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The Liberty of Love

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 25, 1870

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 36, No. 19.

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The Liberty of Love.

There are two kinds of fear. One of them is the most delightful, the other the most painful, emotion we know. The fear of God as felt by his child is sweet, and is a melting of the whole being into tenderness for everything that concerns his glory. It has no slavery in it. Of the subject of this fear it is written, “Happy is the man that feareth always.” He is happy in having a nature so much above that of worldlings as to be pained at the approach of sin, and has a very tender sensibility as to its contact with his own person. This fear springs from the consciousness of living in the atmosphere of Heaven.
The proper expression of his life in action is, “I have set the Lord always before me.” Such a man shall always dwell in the presence of the Lord. It is to the perfection of such a character that the whole gospel of Christ is directed. This is the man who has made the Lord his trust, and whose hope the Lord is. These are they who “sanctify the Lord God in their hearts,” and they are ready to give to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear. Such a hope is connected with purity and with love.
The fear of God, therefore, is most refining and exalting. It casts out the other kind of fear which is slavish; the fear that hath torment. While the fear of God is experienced in freedom, this is the devil’s chain binding the soul to danger and to death. Now the word of God says that while the former kind of fear is Heaven assuring, and therefore an emotion which God loves to see in his people, the other, the slavish fear, has no rightful place in the Christian church. Jesus was slain that we might be free, and that his gospel liberty might be the common inheritance of his people. And so he sent the Holy Ghost that his love might be shed abroad in our hearts. If that love be shed abroad there, where is slavish fear? It cannot be found. “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.”
It is then a fact of this dispensation of the church of Christ, a fact of its life, a natural outgoing of the plan of salvation by the cross as illustrated by the lives of those who receive the grace of God with simplest faith, that all tormenting fear is banished. So then we shall expect to see the persons who enjoy this salvation delivered from all the fears which beforetime chained them to the earth, constrained their action, made them waver, filled them with distress and gloomy forebodings, made an “aching void” in their souls, and robbed them of substantial comfort.
Now, if we be told by any that they have such fears, we must say to them that they doubtless fail of receiving the things which “are freely given them of God.” God has given them freely, but they do not receive these great blessings of his everlasting covenant. It may be that they do not believe that it is the design of God to save them from their fears. But here is the word of God for it: “There is no fear in love; perfect love casteth out fear.” It is vain to say that they cannot be made perfect in love, for that is to say that the Holy Ghost cannot do his work in them, that the blessed Paraclete is unequal to the task which God’s precious promises to his people impose upon him. Nay, let God be true, and every man a liar. Unbelief would rob the Saviour of his crown, and fill Heaven with tears.
The Holy Ghost can and will do for every man every jot and tittle of the promises which the blood of Christ has made the portion of his people. Fear that hath any torment cannot stand the joy of his love. It will fade like mist upon the mountain before the morning sun. Have you fears of anything that can befall you? Then you have not the true fear of God which is always tender to the very first risings of unbelief, you have not that perfect love which you may have, and which becomes those who profess a vital attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. The fear of man is taken away by Jesus, and you will enjoy the liberty if you only abide in him. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
2. The fear of any evils, or what men call evils. The righteous trust and are not afraid; they know very well that when Jesus utters an injunction, he never withholds grace for its obedience; and they fear not them which kill the body.” “They are careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and thanksgiving they make their requests known unto God.”
3. Jesus takes away the fear of death. He took part of our nature, that “through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them, who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
Beloved, with Jesus Christ your life is hid in God. What enemy can reach it? Though Satan be the prince of the power of the air, he cannot see the throne. The glory of our citadel blinds his vision, and makes him tremble in hellish fear and unavailing rage. Up and believe! There is no heterodoxy in that love which banishes fear. ABIDE IN CHRIST.—Sel.