01.12 | The Opposite of Fear
1 John 4
‘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.’
1 John 4:18
The greatest struggle of my Christian walk has been with fear.
Fear of criticism. Fear of rejection. Fear of humiliation. Fear of visibility. Fear of failure.
Fear is a toxin in the spiritual life. It robs the believer of living in the freedom and authority to which we have been reborn. It saps our strength and drains our gifting, turning eyes that should point upwards and outwards to a febrile concern with the self. Fear has led me to sit silent when I should have spoken. Fear has led me to behave religiously when I should have walked with joyful abandon. Fear leads to opportunities missed and to a Kingdom unadvanced. Fear lets the kingdom of hell retain the ground upon which it, temporarily, stands.
Fear does not always manifest in timidity and shyness. It also exists behind arrogance and egotism, for the concern to validate oneself through attainment and accolades is rooted also in fear. Fear is found behind the desire to control others, and is found in a spirit that has become critical rather than constructive. Great vanity projects have found their roots in fear. It is often the hidden the motive behind religiosity, entitlement, narcissism, and frugality. Fear leads to a church nihilistic and a church triumphalistic. Fear is the very atmosphere of hell itself, for there is none in the universe more potently fearful than the enemy of our souls.
And as I read the pages of the Scriptures, I realise that my experience is not isolated, for fear is the target of the most common command of the Scriptures:
Do not fear.
John today wants to speak into the fearful heart. He speaks to a group of believers, pushed and pulled between the competing claims about the divinity and humanity of Jesus. He has articulated this active force in the world that he calls antichrist—those ideas made manifest into lives and words that oppose His identity. He speaks to a people to hold them true, in such an environment, to the essential thing of His character, for only in Him do we find our lives perfectly steadied.
And yet, when John comes to the topic of fear, he doesn’t go where we might expect.
For when we consider the opposite of fear, most of us will quickly come to a single word:
Courage.
It is a good word. It is a necessary word. It is a word characteristic of those who follow in the Way of Jesus of Nazareth across history. True courage—not the bullish bravado of flawed masculinity, but the fortitude that walks with gentleness and creativity and truth into the face of all opposition—is a settled characteristic of the one who has walked deeply with God.
And yet, it is not, in John’s descriptor, the most essential opposite of fear. There is something more essential that is the antidote to the poison of fear in our hearts.
Love.
Perfect love casts out fear.
I have found this truth to be among the most remarkable. For my own contesting of fear has often led me to either hiding from challenge, or trying to muster a different kind of hardness, that pedals in the other direction—an anti-fear that is just as rigid and a different kind of dysfunctional.
And yet love softens such fear. And it does so on two levels. For to know more perfectly that I am loved is to soothe those fears of rejection and humiliation and criticism—for if we have the affirmation of the Father, then what flimsy silliness is the affirmation or criticism of people? And yet, on another plane of understanding, if I am to turn my fear of people into love for them, I find that those fears dissipate like smoke on the wind. For truly you cannot fear somebody when you are loving them.
Do you fear, my friends?
Do not seek your salvation in courage. Seek it rather in love. For you are more greatly loved from heaven—where there is no punishment or consequence or criticism left for you, for all was nailed to the Cross of Jesus—than you can ever imagine. And, dear friends, turn your hearts—in the power of the Spirit of the loving Jesus—to simply loving those who you fear.
For there is no fear in love. Because perfect love that casts out all fear.
Reflect:
What do I fear? How might perfect love cast this fear out?
Pray:
Father who loves me,
How greatly I have feared.
I have feared you—
Criticising words, the indifference of distance,
Or retributive punishment for my many mistakes.
And yet, Father,
In doing so,
I have diminished the power of the Cross.
For there you declare upon me
Perfect love.
I have feared others—
Worrying about their opinion of me, their criticism of me,
Their rejection of me, and their harming of me.
And yet, Father,
I sense your invitation to this greater way.
For the greater way is always the greater love.
And thus, in the power of your Spirit,
Flood me with love
That in this heart,
Perfect love may cast out fear,
Unto a life of courage,
And the advance of your
Perfect Kingdom.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Daniel 9-10 | Psalm 137