1 John 4:18-21- Spirituality – No Fear
Doug Partin – The Christian Church – Sept 24, 2017
Aloha Sunday
I took a preaching course with the president of a Bible College in Manila. He prepared a sermon for that class, which he titled, “No Fear.” He began that sermon by sharing an experience from his childhood, which I want to relate to you.
In the village where he grew up, it was vital that you learned to swim. The village was by a river, and they were always crossing it, fishing in it, traveling by it, and the river swelled from its banks during the rainy season, His father was the village’s primary swimming instructor. He was an old school sort of teacher. He didn’t ask his students if they knew how to swim, he would pick them up and throw them off the dock. Most would manage to get their head above water and, if so, he would pull them back up onto the dock; but if they didn’t he’d jump in and rescue them. He never lost a student, and they all learned to swim.
When it came time for him to learn how to swim, he knew exactly what was coming, and he was terrified. Several of his friends and cousins got thrown in and pulled out, but when his father approached him, he panicked, grabbing hold of pole that supported the dock and would not let go of it. His father spoke to him and tugged at him, but he wouldn’t let go for anything. His father moved on to the next student, and after getting them all in and out of the water, his father tried to get him to let go of the pole, but he wouldn’t do it. So his father walked the other students up to where he would begin teaching them about swimming. It was only after they left that he let go and ran away.
It was one of his cousins who found him hiding in a tree that they often played in. His cousin did not ask him, “Why are you afraid,” but “Why do you not trust your father?” He said nothing. His cousin asked, “Has anyone ever drowned?” More silence. “Has anyone ever gotten hurt?” More silence. Then his cousin asked, “Do you remember when uncle used to come and play with us? How he would stand on the ground and tell us to jump out of the tree and into his arms? We would jump, and he would catch us and then set us down, and we’d climb back up into the tree to do it again as fast as we could.” Then, after a pause, his cousin asked, “Why do you trust uncle, but not your father? Do you not know that your father loves you even more than uncle?”
He said that this last question was more than he could bear, and he burst into tears. He didn’t know why he was afraid. He’d never thought of it as not trusting. But he knew people who had drowned in that river, and he was afraid that he might drown too. The safest thing he could think of was not to get in the water at all.
He eventually went back home that night, confused, ashamed, afraid. His father met him, and said, “Perhaps we can start again tomorrow, it is important that you learn how to swim.” The lesson began just as he expected, with him being thrown into the water. Fear gripped him when he plunged under the surface. He began to thrash around, and the next thing he knew, his father’s hands gripped him and pulled him up out of the water. He, along with the rest of the class learned to swim, but the most important lesson he learned was to trust his father who loved him despite his fear drowning.
To understand what John meant when he wrote that “there is no fear in love,” we must let the context of his letter define the words that he used.
John had just addressed the fear that manyof those to whom he wrote had concerning judgement day. He had assured these ancient believers that those who come to know and believe the love God has shown them will be confident on that day. The word translated confident in verse 17 is an interesting one. It literally means to speak freely. So this is not an arrogant or prideful kind of confidence, but one based on having the right to speak openly about the truth regardless of how it might affect someone, even an important someone. Only Roman citizens had the right to speak openly to anyone or in any situation in regard to truth back in those days.
A non-citizen could not speak up, even if they saw that something was being done that was not based on truth. I’m sure you’ve heard about the rescue efforts for the little girl buried in rubble from last week’s earthquake in Mexico. It ended up that the rescue workers, and the locals who had been assisting them, had been intentionally misled, and there was no little girl under the rubble. When that truth came to light, everyone was very upset that time had been wasted because of a lie that had been told, time that could have been spent rescuing people.
Let’s pretend that it was a “leading citizen” who told the lie, and that one of those helping in the search knew it was a hoax, but because they were not a citizen, they would not have been permitted to speak up about it.
