Fear Does Not Block God's Love

"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)

Some believers struggle with the lie that if they feel fear, it means that God has left them, or that they are out of step with God.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and knowing the Truth (Jesus! John 14:8) set us free!

Paul could not have been clearer in his epistle to the Romans:

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 38-39)

"Nor any creature" -- that includes you and me, beloved!

Yet what do we make of "he that feareth?"

The Young's Literal Translation can shed some light on this matter:

"Fear is not in the love, but the perfect love doth cast out the fear, because the fear hath punishment, and he who is fearing hath not been made perfect in the love."

Those who live in a chronic state of fear, who are always looking over their shoulder, have not been made perfect in love.

How do we "Get made perfect" in love? We rest in that fact that God's love has already been perfected in us. First, establish for yourself what love is:

"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)

Jesus dying on the Cross, cancelling once and for all the judgment and the law which were against us (Colossians 2: 15), that is Love -- a Love that never stops cleansing us (1 John 1: 7)

Now God's love is perfected -- read, completed -- in us by transforming us from dead in our trespassess (Ephesians 2: 1) to children of God (John 1: 12):

"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: 18)

"Our love is made perfect" in our new identity, our new standing in Christ!

Then why do believers still feel fear? Our new identity is all but certain in our spirit, or inner man:

"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4: 16)

Yet our minds need to be renewed to this truth:

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (Romans 12: 2)

How does this occur? By the Word of God:

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. " (2 Corinthians 3: 18)

And His Word is Spirit and Truth (John 6: 63)

So, beloved, we do not have to live in fear because all of our sins have been punished at the Cross! Renew your  mind to this blessed truth every day! Fear does not block God's love, but rather signals that we need to grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord and His love for us!