![\"Seaside](\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/362\/2014\/11\/SeasideStory_watermark_SteveHenderson.jpg\")
<\/a>Do YOU know anyone who worships and follows Jesus as if they really, really\u00a0believed He loved them unconditionally, all the time, and without condemnation, disapprobation, and disapproval?<\/p>\n
“Love cannot live with\u00a0fear.”<\/p>\n
What a great statement, although it’s not a Bible verse; rather, it’s\u00a0a line from P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley<\/em><\/a>, a modern-day mystery that follows the life of Elizabeth (nee Bennet) and Fitzwilliam Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice<\/em><\/a> fame.<\/p>\n While\u00a0it’s\u00a0such a good line that Jane could have written it herself, you’ll be happy to know that someone else who writes about love, the apostle John, penned the sentiment\u00a0much, much earlier than either James or Austen:<\/p>\n “There is no fear in love,”<\/em> 1 John 4:18 reassures us, continuing,<\/p>\n “But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”<\/em><\/p>\n What Is God Really Thinking?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Disappointment, disapprobation, disapproval, exasperation, irritation, impatience: none of these emotions have anything to do with perfect love, and yet, within the minds of too many Christians, they are the very embodiment of what God feels, whenever He looks at us:<\/p>\n 1) Because we\u00a0don’t have enough faith.<\/p>\n 2) Because we\u00a0didn’t read the Bible that day.<\/p>\n 3) Because we\u00a0didn’t say “thank you,” first during our\u00a0Quiet Time Prayer Time.<\/p>\n 4) Because we\u00a0didn’t have a Quiet Time Prayer Time that day.<\/p>\n 5) Because we\u00a0skipped church.<\/p>\n 6) Because we\u00a0had an uncharitable thought about someone else.<\/p>\n 7) Because we\u00a0did something, anything, that human beings do every minute in the process of just breathing, and we\u00a0weren’t perfect.<\/p>\n “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,<\/em>” one Christian quotes Matthew 5:48 to another, theoretically to encourage, but given that none of us is perfect, or can be, while we live on this earth, all this advisement does is remind us of how we have failed, yet again.<\/p>\n So why did Jesus say it?<\/p>\n Considering\u00a0that the sentence concludes an entire chapter (Matthew 5) beginning with the Beatitudes and progressing through a series of statements about fulfilling the law; not committing murder, adultery, or divorce; and loving our enemies, one can pretty much conclude that being perfect is<\/p>\n 1) Something to shoot for<\/p>\n and<\/p>\n 2) Something we’re not necessarily going to hit.<\/p>\n Perfect Love Is . . . Perfect<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n And that’s why we focus on that perfect love — the love that DOESN’T have to do with punishment, punishment being something that we do not experience, or expect to experience, within the love of Christ, because as the apostle Paul reassures us in Romans 8:1,<\/p>\n “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, I know, Revelation 3:19 tells us,<\/p>\n “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline,”<\/em> but it’s wise to remember\u00a0that because our heavenly Father is just that — heavenly, perfect, all wise, all good, and compassionate — it’s a sure bet\u00a0that He’ll do a better job raising His children than we do ours, and really good human parents don’t give the impression to their children that they (the children) are hopelessly incompetent, irretrievably unsatisfactory, abominably imperfect, and distressingly defective.<\/p>\n Wise, mature parents recognize that children will have issues, and perverse is the mother who knocks down the baby and tells him\u00a0to walk all over again, from the sofa, because he’s\u00a0not steady enough.<\/p>\n Or the father who returns the wretchedly hand-sewn pillow, the product of five-year-old fingers, because it doesn’t look like something from Pier One Imports.<\/p>\n God’s Parenting Skills<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Awful parents, we agree, create a climate of fear, unease, anxiety, and discouragement by yelling at their kids, withholding affection to bring about desired change, and expecting more than can possibly be given. (One of my favorite examples of perverse leadership was a sports\u00a0coach who withheld praise to those who finished second, or less, in a heat, convinced that the children would be so desperate to earn her approval that they would try harder — how can one try harder than one’s best? — next time. A wiser person would recognize that eventually, you give up trying to please someone who cannot be pleased.)<\/p>\n Despite the wisdom of sensible human parenting, however, we as Christians walk fearfully and in chronic trepidation around our heavenly Father, punishing ourselves, mentally, in His name when we don’t meet standards that we have set up: we must be patient, all the time, our words never sharp, our actions never misguided, our faith — this is the big one — never unwavering, or else God will walk away from us, because we deserve no less.<\/p>\n But this has never been God’s way, He who loved us first (1 John 4:16).<\/p>\n In a weekly children’s program years ago, I helped 6-year-olds lisp through 2 Corinthians 5:21:<\/p>\n “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,”<\/em> and if they didn’t have the slightest idea of what they were saying, neither did their adult teachers:<\/p>\n God. Loves. Us.<\/p>\n He loved us first. He loves us last. He loves us always.<\/p>\n We cannot alienate Him from us because of our human imperfections, but we can alienate ourselves from feeling secure in His arms by allowing fear to creep into our relationship. His perfect love doesn’t go away — we just don’t realize and recognize that it is there.<\/p>\n “Love cannot live with\u00a0fear.” — P.D. James.<\/p>\n “There is no fear in love.” the Apostle John.<\/p>\n Let Jesus — and His perfect love — drive out your fear.<\/p>\n Thank You<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Thank you for joining me at Commonsense Christianity, where I am overcoming years of religious miseducation by discovering, daily, who God is, and why He’s worth worshiping and loving.<\/p>\n Posts complementing this one are<\/p>\n Angry Jesus: I Don’t Want to Follow Him, Either<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Evening](\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/362\/2014\/11\/ValentinesDay_EveningWaltz_SteveHendersonCopyright.jpg\")
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