There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
How do we respond to this Scripture verse from the First letter of John? Can we accept it at face value? Do we believe we can really experience the absence fear just by loving? And if the answer is yes, how do we practice perfect love? These are reasonable questions.
If we are honest with ourselves, there is a great deal in life we fear. We may not experience it daily, and we may not endure fear to the degree that it cripples our ability to function, but there are many things in life beyond our control. And when we find ourselves in uncontrollable circumstances, we fear what can happen to us, what pain we may experience.
Even the Apostles experienced fear.
When it was evening,
the boat was far out on the sea, and He was alone on shore.
Then He saw that they were tossed about while rowing,
for the wind was against them.
About the fourth watch of the night,
He came toward them walking on the sea.
He meant to pass by them.
But when they saw Him walking on the sea,
they thought it was a ghost and cried out.
They had all seen Him and were terrified. (Mark 6:47-50)
The Apostles were in the presence of Jesus, but they did not fully recognize Him. They thought He was a ghost. And so, they experienced fear, both from Him and the Winds.
This can be true for us as well. The winds on the sea are an analogy to the storms we all experience in life. And Christ is always present in our lives, but His presence is not always experienced in the way we anticipate, and so we can experience fear even in His presence.
Now, if we look again at the earlier verse from the First Letter of John, it identifies the source of our fears.
Fear has to do with punishment.
There it is. What we fear in life is punishment, in all its forms. Pain, discomfort, the loss of a loved one, the loss of control over our circumstances, any of these can be viewed as the universe administering punishment.
And punishment does not have to be the result of anything we have done wrong. It may be the unfortunate reality of being at sea during a storm, as it was with the Apostles. Our lives are filled with such storms.
So how is it possible that merely loving could save the Apostles from what they feared. Or what can save us from all our fears? The answer, according to Scripture, is perfect love. But then what is perfect love?
The human person can never attain perfect love, we are not capable of it, despite our best intentions or our best efforts.
For us broken and wounded souls, perfect love requires our coming to the realization that we are loved perfectly - and being convinced of that love. It requires our living in that truth.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
This is the entire secret to the elimination of fear in our lives. We must come to the point where we are fully convinced of God’s love for us. To make our love perfect, we must allow ourselves to be loved by the One whose love is perfect.
We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
Then we will become like Him in love.
In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)
Copyright © 2025, Deacon Mark Danis
Image credit:"Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee," Paul Bril (Museum of John Paul II Collection), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons