“PERFECT LOVE CASTS OUT FEAR”
W. Dickson
We are again passing through a time of peculiar pressure in this city and it would not be the Lord’s mind to let an occasion like this pass without giving us some word of strengthening and comfort in the circumstances. That would be according to 1 Corinthians 14. One of the prime matters in a meeting of this character is its bearing upon the place and the city at the time and in relation to what is actually present amongst us. I think, beloved brethren, that what the circumstances are bringing out locally and generally is our knowledge of God. If as Christians, as believers in the Lord Jesus, we develop in a knowledge of God, we will be able to read and understand events which to the natural mind are beyond understanding. So the natural mind, the unconverted mind, does not know the God that we know, it does not know the God who sent the Saviour, who sent Jesus. Even the youngest believer has that knowledge of God. He knows God as the Father who sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
When circumstances come into a locality, or into our lives, is our knowledge of God deep enough to go beyond the circumstances and go beyond what is happening outwardly and trace the hand and the will and the love that lie behind all these movements? Can we do that, brethren? Have we the power to do it? Have we the understanding of God to do it? So it says, “Beloved, let us love one another; because love is of God, and every one that loves has been begotten of God, and knows God”. Thus when a matter of sickness or sorrow overtakes one in the Christian circle our love goes out towards them, our affections go out towards them; they have been begotten of God; we are in the family, in the divine family. When a circumstance affects your next-door neighbour or the person that you work with it does not bring out in you quite the same feelings, but in the circle of the saints, in the Christian circle, as persons who have been begotten again, on account of that you love them. The circumstances of sickness bring out your love, your feelings for them, in a direct way and it is because we have been begotten of God. There is the nature in us which loves on that account.
It also says, “Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”. Beloved brethren, how could we doubt the hand that orders our circumstances in the light of a scripture like that?
How could we in moments of weakness and unbelief question the love of a heart that moved that way, that “sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”? We sang hymn 351—
‘Precious things to Christ belonging,
Brought to us in love by Thee,
Fill our souls with holy longing
Of His glory more to see’.
Have we seen that glory—the glory of the sent One of the Father going into death in order to be for ever an expression of the love of God towards us? So in times when our faith is wavering and we feel inclined to question the hand that is moving in our circumstances, we are to see that glory, a blessed subject Man moving into death in order that the Father’s heart and the Father’s affections might be made known to us.
So John says, “We have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love”. Could we say that? No matter what comes in, can we say that? Even though the matter goes to its extremity, can we say that—“God is love”? He also says, “He that abides in love abides in God, and God in him”. In other words there is a resting place for the believer in the heart of God and God has a resting place in the affections of a believer who is subject to His will and can trace His hand back to the heart that orders everything for blessing. It adds, “Herein has love been perfected with us that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as he is, we also are in this world”. Now when things come into our lives and our locality do we say, ‘What have we done to merit this? Is there anything that we will have to face in the day of judgment and God is trying to bring it to us now?’ These things come into our hearts sometimes. We tend to look for a second cause, but John says, “As he is, we also are”, in other words we are in the perfect acceptance of Christ before the Father, and such is the love of God towards us here, and there is no imputation to those that are in Christ Jesus.
Further he says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has torment”. Fear has torment, and we are oft-times tormented trying to search out the cause, the reason for things happening, “but perfect love casts out fear”.
Beloved brethren, I think the Lord would put His gentle, comforting hand upon us at the present time, and amidst the torments that sometimes come into our minds. He would tell us that God is love. He would give us the knowledge of Himself and He would give us the peace that flows from His perfect ordering of everything for His own glory. May we know it, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Edinburgh
19 August 1980