Perfect Love Casts out Fear -- Already!

"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."

I used to read this verse, convinced that if I got afraid, it meant that I still had to do something. It reads "He that feareth is not made perfect in love."

So, my reasoning went something like this: If I get afraid, God must not love me, or that I had cut of fellowship with God. With that kind of thinking, I found myself fighting a needless and fruitless two-front war. On one hand, I was trying to maintain or restore my relationship with God. On the other hand, I was trying to fight off my fear.

Of course, the following scriptures make very clear that I do not create, nor can I prevent, God's love from flowing through me:

"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." (Romans 5: 5)

and

"Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 37-39)

Nothing can separate us from God, for God is love (1 John 4: 16), and God dwells in us through Christ (Colossians 1: 27) and through the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5: 22-23)

In fact, the same chapter in First John explains that His love is perfected in me:

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4: 17)

If there is any one thing that can break the illusion of fear away from our minds, it is that God the Father does not see us in our sinful, fallen bodies and minds. Instead, He sees His own Son:

"And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." (1 Corinthians 3: 23)

and

"Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." (1 Corinthians 12: 27)

We are so close to God through His Son, we are one with Him:

"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." (John 17: 23)

 – but we still live in a fallen world that will tempt individual believers to get afraid. We have the Holy Spirit’s love bursting through us.


If you feel afraid, just rest in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, knowing that He who is within you is greater than he who is in the world (, and that includes yourself. We are  no longer fearful people, we are no longer our thoughts and feelings:

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 11)

His love is more than perfected. We do not fear in our spirit man, therefore – and if our thoughts an feelings tilt toward fear, we just repudiate it – we are not defined or pushed around because of our feelings or thoughts. The writer in Hebrews dispels once and for all even the thought of sin in our lives:

"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9: 14)

We have no need to be afraid of even doing something wrong. Our fallen minds may be tempted to fear, but the believer can reject such a temptation by resting in the knowledge that we are even cleansed from the sense of judgment, of the even the foreboding possibility of wrong-doing in our lives!

You have perfect love within you already, for God is Love, and His love is thriving and pouring out of you already! You cannot stop His love of you, in you, or through you. Only your mind, your conscience, may be tempted to doubt His love, but your thoughts and feelings cannot stop Him. Walk in this love, therefore (Ephesians 5: 8)– and watch what Jesus does in your life!