Love Perfected Casts Out Fear

While I was talking with a pastor friend of mine, he shared with me that he had been counseling a young man who was struggling with fear. Like that young man, I had contended with many fears throughout my life.

When I was struggling with fear in my life, another friend quoted to me one of Paul's verses on fear:

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1: 7)

Right away, I could then accept by faith that the fears in my life were not from God, nor where the spirits of caution to protect me from doing something. I also learned that the fears in my life were not caused by other people:

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

"(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; " (2 Corinthians 10: 3-5)

Yet the fears persisted. I began to meditate on John's verse about fear:

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4: 18)

Here, "perfect" would be better translated as "completed" or "perfected." This love speaks of God's love for us, not our love for God or for anyone else:

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4: 10)

and

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. " (1 John 4: 17)

Because we are like God (1 John 3: 1-3), we know that we have His love, for He loves us as much as He loves His own Son (John 17: 23). When the believer receives this growing revelation of God's love, a man's fear is cast out. Fear cannot be reasoned away through his thinking, but by the gracious of love of God we see every fear cast out of our lives.

This love has been perfected for us by the death of His Son, the gift so great, that we can believe with certainty that every other need will be met in our lives with Him (Romans 8: 31)

The only thing, therefore, that can delude us into losing this perfect love is to believe the lie that this love is not perfected, that Christ has done everything for us to receive His love shed abroad in our hearts (Romans 5: 5), to be ignorant of the truth that the Holy Spirit within us bears the fruit of God's love in our lives (Galatians 5: 22)

We may feel afraid, a whisper of a lie from Satan, a discouraged unbeliever, or even our circumstances may cause us to believe that God does not love us, but He already has loved us, and by His Spirit, the life we live, we live by the faith of the Son of God in our lives (Galatians 2: 20)

The job of a believer, then, is to trust God's Word in the face of trials, to rejoice in Him always (Philippians 4: 4), to count it all joy, whether we face hardships or not (James 1: 2-3)

God's perfected love is already in the believer. We do not have to do anything to remove fear from our lives. Instead, let us pray to the Lord that He will open the eyes of our understanding to know by faith the riches that we have through Him (Ephesians 1: 17-19), and that we would be strengthened by faith in our inner man to receive a greater understanding of God's love for us (Ephesians 3: 16-19), the love that casts out every fear in our lives.