Since we live in a country in which freedom of speech is a right for everyone, it is hard for us to imagine such a situation. However, some of those that John wrote to would not have been Roman Citizens. They would have known what it was like to be denied the right to speak the truth, even when it came to defending themselves. Where a citizen could speak up, they could not. John wanted them to understand that things would be different on judgement day, they would be allowed to speak up for the truth.
What would they say? They would talk openly about God’s love, not only for themselves, but for the whole world. They would speak up about having accepted what Jesus has done, that their punishment had been carried out on Him, and He had died in their place, upon the cross; but He had risen from the dead and had forgiven them, and they were promised eternal life.
John declared that if you fear punishment on judgement day it is because you are not “perfected” in love. The term translated “perfected” or “completed” indicates that something reaches its intended purpose, think growth or maturity. In regard to John’s point, the image is that of a seed. The seed of God’s love has not produced what God intended for it to produce in your life – no fear about judgement day.
The problem is not with God’s love, but our acceptance and response to His love. Think for a moment about Jesus’ parable of the sower who scatters seed. The different soils it lands on represent different responses to His love. The hard packed trail is one who does not understand God’s love, easy picking for Satan. The rocky places is one who receives it with joy, but when affliction or persecution arises, they immediately fall away. The thorns is the one who is worried about worldly things and the deceitfulness of wealth which keeps the seed from being fruitful. But there is a good soil, the one who hears and understands God’s love and is transformed by it.
God’s love, given to them first, produces in them a love for others. We have been reminded in this study that God’s kind of love is a charity kind of love. So, if you have been transformed by it, you will be a charity kind of person. Not just a person who talks about loving God, but one whose talk is evidenced by expressions of charity.
Hate, for John, was not just an outburst of anger, or deep resentment, but it was the opposite of charity. So, in his thinking about things, he could not imagine how a person who had been perfected in God’s love could hate anyone, much less his brother. How could they withhold charity from someone in need regardless of their relationship to them?
The person who only has the “talk,” John says, is a liar. It’s hard not to take John’s accusation in a negative way. A liar hides the truth, alters the truth, offers an “alternative” truth. But when it comes right down to it, a liar is one who does not embrace and present the truth.
If we have experienced God’s love, we need to own up about it. We need to be unashamedly compassionate about the needs of those around us. Compassion isn’t pity, feeling sorry about it, compassion does something, even a little something, about it.
I like what has become known as “the starfish story.” I’m sure you’ve heard it before. It is the story of a boy walking down the beach, and notices that starfish have been washed ashore. So, he starts throwing them back one at a time. As he does, and older man comes along and asks what he is doing. He explains that the starfish cannot return on their own, and when the sun heats up, they will dry out and die. There were 100s, if not thousands of starfish; and the man told the boy, “You are not making much of a difference, there are so many you can’t possibly save them all before the sun heats up.” The boy bends down, picks up a starfish and throws it back into the ocean. The declares, “It matters to that one.”
We may not help everyone who needs help. But the help we offer makes a difference to the person that we are able to help; and if you have come to know and believe in the love God has for us, you will help others. It is a part of who you are in Christ.
John pointed out that there is a real correlation between loving God, whom we can’t see; and loving our brothers whom we can see. I believe that John learned about this interconnectedness from Jesus; who taught that when we show charity to the least of these, we express our love directly to Him.
That’s not to say that what we do in worship is inferior or meaningless; but I think that the apostle Paul got it right when he spoke about charity in the 13th chapter of his letter to the Corinthians.
If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to the flames, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
God’s kind of love is a compassionate charity. And I am sure that you noticed that John told these ancient believers that loving like God loves is not just a good idea. It is a command. Not one that we obey in the general sense of the word, but one we do instinctually because we have been transformed by His love. Showing compassion has become a part of our spiritual DNA. We have become predisposed, hardwired, to act this way. You can fight this new inclination, which is why John told these ancient believers that they “should” love their brothers, and not they “had” to love them.
It is my prayer that we are all transformed by God’s love into His children, who are unashamed to love as He does. When compassion occupies our lives in this way, there is simply no place for fear.