There is no fear in love

When John writes that “There is no fear in love” in 1 John 4:18, he means the kind of love that gives us total “confidence on the day of judgment” (17). When Jesus comes to judge the world, therefore, we’ll have nothing to be afraid of. John gives us the reason why in verse 17 too: it’s “because in this world we are like him.” 

But how do we become so much like Jesus in our lifetimes now that his judgment later holds no fear for us? John’s simple answer to that in verse 13 is: “because he has given us of his Spirit.” 

It’s by the marvellous work of the Spirit, therefore, that even while we’re living in this world we can – as Paul phrases it – “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13. And just as “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” Colossians 2:9, we too “have been given fullness in Christ” living in our bodily form. In other words, we really can become like Christ in who we are now.  

But how does the Spirit do that for us? According to Jesus in John 16:15, “the Spirit takes from what is mine and makes it known to you.” That’s the Spirit’s job, to feed everything there is to know about Jesus to each of us individually. And the Spirit won’t stray from that (13), because his entire focus is on “bringing glory to Jesus” (14). 

But how does the Spirit bring glory to Jesus? By fulfilling Jesus’ wish for his disciples in John 14:18, when he told them, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” It’s by the Spirit, then, that Jesus makes sure his disciples never feel lost, unloved, or unattached to him. And how would the Spirit do that? By being an umbilical cord constantly feeding two things about Jesus into them, verse 21: first of all that Jesus loved them, and secondly by revealing more and more about Jesus to them so in time they’d become more and more like him too.  

The result of which would be verse 27, when Jesus told his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” So through that umbilical cord of the Holy Spirit feeding all that Christ is into us – both his love and his likeness – it dawns on us that “There is no fear in love.” What do we have to be anxious about, both now and “on the day of judgment,” when through the Holy Spirit we know Jesus loves us and know we’re becoming like him too (1 John 4:17-18)? He makes Jesus real to us, all right, but “How does the Spirit make Jesus real?”….(next blog)