JOHN has been speaking of boldness, and that naturally suggests its
opposite — fear. He has been saying that perfect love produces courage in
the day of judgment, because it produces likeness to Christ, who is the
Judge. In my text he explains and enlarges that statement. For there is
another way in which love produces boldness, and that is by its casting out
fear. These two are mutually exclusive. The entrance of the one is for the
other a notice to quit. We cannot both love and fear the same person or
thing, and where love comes in, the darker form slips out at the door; and
where Love comes in, it brings hand in hand with itself Courage with her
radiant face. But boldness is the companion of love, only when love is
perfect. For, inconsistent as the two emotions are, love, in its earlier stages
and lower degrees, is often perturbed and dashed by apprehension and
dread.

Now John is speaking about the two emotions in themselves, irrespective,
so far as his language goes, of the objects to which they are directed. What
he is saying is true about love and fear, whatever or whosoever may be
loved or dreaded. But the context suggests the application in his mind, for
it is ‘boldness before him’ about which he has been speaking; and so it is
love and fear directed towards God which are meant in my text. The
experience of hosts of professing Christians is only too forcible a comment
upon the possibility of a partial Love lodging in the heart side by side with
a fellow-lodger, Fear, whom it ought to have expelled. So there are three
things here that I wish to notice — the empire of fear, the mission of fear,
and the expulsion of fear.

I. The empire of fear.

Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the person or
thing which we dread. My text brings us face to face with that solemn
thought that there are conditions of human nature, in which the God who
ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire becomes our ghastliest
dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of all that a creature ought
to feel towards its loving Creator lies in the simple consciousness of
discordance between God and man, which is the shadow cast over the?76
heart by the fact of sin. God is righteous; God righteously administers His
universe. God enters into relations of approval or disapproval with His
responsible creature. Therefore there lies, dormant for the most part, but
present in every heart, and active in the measure in which that heart is
informed as to itself, the slumbering, cold dread that between it and God
things are not as they ought to be.

I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord
attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and often
denied. But there it is; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in the heart all
the same; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its crested head, and
shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into the veins. A dread of
God is the ghastliest thing in the world, the most unnatural, but universal,
unless expelled by perfect love.

Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come,
likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony with
Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered by Him,
and in which all are His servants? Oh! I sometimes wonder how it is that
godless men front the facts of human life and do not go mad. For here are
we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the awful vortices
of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and swirl all manner of
evils, some of them certain, some of them probable, any of them possible,
since we are at discord with Him who wields all the forces of the universe,
and wields them all with a righteous hand. ‘The stars in their courses fight
against’ the man that does not fight for God. Whilst all things serve the
soul that serve Him, all are embattled against the man that is against, or not
for, God and His will.

Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner, derives
all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our discordance with
God; and that is ‘the shadow feared of man,’ that stands shrouded by the
path, and waits for each of us.

God; God’s universe; God’s messenger, Death — these are facts with
which we stand in relation, and if our relations with Him are out of gear,
then He and all of these are legitimate objects of dread to us.
But now there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love, and
that is — perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that so many of
us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that I am?77
exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of man, and I
have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my hearers,
who are below both fear and love as directed towards God; for they never
think about Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him or their
relations to Him or anything that flows therefrom. It is a strange faculty
that we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and shutting our eyes
to the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson when he puts the
telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he would not obey the
signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing that men should ignore or
shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness the real facts of their condition,
like boys whistling in a churchyard to keep their spirits up, and saying,
‘Who’s afraid?’ just because they are so very much afraid. Ah, dear friends,
do not rest until you face the facts, and having faced them, have found the
way to reverse them! Surely, surely it is not worthy of men to turn away
from anything so certain as that between a sin-loving man and God there
must exist such a relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that man, as
surely as God is and he is. I beseech you, take to heart these things, and do
not turn away from them with a shake of your shoulders, and say, ‘He is
preaching the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion of fear.’ No! I
am not. But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man who is in discord
with God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you with the old
exhortation of the prophet, ‘Be troubled, ye careless ones.’ For there is
nothing more ignoble or irrational than security which is only made
possible by covering over unwelcome facts. ‘Be troubled’; and let the
trouble lead you to the Refuge.

II. That brings me to the second point — viz., the mission of fear.

John uses a rare word in my text when he says ‘fear hath torment.’
‘Torment’ does not convey the whole idea of the word. It means suffering,
but suffering for a purpose; suffering which is correction; suffering which is
disciplinary; suffering which is intended to lead to something beyond itself.
Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has the same function in the moral
world as pain has in the physical. It is a symptom of disease, and is
intended to bid us look for the remedy and the Physician. What is an alarm
bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and to hurry them to the refuge? And so
this wholesome, manly dread of the certain issue of discord with God is
meant to do for us what the angels did for Lot — to lay a mercifully violent
hand on the shoulder of the sleeper, and shake him into aroused
wakefulness, and hasten him out of Sodom, before the fire bursts through?78
the ground, and is met by the fire from above. The intention of fear is to
lead to that which shall annihilate it by taking away its cause.
There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to destroy a man,
than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its own
fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paralysed by dread that they
cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be afraid — as every
one ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin — for a man to be
afraid and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear; then what do I do?
Nothing. That is true about hosts of us.

