by
Pastor Paul Wolff
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| Jesus and the Little Children from Emmanuel Lutheran Church Dearborn, Michigan |
1
John 4:16b-18
“God
is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 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. 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.”
You
may have heard people say, “Fear is a great motivator.” Few,
however, are honest enough to complete that thought. If someone ever
tells you that “Fear is a great motivator” you can be sure that
they are trying (or will try) to manipulate you to do something which
will benefit them, but will not necessarily benefit you.
Fear
paralyzes people. Fear makes people want
to act to save their own lives, or avoid getting hurt, but they
cannot
act out of fear that they will be harmed in the process. It’s a
vicious circle. This is why tyrants employ terrorist tactics to cower
people into submission. Fearful people will not effectively resist
forceful oppression and therefore can be manipulated and easily
subjugated by
evil people.
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| Creation and the Fall into Sin from Holy Cross Lutheran Church Detroit, Michigan |
Fear
of Punishment
As
St.
John notes in the Scripture quote above:
fear has to do with punishment, or a desire to avoid pain and
suffering. When Adam and Eve first disobeyed God they should have run
to Him and confessed their sins and asked Him to rescue them from the
doom which they had brought upon themselves. They should have known
God would have mercy on them (as He ultimately did), but instead they
feared the righteous
punishment for their sins and ran away from their savior instead of
running toward Him for help and salvation. At that time Adam and Eve
were naïve
about sin, and they were not used to living as sinners as we are, but
we act in exactly the same way.
As
I was preparing this article I found this interesting news story:
Police detectives in California recently solved a 30 year old murder
case. Evidence pointed to a 48 year old man who, after police
questioned him about the details of the case, took his own life
rather than face the consequences of his actions from three decades
ago. For thirty years he must have lived in fear that his crime would
be discovered. Then, when it was discovered, he feared the punishment
so much that he carried out a capital sentence on himself. Now, I’m
not saying that the self-imposed punishment did not fit the crime,
but until the murderer’s life ended there was forgiveness available
for him in Christ. The state’s punishment may not have been as bad
as what the man feared, and he could have received true forgiveness
in Christ long ago. I don’t know why he didn’t seek Christ’s
forgiveness earlier, but had he repented he could have given the
family of his victim some sense of justice by confessing to the crime
and taking the civil punishment for the crime. Instead, his fear gave
him torment throughout his life, and no doubt added to the sorrow and
suffering of the victim’s family, also.
What
Can Stand Against Fear?
After
the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941,
President Roosevelt told the American people, “We have nothing to
fear but fear itself.” It was a fearful time, but Roosevelt wisely
called for courage in the face of fear. Courage is the antidote to
fear. But where does courage come from? Courage is not a natural
response to fear. Panic is the natural response to fear, but courage
comes from somewhere else.
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| Samson Window from Holy Cross Lutheran Church Detroit, Michigan |
Courageous
people act out of love. Love is simply when one cares more for
someone else than for oneself. Courageous people are more concerned
for others than for themselves. So when courageous people see someone
in danger they only think of how to help someone in need, they don’t
stop to consider their own safety. Courageous people may have fear
for themselves, but they do not take time to think about their own
needs as they act bravely to save others. Courageous people (i.e.
Loving people) cannot be terrorized. They cannot be manipulated. They
cannot be forced to submit to tyrants.
Perfect
Love Drives out Fear
Saint
John writes in his first Epistle, “Perfect love drives out fear.”
This sounds like a good thing. I would like to find some perfect
love. The only trouble is that we all are sinners in a sinful world,
and you will never find “perfect love” in a sinner. However, even
the imperfect love of sinners can accomplish wonderful things. Love
can heal wounded or broken hearts. Love can drive out wicked tyrants.
Love can give comfort and hope to those in despair. But where there
is only imperfect love – fear remains.
So
where can we find the perfect love which drives out all fear? Since
we can’t find it in ourselves or in other sinful people we must
look for it outside of ourselves. The only place to find perfect love
is in Jesus Christ. There are many descriptions of this in the
Scriptures, but one of my favorites is in Philippians 2:5-11. Saint
Paul tells us, “Your attitude should be the same as that
of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider
equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient to death – even death on a cross!”
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| Jesus paid the price for your sins Holy Cross Lutheran Church Detroit, Michigan |
Jesus
is the only person who ever lived His whole life in perfect love.
Jesus loved God, the Father, with all His heart, all His soul, and
all His strength; and Jesus loved His neighbors as Himself. Even when
Jesus learned that it was God’s Will to punish Him for the sins of
the world in order to save sinners from that punishment, Jesus loved
God, the Father, (and us wretched sinners) enough to do all that
needed to be done. Jesus is the only one who could save us from the
punishment for our sin because Jesus is fully God and fully man in
one person. His death paid the full price for the sins of the whole
world. That is why the only place you will ever find perfect love is
in Jesus Christ.
The
perfect love of Jesus drives out all fear because fear has to do with
punishment. There is no greater fear than the fear that God will send
us to eternal punishment for our disobedience. He would be completely
within His rights to do so, but He would rather take the punishment
Himself and save us from that torment – and that is exactly what
Jesus did for us. We need have no fear because Jesus endured the
punishment for all our sins. Because of Jesus, God no longer has
anything more to punish us for. So if we do not need to be afraid of
God, then there is nothing in all of creation which ought to cause us
fear.
How
do we receive the perfect love of Jesus? We can only receive it as a
gift through faith in Jesus by believing that Jesus died to save us
from our sins. God, the Father, counts us righteous through faith and
gives us salvation and eternal life. The courage and love that comes
from being forgiven is just one of the many bonuses granted by God’s
Holy Spirit.
This
is not to say that love has any particular power on its own. It does
not. Strictly speaking, love, itself, does not save us. Only the
perfect life and innocent death of Jesus can save us. It is true that
it was the love of Jesus that caused Him to endure God’s punishment
for our sins, but until Jesus was physically hanging dead on the
cross our salvation was not complete. It is like a parabolical
argument I like to use against decision theology: Three frogs are
sitting on a log in a pond. One decides to jump in the pond. How many
frogs are left sitting on the log? The answer is three, because until
the frog actually jumps into the pond he is still sitting on the log
no matter what he has decided to do. Likewise with Jesus, He can love
us as much as He wants, but all people were still subject to
condemnation for our sin until Jesus lived the perfectly obedient
life in our place, and then died to pay for our sin.
Christ
has taken away all need for our concern about ourselves. Baptized
Christians are God’s children through faith in Christ and God will
provide for all our needs of body and soul. His perfect love has
removed all threat of God’s punishment, and where there is no
threat of punishment there is no fear. In Christ we are freed to
think about our neighbor without fear that we might come up short.
Jesus has overcome all our shortcomings.
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| The Crown of Life from Zion Lutheran Church Columbus, Ohio |
“Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or
sword? As it is written, ‘For
your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as
sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death
nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.” (Romans
8:35-39)
