No Fear

DEVOTION 1 JOHN NO FEAR 1 John 4:16-18 God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. NIV If we are afraid that God might punish us for doing something wrong, then we simply do not understand the love of God for we can see here that in perfect love there is no fear. Whenever that Day of Judgment happens because of the love of God for us we can stand with confidence before him. It might be that on the earth we could not say that about our earthly fathers, or in fact our children might not be able to say that about us, but that is not the case with God. Here there might always be that doubt as a child stands before their father as to whether they are going to be punished or not. In fact many parents think it is their duty to punish their children for wrong doing as a form of discipline in order to teach them not to do that again. What if God did that to us? What if he punished us every time we failed to be perfect in his sight? What if he punished us each and every time we did not get it right and made a mistake? What a horrible way to live, in fear of consistently being punished because we are not perfect. But his love is perfect and therefore we need not fear punishment. Maybe we should try to take a lesson from that with our children. Can we exhibit perfect love? Maybe we should exhibit that we each other. That would require not having any hateful attitudes, or at least we could not feel hurt and store away that experience for a time to use later on, keeping a record of the others wrong. Maybe we would have to overlook every offense, as God does especially on the Day of Judgment. But do we convene our own day of judging over and over again? Do we harbor any ill feelings about another, holding them at arms distant as a form of punishment for the way they behaved toward us at some time? Is that perfect love? Aren’t we supposed to be like him? Should we love each other so much that we have no fear of each other, knowing that we all love one another and thus overlook each other’s faults? We simply should be able to live without fear of God or of each other. No fear!