What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its source, my own
sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its remedy,
the righteousness and the Cross of Jesus Christ. He, and He alone, can deal
with the disturbing element in my relation to God. He can ‘deliver me from
my enemies, for they are too strong for me.’ It is Christ and His work,
Christ and His sacrifice, Christ and His indwelling Spirit that will grapple
with and overcome sin and all its consequences, in any man and in every
man; taking away its penalty, lightening the heart of the burden of its guilt,
delivering from its love and dominion — all three of which things are the
barbs of the arrows with which fear riddles heart and conscience. So my
fear should proclaim to me the merciful ‘Name that is above every name,’
and drive me as well as draw me to Christ, the Conqueror of sin, and the
Antagonist of all dread.

Brethren, I said I was not preaching the religion of Fear. But I think we
shall scarcely understand the religion of Love unless we recognise that
dread is a legitimate part of an unforgiven man’s attitude towards God. My
fear should be to me like the misshapen guide that may lead me to the
fortress where I shall be safe. Oh, do not tamper with the wholesome sense
of dread! Do not let it lie, generally sleeping, and now and then waking in
your hearts, and bringing about nothing. Sailors that crash on with all sails
set — stunsails and all — whilst the barometer is rapidly falling, and
boding clouds are on the horizon, and the line of the approaching gale is
ruffling the sea yonder, have themselves to blame if they founder. Look to
the falling barometer, and make ready for the coming storm, and remember
that the mission of fear is to lead you to the Christ who will take it away.

III. Lastly, the expulsion of fear.

My text points out the natural antagonism, and mutual exclusiveness, of
these two emotions. If I go to Jesus Christ as a sinful man, and get His love
bestowed upon me, then, as the next verse to my text says, my love springs
in response to His to me, and in the measure in which that love rises in my
heart will it frustrate its antagonistic dread.

As I said, you cannot love and fear the same person, unless the love is of a
very rudimentary and imperfect character. But just as when you pour pure
water into a bladder, the poisonous gases that it may have contained will be
driven out before it, so when love comes in, dread goes out. The river,
turned into the foul Augean stables of the heart, will sweep out all the filth
and leave everything clean. The black, greasy smoke-wreath, touched by
the fire of Christ’s love, will flash out into ruddy flames, like that which has
kindled them; and Christ’s love will kindle in your hearts, if you accept it
and apprehend it aright, a love which shall burn up and turn into fuel for
itself the now useless dread.

But, brethren, remember that it is ‘perfect love’ which ‘casts out fear.’

Inconsistent as the two emotions are in themselves, in practice, they may
be united, by reason of the imperfection of the nobler. And in the Christian
life they are united with terrible frequency. There are many professing
Christian people who live all their days with a burden of shivering dread
upon their shoulders, and an icy cold fear in their hearts, just because they
have not got close enough to Jesus Christ, nor kept their hearts with
sufficient steadfastness under the quickening influences of His love, to have
shaken off their dread as a sick man’s distempered fancies. A little love has
not mass enough in it to drive out thick, clustering fears. There are
hundreds of professing Christians who know very little indeed of that
joyous love of God which swallows up and makes impossible all dread,
who, because they have not a loving present consciousness of a loving
Father’s loving will, tremble when they front in imagination, and still more
when they meet in reality, the evils that must come, and who cannot face
the thought of death with anything but shrinking apprehension. There is far
too much of the old leaven of selfish dread left in the experiences of many
Christians. ‘I feared thee, because thou wert an austere man, and so,
because I was afraid, I went and hid my talent, and did nothing for thee’ is
a transcript of the experience of far too many of us. The one way to get
deliverance is to go to Jesus Christ and keep close by Him.?80

And my last word to you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound
way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been
speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in full
operation the causes of your dread — and that is stupid. There is only one
wise thing to do, and that is, to make sure work of getting rid of the
occasion of dread, which is the fact of sin. Take all your sin to Jesus Christ;
He will — and He only can — deal with it. He will lay His hand on you, as
He did of old, with the characteristic word that was so often upon His lips,
and which He alone is competent to speak in its deepest meaning; ‘Fear
not, it is I,’ and He will give you the courage that He commands.

‘God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of
a sound mind.’ ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear,
but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father,’
and cling to Him, as a child who knows his father’s heart too well to be
afraid of anything in his father, or of anything that his father’s hand can
send.