Lecture XXXIV

THE BOLDNESS OF PERFECTED LOVE

THE leading idea here is “boldness in the day of judgment; not boldness prospectively when the day comes, but present boldness in the view of it now. It is much the same thing as we have in a previous section of the epistle (3:19–21), our assuring our hearts before God; our having confidence toward God. This boldness is connected with the perfecting of love; “Herein is our love made perfect;” or as in the margin, “Herein is love with us made perfect,¹ that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” Love then, or the love before indicated, is perfected with us; and the perfecting of this love with us is bound up with our having boldness in the day of judgment. The bond or connecting link is our oneness with Christ; our being in this world as he is now.

What is perfected is love; not love indefinitely; but the love which is God’s nature, and which comes out in the saving gift of his Son. It is to be perfected as “love with us.” It is not merely, as in the twelfth verse, to be perfected in us, as love to us; it is to be perfected in us, as “love with us.” It is God’s love so shared by him with us as to constitute a love relationship, or love-fellowship, between him and us. This is indispensable to our having boldness in the prospect of the day of judgment. And it is realised through oneness with Christ, through our “being as he is;” not as he was before he came into the world; nor merely as he was in the world; but as he is now. It is our “being as he is,” that connects in us, in our consciousness and experience, the perfecting of God’s love with us, and our having boldness to face the final account (ver. 17).

The boldness must be very complete; for it must exclude whatever is incompatible with the ground on which it rests. Now it rests on love; on God’s love shared with us. But love shared between the lover and the loved, in a mutual fellowship of love, excludes or “casts out fear.” It must do so, for “fear hath torment.” A relationship or fellowship based on fear is of course quite conceivable; but it has torment. It cannot therefore consist with a relationship or fellowship of love. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love;” in this love; the love, or covenant of love, here spoken of or referred to (ver. 18). But “we love.” We may not be made perfect in love,—the love or loving treaty in question. But we do love; and our love is a reality; it may be relied on as a reality; for it is love springing out of his love to us; it is his own very love in us. “We love, because he first loved us.”

Having offered these exegetical explanations, I now take up the topics suggested in their order.

I. (ver. 17.) “Herein is our love”—God’s love with us—“made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.” The perfecting of “God’s love with us,” so that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, depends on our being as Christ is,—and that too “in this world.” We are in this world, not as he was when he was in it, but as he is now.

In a very eminent and emphatic sense, God’s love with him is now made perfect; in a sense in which that could not be said of him as he was when in this world. The Father’s covenant of love with him, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”—“the Son sent by him to be the propitiation for our sins”—is now perfectly ratified, so that he may have boldness in the view of any day of judgment.

That, I repeat, could scarcely be said of him as he was when in this world. Personally, no doubt, he was then the object of the Father’s love; and that divine love, as communicated and shared with him, in his human nature and earthly condition, was absolutely perfect. Personally, therefore, he might have boldness,—he had nothing to fear,—in any judicial reckoning. But consider him as “sent to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Oh, what a cloud comes in between him and his Father’s love! What a cloud, charged with fiery wrath, about to burst on his devoted head! And what trembling is there in the prospect of that judicial reckoning with him for our transgression of the law which he has to stand! It was not then altogether a fellowship of love with him on the part of God. The things that passed between God and him, as he hung on the accursed tree, were not all love-tokens and love-caresses! Love was with him still, divine love, even then and there; love, if possible, more than ever, for the very death he was dying, in fulfilment of the divine purpose of salvation. But something else was with him too; something that for a season terribly shaded that love. Divine justice was with him; justice inexorably demanding, in the interests of law and government, the stern execution of the penal sentence. And that must first be perfected; that must have its perfect work; before the love can be made perfect. He feels, he affects, no boldness in meeting that day of judgment. He knows its terror; he shrinks; he cries; he “is crucified through weakness.” For us to be as he then was, would give us little boldness in view of the day of judgment awaiting us.

But to be as he is now! Ah, that is a very different matter! Now that his dark agony is over, and all his groans are past; now that there is no more present with him, on the part of God, any wrath at all, but only perfect love; now that, no longer bearing condemnation, but accepted for his righteousness’ sake, he has boldness to set any day of judgment at defiance; now that the Father need have no other dealings with him any more for ever but only dealings of perfect love; now that, being raised from the dead, he dieth no more; death, judicial death, having no more dominion over him! May this privilege indeed be ours? Nay, it is; “we are as he is.” When and where? Now, “in this world.” It is not the blessedness of the future state; it is blessedness to be got here and now. Do you ask how? Look to Jesus; to “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” “the Son sent by the Father to be the propitiation for your sins.” How was it possible for him, when he took that position, to be as he now is? On one only condition. He must consent first to be as you are, in the full sense and to the full extent of enduring and exhausting all the pains and penalties which your being as you are entails on you. Not otherwise could he come to be as he is now. And not otherwise can you come to be as he is now; not otherwise than by first consenting to be as he was then; to die as he died; to be “crucified with him.” Is this a hard preliminary? Nay, it is altogether reasonable as well as necessary; it is eminently gracious. It is his own free gift of himself to you; of himself as the propitiation for your sins.

I take your death as mine, he cries; the death which as sinners you deserve to die. I die that death in your stead. You cannot die that death yourselves and ever live again. But I can. “I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore.” How much better is it for you to make my death yours than to die eternally yourselves!

Can you refuse to be as he then was, in the exercise of realising, appropriating, uniting faith; “knowing the fellowship of his sufferings?”—especially when you consider how this not only secures your never again being, as you naturally are, under condemnation; but secures also your being as he now is. God’s love is with you; as truly “perfected with you,” as it is with him. You may have the same boldness that he might have in facing any day of judgment. To you, as to him, death as the wages of sin is really past. There is no more any judicial reckoning with you on God’s part, no more with you than with him; but only dealings of love, of love made perfect, love having free course, love unfettered and unrestrained. So you have boldness as regards the day of judgment.

II. This love with us, thus perfected, is inconsistent with fear. It founds or establishes a love-relationship, a love-fellowship, with which fear cannot co-exist:—“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment; he that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

The love here meant is not our love to God; neither is it, strictly speaking, God’s love to us, or our apprehension of it. In a sense, it may be said to be the mutual love that subsists between God and us, when, “as Christ is, so are we, in this world.” Or, still more exactly, it may be understood as denoting the terms of loving agreement, of good understanding and endearment, on which God would have us to be with him, in virtue of “his love with us being made perfect.” The great practical truth taught is that our faith, when we “confess that Jesus is the Son of God” (ver. 15), and when “we have known and believed the love that God hath to us” (ver. 16), brings us into a position, as regards God, in which there is not only no occasion, but no room, for fear.

Love and fear are diametrically opposite principles; and they imply opposite modes of treatment on the part of God towards us, and opposite relations on our part towards him. If God deals with us in the way of strict law and righteous judgment, then the footing on which we are with him is one simply of fear. His fear is with us; not his love. And it is so with us that, however it may be lulled for a time, it will one day be perfected, or have its perfect work, in “a fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversary.” If, again, God deals with us in the way of rich and free grace, then the footing on which we are with him is one of love. He no longer holds over us the threat of punishment; the fear of it is not with us any more. It cannot be, for this fear hath torment.

Mark the reason here assigned for fear being cast out; it hath torment; the torment of anticipated judgment; for that is exactly what is meant. It echoes the voice of the demons:—“Art thou come to torment us before the time?” But we with whom “God’s love is perfected,” have boldness in reference to the day of judgment; not torment, but boldness. Therefore “there is no fear in that love,” thus perfected; for fear introduces an element the reverse of what a state of loving fellowship implies. Hence “he that feareth is not made perfect in that love;” he does not fully realise the standing or position which it gives him; he does not enter completely into the faith and fellowship of “God’s love with us,” as a love that “is made perfect.”

Here let us consider, first, the evil and danger of confounding these two opposite footings, of fear and of love, on which we may be with God; and, secondly, the careful provision which God has made for keeping them separate.

1. I take the case of one who is still in the relation to God in which fear reigns; who yet, at the same time, assumes that, even in his case, there may be something of the opposite relation, of which love is the exponent and expression. He is still under wrath; he has no real boldness as regards the day of judgment; he is subject to the power of the fear which has torment. But he has a notion that God’s love may yet somehow be with him after all; he has a dream of mercy; he welcomes the idea of indulgence and impunity; it abates his torment. It does not really bring him into the region of love, but it mitigates fear. Is that a good thing for him? Were it not better far that he should be left, naked and shelterless, to the full experience of all the torment which fear has? He might thus be shut up to try “a more excellent way.”

But I take, with John, the opposite case. I suppose that you are within the realm and domain of love. Love; the love which is God’s very nature; the love “manifested in his sending his only begotten Son into the world that you might live through him;” that love is the atmosphere of the region in which you now dwell. You are on loving terms with God; his love being with you; and being “made perfect with you.” Nay; not quite made perfect. It should be so, but it is not so. For you let into your heart something of what is proper to the opposite relation; your being on the old terms with God to which fear belongs. And the practical effect of this is very disastrous. Not to dwell upon its sure tendency to mar your peace and joy: it thoroughly cramps your free walk with God in light; it has a sad bearing on your manner of serving God. For no two things can be more opposite than service rendered on the footing of love, and service rendered on the footing of fear. Not only are the motives different; the kinds of service which they prompt are different. If I am under the influence of the fear which has torment, and so far as I am under its influence, I am inevitably inclined to evasion and compromise. I must do some things and leave some things undone; my conscience, moved by fear, will not otherwise let me alone. But I sail as near the wind as possible, if only I may keep barely on the safe side of the law. I venture on occasional omissions of duty and compliances with temptation; stealthily, as it were, “snatching a trembling joy.” The service is all task-work, slave-work. As such I grudge it always, and get off from it when I can on any plea. That is my way with God under the torment of fear. It should be otherwise when I move in the sphere, and breathe the air, of love; of divine love; “God’s love with me made perfect.” There should be no guile in my spirit now; no inclination to unfair dealing any more. Alas! is it so? Is it always so with me? Even if I have some sense and experience of the new and better footing of love on which it is my privilege to be with my God, am I not too often visited with questionings and misgivings proper only to the old footing of fear? Do I not find myself ever and anon asking, Must I positively renounce this?—may I not, for once, venture upon that? And does not all such asking indicate something of the old servile mind? What uneasiness is there in such a way of living with God, and what unfaithfulness too! What “unsteadfastness and perfidiousness in his covenant” of love! Surely it is true that he who in any measure thus acts from mere fear, under the pressure of felt necessity, is not “made perfect in love.”

2. But why should it be so? God would not have it so. His will is that there should be a sharp line of separation between the two incompatible relations; that of love and that of fear. He would shut you up, completely and exclusively, into one or other of them.

Are you in that relation to which fear is appropriate? Then let it be fear alone; fear in the view of the judgment-day. By all means let fear operate alone; unmitigated, unrelieved, by any vague notion of mercy; any dream of love. That is the way in which it should operate. So operating, let it deter you from crime; let it impel you to duty. Or, better far, let it drive you to despair; to despair of yourselves; not, God forbid, of him! You have nothing to do with love as you are, and continuing as you are;—you have to do only with fear. Oh that it were, in the first instance, perfect fear!—fear, pure and simple, casting out, I say not love, but the idle imagination of love! Yes; it is yours to fear; and only to fear! Would to God that your fear had torment enough, not merely to set you on doing some things and avoiding some things, to soothe it or set it to sleep; but to set you on crying, with the deep voice of true conviction: “Who shall deliver me?” “What must I do to be saved?”

Are you, on the other hand, in the relation of which love, divine love, is the characteristic? Is it not a relation of love in which full provision is made, if you will only realise it, for the entire and absolute casting out of all fear? I call upon you so to realise it. Have you, in very truth, “known and believed the love that God hath in you”? Have you considered this love, its nature, its manifestation, its effect and issue? Have you asked yourself, O my brother! this simple, but very serious, question: On what footing does this loving God; this God whose very nature is love, and whose love is with me and in me; mine in actual possession; mine in all its fulness;—on what footing does he intend and wish me to be with him? Ah! is it a footing that will still admit of the miserable suspicions and subterfuges of one driven by a tormenting dread of the lash? Is it not rather a footing that precludes them all? Not a vestige of the old state of liability to judgment remains, if “as Christ is, so you now are in this world.” Not a vestige of the old grudging and guileful frame of mind, congenial to that state, should remain. Not for your own comfort merely, but for your single-eyed, and simple-minded, and honest-hearted walking with God, and serving of God, I beseech you to let his perfect love cast out your slavish fear. For fear hath torment; it is torture; and your God and Father is not a torturing inquisitor.

III. That it may be so; that “this love with you” may be so “perfected” as to “cast out fear;” see that you love with a love that springs out of God’s love, and is of the same sort. “We love,” says the apostle, on behalf of himself and you who believe through his word; passing now from God’s love to ours; “we love, because he first loved us.”²

“We love.” We can take home to ourselves personally and individually what has been said abstractly of love casting out fear. For we love, and do not fear. “He that feareth is not made perfect in love;” he does not perfectly realise the love relationship, the love-fellowship, the love-state, as it were, which God’s “love with us made perfect,” involves. But that is not our case; “we love.”

“We love.” It is the first time John has ventured to say so in this passage. Here first he brings in expressly our subjective experience or consciousness, as bearing upon the assured footing of love on which we are to be with God. Hitherto, it has all turned on God’s love; manifested by him; known and believed by us; communicated to us; present with us; and as present with us, made perfect; so perfect as to cast out fear. Now, it is our love that is asserted;—“We love.” For this must be the issue. It is idle to imagine that anything of the loving relationship and fellowship of which John speaks can be ours, unless we can say with him, humbly, but with some measure of confidence; “We love.” And it is no light thing to say so. It is significant of much.

