Is there such a thing as “perfect love”? Clearly, for Scripture speaks of it — “perfect love casteth out fear,” (1 John 4:1818There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)). But whose love is thus perfect, dear reader? Mine, I am free to confess it, is not, but very far from it, I fear. Is yours?
What would you consider “perfect love?” I suppose if you take the law of God as the measure and test of it, perfect love in you or me would be loving God with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and one’s neighbor as oneself. And this we ought to do, no doubt. I do not question it at all. If we were unfallen, such love would be ours. The question is, who has it? who can stand the test? Whose love to God absorbs the whole heart, mind, and soul and strength? Whose love to his neighbor, — to every one of them, remember, the wide world over, is just in every particular what it is to himself? Again I ask, is it yours, reader? Before Him who is a God of truth and reality, could you claim this as your own?
Look further at the passage and its context in that fourth chapter of the first epistle of John. Is it in us, do you think, as possessing it towards God and man, that this love is to be found? I know that verse 17 may seem to say so decidedly, “Herein is our love made perfect.” If you look in the margin of your Bible, you will find that the Greek says, “love with us” instead of “our love.” And that is a very different thing: “herein is love made perfect with us, that we should have boldness in the day of judgment.” Herein: wherein? Why in this, “because as He — as Christ — is, so are we in this world.” That gives us boldness in the day of judgment.
What does this mean precisely, “Because as He is so are we in this world?” Morally perfect as He was when He walked this world, it cannot be. Who would venture to say of Christians in general, or any class of them in particular, that they were in this respect as the Son of God Himself? and so confident about it, that it gave them boldness in the day of judgment?
Again, it cannot be that we are put in His place or path or circumstances down here, for that would not give boldness. Furthermore, it is not “as He was” when here, but “as He is,” when now in glory. How then, are “we” — all Christians — “as He is?” Simply and only, because He is gone up from His work finished on Calvary, “to appear in the presence of God for us,” our Representative in glory. God looks at His beloved; sees and accepts us in Him, and — “our old man being crucified with Him,” our old selves and all that belongs to them being put away by His cross, — sees but the Christ in us, and what is of Christ, as we walk in the world. Thus the favor wherein He holds His beloved, rests on us as identified with him. What an antidote to fear is that! “Boldness in the day of judgment,” because even now just “as” the Judge!
But whose is the love, then, “perfected with us” in this? Plainly not ours but God’s. It is Divine love which has done it all. Perfect in itself, it is perfected with us in this way; and this “perfect love casteth out fear” indeed, “because fear hath torment,” and love like His would not have us know this torment. Did you never see the mother hush her babe upon her breast, when some causeless fear alarmed it? It is not enough for her to know that there is no ground for the fear. Causeless or not, the fear itself hath torment, and she is not satisfied till the fear is gone. Just such babes are we, rocked upon the bosom of infinite love, and this is our lullaby, our sweet dread-dispelling assurance: “as He is, so are we in this world.”
But are we not too to be “perfected in love” O yes! for “he that feareth is not made perfect in love.” That means, we ought to be, of course. But in what way ought we to be perfected in it, according to this passage? it in, and letting it banish fear. We are to be perfected in it as a lesson God is teaching us. In that love is “no fear.” Nay, it is its antipodes — its antidote. He that feareth, then; has not learnt his lesson is not, perfect in it. O to be perfect in it! For “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” What a home, what an atmosphere to dwell in, in the bosom that holds the Only begotten: in love, that is, in God; for God is love!
That love, dear reader, was towards us, ere the was one good thing in our hearts towards Him. As the apostle says again — for we are but gathering together a few fragments of his teaching — “Herein is love, NOT that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Our “sins,” and not our goodness, brought Him down; His own love and not ours. Thus God has justified Himself in taking up us sinners, yea, a Saul of Tarsus as the chief of sinners to be a “pattern” of his ways of grace, (1 Tim. 1:1616Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. (1 Timothy 1:16)). And of all that believe in Jesus is it true that “God for His great love where with. He loved us, even WHEN WE WERE DEAD IN SINS, hath quickened us together with Christ,” (Eph. 2:55Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) (Ephesians 2:5)). there this perfect love found us, and thence it brought us; for what purpose why, to the intent “that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace, in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus,” (verse 7.) Stagger not, then, dear reader, at these “exceeding riches.” Such they are indeed, but then they are the “riches of His grace.” Must they not “exceed” all your, and my, poor thoughts about them?
This is not forgetting holiness. The root and soil of holiness is only here, in the knowledge of this Divine and perfect love. Can a man be enjoying love, and yet not himself love? Nay, “we love Him, because He first loved us.” Or can he love God and hate his brother? Nay, but he is a, liar who pretends to it (1 John 4:2020If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1 John 4:20)). And thus the apostle shows us once again, that there is a “perfecting” of Divine love in us, when that love enjoyed by our souls is the sunshine wherein ripens the fruit of love to one another. “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us” (verse 12). This is a perfecting such as the seed has, when it springs up into the full maturity of plant, and fruit, and seed again. It is not that our love is perfected, but His in us; which is a very different thing. This love toward us has its perfecting, its fruition in us, when in the knowledge of His love we love again.
Thus have we the three things in the apostle’s teaching here: —
God’s love, perfect; perfected with us in this, that as Christ is, so are we in this world; and this, that we might have boldness in the day of judgment.
Secondly: we are perfected in this love, when we have so learned it, that fear is cast out of our hearts.
And, thirdly, it is perfected in us, when it becomes in us fruitful in love to those who represent Him for our hearts in this present world.