I. We can scarcely conceive how anything could live in such a world as this that had not the element of fear. For surely every part of life, not alone of the human family, but down to the lowest animated particles, has to struggle for its existence. One of the strangest things in the organisation of this world is the prevalence of a universal destructiveness. We are taught, and we believe, that God is a God of benevolence. We are taught, and we believe, that the world was ordained for the production of happiness. And yet, when the Apostle says that "the whole creation groans and travails in pain until now," every one who is conversant with history says, "Amen." Every one who looks out into life and takes cognisance of the things that are going on the silent sufferings, the secret mischiefs, the wastes, and the wails that spread throughout the whole human family every such one must feel that that which has been is, and will be.
II. Fear was the lowest and earliest condition in the human development. As men rise in knowledge and virtue, they lose the need of fear. It still remains; it may exist in some external relations as long as we live upon the globe; but, in regard to our affections and moral sentiments, that fear which is indispensable in the development of a higher life grows less and less. Men take the first steps in their development because they fear; but afterwards their development is carried on by other influences. Civilisation progresses from a state of fear toward a state of tranquillity. It works through a realm of the lower appetites and passions, filled with pain, up toward a condition in which peace, and tranquillity, and quiet predominate, and are the characteristic elements. As society develops and as men grow stronger and larger, terrors cease, and the impact of overwhelming fear becomes less and less frequent. But fear is not gone. It has taken on a latent form. That is, it has associated itself with other faculties. It acts now as an auxiliary to all the different feelings. In the beginning it acts by itself, but by-and-by it acts with the higher qualities of the mind; and then come all the solicitudes and vigilances of love, for fear working with love produces vigilance and solicitude. Fear and love acting in conjunction create apprehensiveness. Blended together, they go to make a state of mind not without its charm, and oftentimes quite indispensable to the purposes of life.
III. And when at last men have, by culture and training, passed out of the lower and voluntary states into the higher and involuntary ones; when habits have been formed, and have clustered themselves into groups, covering the whole circle of the mind, so that character is the result; when pain has done its work, and men are set upon that which is right because they love right, and not because they are afraid of penalty; when fear has wrought out its negative fruits, and inspired such growth that men come to the positive side, and love brightness because the sense of brightness is gratified, and love truth because there is that in them which is attracted by truth, and seek goodness with their whole social and moral being, because they are so lifted up that they hunger and thirst for it, then fear has no longer any function. Now they have risen to such a state of purity, and of beneficence, and of likeness to God that they live in a higher sphere and on a nobler plane, and work by the positive attractions of good, and not by the fear of the mischiefs of evil. But this is a long course. It is the final result. It is not the beginning, but the ending, of our training in life.
H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 212.
I. Consider the truth, "There is no fear in love." There is no fear (1) of God's majesty. God's grandeur gives not birth to dread within the Christian's soul. There is enough majesty to overawe a universe, but not too much for the weakest saint to joy in. He knows his God, and love has cast out fear. Nor is he afraid (2) of Divine power. Though he knows that God's right hand hath omnipotence, yet does he not dread its power. Nay, it is just because God has unlimited power that he triumphs in Him. The very might of God, instead of being a thought to crush with terror, becomes one of the themes of his daily song. (3) There will be no dread, either, in approaching Him in prayer. The soul that is filled with love cannot come to God trembling like a slave. It comes with reverential, but delightful, awe; it comes with its spirit bowed, and oftentimes with its face veiled with shame, yet with holy confidence.
II. Let us seek to know a little more of this by experience. The sad thing is that there are so many who seem content with a low, dull level of mediocrity in love for Christ. How few there are who seem to climb the mount of love until they attain a sublime, position. Let us daily ask the Lord to cause love to Him to become an all-absorbing passion, until this text shall be true in our own experience.
A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 1088.
Fear and Love.
I. Scripture assigns to fear a considerable place in the apparatus, so to speak, of religious motives and forces. Fear of punishment, either as imminent or distant, is not a false or bad principle of action in its own place and for its own time. It is appropriate for the earlier stage of spiritual training. It is commonly called "servile"; but until a soul can realise its sonship the servant's position is the one which it must occupy, and it has, at any rate, the assurance of bread enough for present needs. Bishop Andrewes, alluding to fear, observes that it is "as the base-court to the temple"; and adds that a man must do his duty "for fear of punishment, if he cannot get himself to do it for love of righteousness." So long as we are still under probation, there must be the possibility of ultimate failure even on the part of the grey-haired saint, as Bunyan in his dream saw that there was a way to hell from the gate of heaven as well as from the City of Destruction, as before now men have fallen from God at their very last hour, as once, according to a most impressive story, an ail-but martyr became through unforgivingness an apostate. And that possibility involves a fear which dwells not on the mere pain of future punishment, but on that which is the essential and central misery of hell: the forfeiture of the life-giving love of God.
II. A religion which professes to dispense with this kind of fear, on the ground that Christianity has discarded it as a permanent motive and that rational piety involves an assurance which makes it needless, may be very attractive and become widely popular, but it is not the religion of Scripture and the Church. One may suspect that its estimate of sin is gravely defective. Let our fear of grieving and quenching the Spirit, of wounding the heart of Jesus Christ, of losing our place in the house of our Father, be steadfast and perpetual in companionship with love.
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine,p. 209.
I. The Apostle here contemplates a universal dominion of fear wherever there is not the presence of active love. Of course he is speaking about the emotions which men cherish with regard to God. It is not fear and love generally that he is talking about, but it is the relation in which we stand to our Father in heaven; and of that he says universally, Those that do not love Him fear Him. Is that true? It is not difficult, I think, to establish it. (1) This universal dominion of fear rests on a universal consciousness of sin. (2) This truth is not made in the least degree doubtful by the fact that the ordinary condition of men is not one of active dread of God. There is nothing more striking than the power we have of forcing ourselves to forget, because we know that it is dangerous to remember.
II. Note the fearlessness of love, how perfect love casts out fear. Love is no weak thing, no mere sentiment. It does not ally itself most naturally with feeble natures, or with the feeble parts of a man's nature. It is the bravest of all human emotions. It makes heroes as its natural work. The spirit of love is always the spirit of power, if it be the spirit likewise of a sound mind. The love of God entering into a man's heart destroys fear. All the attributes of God come to be on our side. He that loves has the whole Godhead for him. The love of God casts out the fear of God; the love of God casts out all other fear. Every affection makes him who cherishes it in some degree braver than he would have been without it. It is not self-reliance which makes the hero. It is having the heart filled with passionate enthusiasm, born of love for some person or for some thing. Love is gentle, but it is omnipotent, victor over all. It is the true hero, and martyr if need be, in the human heart. Note these lessons: (1) they that love ought not to fear; (2) they that fear ought to love.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,vol. i., p. 200.
References: 1 John 4:18. G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 355; G. J. Proctor, Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 195; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xviii., p. 332; Ibid.,vol. xxxi., p. 84.