“We love.” It is not merely that we have a natural faculty of loving, and exercise it by letting it go forth on things and persons naturally attractive to us. But we have now a divine faculty of loving; we love with the love which is of God; which is God’s very nature. We love with a love that goes forth towards things and persons, as they are attractive, not to us, but to him. In particular, as regards our life with God, our walk with God, our fellowship with God, our service of God, our obedience to God; as regards all that pertains to the relation that is to subsist between him and us; “we love.” Not fear, but love, is now, on our part as well as on his part, the ruling principle and living spirit of it all.

“We love.” And in loving, we do but reciprocate God’s love; and respond to it. “We love, because he first loved us.” For our love would be but a poor and sorry thing unless it were linked on to God’s love, as the consequence, or as it were the continuation of it, the reflection or reproduction of it. Always, it must be ultimately, in the last resort, God’s love on which we fall back. “God first loved us.” This wondrous economy of love, in virtue of which he would have us to be on such a loving footing with him as to have fear utterly cast out, originates in him, and is all his own. If we love at all with the love which is of God, it is only because “we have known and believed the love which he hath to us.” For it is “faith alone that worketh by love;”—to that principle we are brought back. If we are to realise, in our experience, the relationship and fellowship of love, as one in which there is no fear, it must be by faith. Therefore I call on you to believe; to believe always; to believe more and more. Believe in God as first loving you; —yes, I say, as first loving you. Be very sure that that must be first; not your loving; but God’s loving you. You cannot really know what love is until you believe in God as first loving you. You must first lay open your whole hearts to the free, frank acceptance of the love with which he first loveth you, as the plant opens its bosom to the rain and sunshine of heaven. Then, from that love with which God first loveth you,—known, believed, accepted, embraced,—there will spring up love in you; such love as will make your whole intercourse with God an intercourse altogether loving, and not fearful at all; such love as will cordially welcome the assurance that God means you to be to him,—not trembling, disaffected slaves,—but loving, loyal, and confiding sons.

I close with two practical observations.

1. There is surely much here, in this glorious description of the fellowship of love which God desires to have with us, and desires us to have with him, that should encourage earnest though anxious souls. I can conceive indeed that some may be inclined to question this. They may feel as if the view now given of the position which God would have them to occupy places it beyond their reach; high above their utmost aspirations. It may seem to them a perfection quite unattainable; an ideal that they can never dream of realising. If something far short of it,—some far more ordinary and commonplace walk and service,—will not suffice or be accepted, it is all over, they may be saying, with them. But let me ask,—In what spirit are you saying so? Is it with regret? Is it with a feeling of disappointment? Would you be upon this footing with God if you could? I must assume that you would; that you see it to be above all things desirable; that you really long and pray to be to God all that you now perceive he would have you to be. Then, if so, I beseech you to remember that this whole business of the adjustment of your relation to God as one of perfect love, is his and not yours. It is not you that have to go to him; he comes to you. It is not you who have to get up, by a painful process of inward working, love in yourselves; it is he who “first loveth you.” It is with his love you have to do, and not with your own. And his love is not far to seek,—or long to wait for. It is with you; embodied, enshrined, impersonated, in the Son of his love, sent by him to be the propitiation for your sin. Look to him; believe on him; consent to be now, in this world, as he is. And remember that “the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

2. Let sinners be warned against presumptuous confidence with reference to the day of judgment. Whatever may be our boldness, if “as he is, so are we in this world,” it does not spring from any questioning of the certainty, or any abating of the alarm, of that great and dreadful day. On the contrary, we have reached that boldness in a way that gives us an insight we never can forget into the reality and intensity of the pains of hell. “We know the terror of the Lord;” we know it by our “being crucified with Christ.” What we see of it in the cross,—in Jesus hanging there, bearing guilt, bearing wrath;—what we feel of it in ourselves, when we take his death of condemnation as ours;—deepens our sense of God’s love in saving us from it, and fills us evermore with sensitive apprehension at the very thought of our being again “castaways.” And knowing thus this terror of the Lord, we would fain “persuade men.” Snatched ourselves as brands from the burning, going softly all our days in the remembrance of our narrow escape, our most seasonable deliverance, we cannot contemplate unmoved their going down into the pit. We beseech them to lay no flattering unction to their souls, as if judgment were not both absolutely certain and inconceivably terrible. We bid them fix their eyes on Jesus suffering judicially on the accursed tree, and hear his voice:—“If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”

“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” For “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Who shall be able to “stand before the face of him that sitteth on the throne,” and brave “the wrath of the Lamb, when the great day of his wrath is come?” “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”