conscience. We are incurably moral!

Having a bad conscience is painful. Some people spend years ‘making up’ for what they have done. And keeping a good conscience is hard work. We have to have reasons why our critics are wrong.

Conscience is like an early warning system—an alarm to tell us that danger is coming. If we do wrong, we fear we will get what we deserve. 

Conscience is also like a shadow. If we are in the light, it’s there. God shines on us—his creatures. And his light casts a shadow we can’t avoid. We know we’re responsible to someone. 

Many try to deaden this sense, but it turns up anyway. The fear of there being a God to whom we must answer one day won’t go away (Heb. 2:14-15).

That is, unless we discover that we are loved by God. Here’s some points that John makes. They all begin with ‘c’ to help keep them in mind.

First, Christ has come. God Son has come into this world to be its Saviour (v. 14). John has seen him. He’s telling us what he’s heard and touched. And there’s no-one else who can promise us eternal life (John 6:68)—that is, life beyond judgement.

Sending his Son is a very personal act for God to take and he means us to take notice (Luke 20:13).

He sent him among us to make propitiation, or be a sacrifice for our sins (v. 10). Propitiation is Jesus preventing God’s anger from reaching us. 

God feels very deeply about our sins. We try to be a small target and make little of what we do wrong. But God is offended by our ignoring him. If he wasn’t, he would be saying that we don’t matter. But we do matter to God—and what we do matters. That’s why our conscience tells us our sinning is not OK. The ‘shadow’ is there. 

And Jesus sees this is the trouble we’ve got. He wants us to know his Father like he does and is willing to bear God’s offence with us—instead of it reaching us. Everything here is very personal.

Second, we confess that Jesus is the Saviour of the world (v. 15).

Confessing something like this is more than just doing some history or theology. We’ve discovered God loves us and is speaking to us. We know Jesus is his Son. We know he’s laid down his life for us. From now on, God is very close and personal.

We sometimes talk about people bouncing off each other like billiard balls. But the gospel penetrates our exterior toughness. We were being stalked by our ‘shadow’. But then, a Saviour is announced. He comes closer to us than this shadow. And we find ourselves confessing, gratefully, that Jesus is God’s Son.

Third, we are being courted (vv. 15-16). This may not the best word to use but it does start with ‘c’! 

When we confess that Jesus is God’s Son, we have come to live in God and God has come to live in us. This is the language of love—personal giving to one another. We have come to know the love God has for us. This is what happens in a courtship.

In fact, we are in a covenant with God—like a marriage. And the bond is validated by Christ’s blood. That’s more than courting, but in fact, we are discovering love. God is giving to us what is precious to him and what we deeply need. God is living for us and we are now living for God.

Fourth, all this leads to confidence.

John tells us two things that will give us confidence. 

We—on earth, are like Jesus—in heaven. Think about this. Jesus is in God’s presence—magnificent in holy victory. He’s made an end of the offence we caused God. And God loves his Son for what he has done. And the Son is delighting in that! 

And we are like that—now, in this world! That is, God’s love for us and delight in us is the same as it is for his Son. We are accepted ‘in the Beloved’ Son (Ephesians 1:6). 

Then, this amazing love of God is ‘made complete among us.’ What starts in heaven is now operating among us. We know God is true, we know what he has done, and we love. Love has changed our whole situation. Bitterness, suspicion, anger and envy are gone.

And so has fear! Love throws fear out of the picture. We are ready for judgement day (v. 17)—happy to meet God. 

God’s love has landed, not just on our planet but right here. He lives in us so that his love is formed in us and among us. And we live in him, dependently and gratefully.

And the result of all this is confidence for judgement day! People with confidence like this are also ready for life here and now. 

We all have fears to face—of what happens in our world, of what the doctor might say, of what our family is doing or how the bills will be paid. But none of this comes as accusation and blame. That’s been settled. We know where we stand—with God. And we have access to his grace.

We are ready to serve God and our neighbour. We’ve heard the early warning of judgement and run to Christ. We know that the shadow we make is created by a Light we now know as our Saviour.

Love is God’s nature and project

When we study something, we try and understand it. But who can understand God loving the world? How can we talk about God giving his only Son to us? And who can understand a Saviour needing to die as he did to save us (John 3:15-16)?

But we need to know these things. God loves us. And his love is not mere posturing, or experimenting. He knows what is needed and sees that it’s done.

Here’s some pointers about the death of Jesus as a work of love—from Jesus and then the apostles. (I’ll use ‘the cross’ as shorthand for all that happens when Jesus is crucified.)

First, the cross shows that love is God’s project before it is ours.

It may sound cheap to talk about God’s ‘project’, but I do so because Jesus comes with a purpose, and before he dies, he announces, ‘It is finished’. He says he came that we may have a full life (John 10:10). This must mean he will teach us to love because it is where we love that we actually live.

But love is a ‘God thing’ (1 John 4:7). It begins with him. But it also is him. He doesn’t need our loveliness, or even our need, to attract him. He just loves.

If, on the other hand, we imagine that love is our nature and project, we begin to unravel—personally and socially.

Can we create a society that is good and loving? Indications are that we can’t. If we imagine it to be so, our insights shrink until we only see what pleases us. And our horizons shrink until they only include the people we agree with.

But what God does through the cross is a power that creates love. It’s an action we need to live in. Jesus’ death constrains us to love—that is, it encloses us on both sides and moves us from behind into all that life now can be (2 Cor. 5:14).

Second, the cross shows love is God’s priority

It’s easy to give first place to getting things done or accumulating whatever makes us feel secure. But Jesus is putting his life on the line for love. Everything else can come or go, but not love. Here’s some things he says just before he dies (all quoted from John’s Gospel).

He will love his people ‘to the end’ (13:1). He wants us to love him (14:24). He will go to the cross so the world will know he loves his Father God (14:31). This is his first love. He knows the Father’s love for him and that’s how he loves his disciples. This is where he wants us to live as well—in his love (15:9).

He prays that the love he receives from the Father will also be in his disciples (17:22, 26). He wants us to love one another like he does (13:34; 15:13). And he knows none of this will ever happen unless he dies.

Jesus has already told us that the greatest call on our humanity is to love God and to love one another (Mark 12:28-31). Now, he will do just that. If we’re not interested in love, we can let Jesus pass without a thought. But if love is the way to live, and if it’s what we want, we need to know what happens when Jesus dies.

Third, the cross shows love is not deserved.

Jesus is the ‘friend of sinners’ (Luke 7:34). So-called ‘righteous’ people don’t need his help (Mark 2:16-17).

Paul helps us think about this (Romans 5:6-10). We are weak. That’s about as low as you can get—someone without the power to be properly human. Then we are ungodly—we coast around as though the world doesn’t need a Creator, let alone a Saviour. And then, we are sinners—we just don’t ‘get it’ and constantly miss what we are supposed to do.

That’s where we are when Jesus dies for us. We are not lovely people. God is saying, ‘Look at me. What kind of God am I?’ He is asking us to think about whether his love is real or not.

Jesus gets closer to us than we can get to ourselves. The thought of us being wrong, polluted, unlovely and arrogant doesn’t fit easily into our thinking. Jesus sees all of that in us and still says, ‘I want to be with you. I’ll wear what you are. I’ll suffer what you deserve.’

And he also says, ‘I’ll give you all that I am so you can be pure before my Father, and before your Father.’

Fourth, the cross destroys love’s enemy—fear.

What kills love is not busyness or difficult people. It’s threat and shame. Jesus lovingly does something about this. He is sent to be an atoning sacrifice for our sin—a propitiation (1 John 4:10). He needs to turn the wrath of God away from us, and does so by bearing it himself.

We’ve noted that there’s something deeply built into us that wants to make love our project. But love is ‘of God’. He is where it comes from and why it works (1 John 4:7-12).

Because Jesus so comprehensively endures God’s wrath, there is no fear of it touching us. We no longer need to fear meeting God (1 John 4:17-18). Love and fear don’t belong together. But, if fear is gone, love can thrive!

John explains this by saying, ‘as Jesus is, so are we in this world.’ In other words, Jesus is in heaven. We are on the earth. But we are as he is.

Think about what this means. There was a time when Jesus was in torment—on his cross. He could not say ‘Father’ as he usually did. He said, ‘My God. Why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46). He is in torment.

But then, he announces that his work is finished (John 19:30), and entrusts his spirit to the Father (Luke 23:46). And God raises him from the dead. He raises him to sit by his side to administer the kingdom. His torment is over. This is how he is now. And we—in this world—are as he is.

Our torment is over. Love has begun. ‘God abides in us and we are made perfect in love’. This is not about us being perfect in love, but about God’s love being perfected or coming to its goal in us. He is confident that his work will bear fruit and cause us to love.

Lastly, the cross creates something entirely new.

To see the cross as God’s revelation and gift of love is to be a new person. Love is not strange to us now. One man dies for all. So, that is the end of all we have been. What happens from now on is all new—made by God (2 Corinthians 5:14-17). Life comes to us, and sometimes, at us, with many difficulties. But the cross is our assurance that nothing that ever happens around, or to us, will separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:38-39).