Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Perfect Love

1 John 4:18 ESV
18 There is no fear in love, but dperfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not abeen perfected in love. 

When you were young and you did something wrong, you had to go talk to a parent about it right? At least this is how it was at my house. You either had to confess your wrong, or they already knew about it. Either way, there was fear of being punished, fear of the consequences of your wrong doing. 


Get this. We don't have to be afraid of going to the Lord, the greatest Father ever, because our punishment has been taken care of. WHAT?! For real. I know you've probably heard it before, but let me put it to you this way. We all have sinned. It's our human nature. That just means that we've all done something bad (just like when we were kids and went against our parents rules). The human response then is to be afraid of the consequences of doing that bad thing. Most people think that there's a power beyond them which means most people probably acknowledge that there's going to be some kind of ultimate judgment for those things that you've done wrong. But with God, when you accept Christ and come into the family of God, there's no punishment.


God is the best Daddy ever. Ever. He loves you. That's it. There's no punishment because He already sent Jesus to take care of it. Punishment is death if you don't know God. That's a pretty sucky punishment if you ask me. But when you know Christ, when you accept Him and come into the family, there's no more punishment. 


The end of this verse says that "fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." I don't fear punishment. This simply means that I can go to the Father with joy, that I can be in His presence and know His amazing Love. I'm not going to focus on the things I've done in the past, or the things I might do today, because that's not how He sees me. I'm going to focus on His Love. I want to be perfected by His Love, not by fear.