Meditations Upon 1 John 4:18 - Part One

 

Meditations Upon 1 John 4:18- Part One

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

 

This seminal verse reminds disciples that God’s unfailing love in Christ is the foundation of the Gospel. In the fourth Gospel, the evangelist makes the often-quoted declaration, “For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The first half of this verse alludes to God’s irreversible and irrevocable covenant with humankind that He makes with Abraham in Genesis. In Christ, God’s establishes a new covenant through the gift of the Lord’s sacrificial life. At the Last Supper, Jesus foreshadows His betrayal, crucifixion, death and resurrection as He institutes this ordinance of remembrance. Christ’s broken body and shed blood are supernatural gifts that establish the new covenant. Through faith in Christ, anyone graciously receives admission to the “New Israel,” the church or beloved community of the eternally redeemed through Christ. They are heirs of all promises that God makes through Christ. The ultimate promise is the gift of eternal life to anyone who believes in Christ and His atoning and salvific work. Implied in this promise is exoneration from perishing in eternity. Because of the Father’s covenant pledge premised upon His unfailing love for humankind through the gift of Christ, anyone who believes need not fear “going to hell” and being timelessly separated from God.

 

In the seventeenth verse of the third chapter of the Gospel, John further explains God’s purposes in the gift of Christ. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him.” The objective of the Gospel is sharing God’s unfailing, redemptive, gracious and transformative love with humankind. Condemning people to hell is not its cardinal purpose. Commenting to the beloved community, conceivably filled with second and third generation disciples, with wisdom borne of his old age and longevity, the beloved apostle reaffirms love as God’s character and essence. Simply stated, “God is love.” God demonstrates the pricelessness of His love in Christ. Accordingly, the enduring and eternal gift of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and propitiation satisfies the collectivity of human sin, offense and transgression against God’s holy character. Implementing a new covenant that appeases Himself, the Holy and Heavenly Father through love liberates all disciples from the eternal threat of hell and daily fear of punishment.

 

I grew up in the African American Southern Christian context and community. I attended New Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church located in Wisacky, South Carolina. The church was nestled between soybean, corn and cotton fields. This rural hamlet was a microcosm of the pervasive conservative, evangelical, regional and cultural expression of American Christianity that acquiesces biblical inerrancy and literalism and conservative sociopolitical and economic ideology. My childhood years witnessed the ascendancy of the “Gospel of Wealth and Health.” Still, a fundamentalist canopy hovered above regional religion, social interactions and relationships and public policy decision making. Removal of prayers in the public schools was met with utter disdain. Allusions to the Bible permeated public discourse. Political speeches faithfully invoked the name and will of God. Interestingly, a former Governor, Richard W. Riley, during an unrelenting drought punctuated with no rain and a daily heat index exceeding one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit in the first two weeks of July 1986, asked the clergy of South Carolina to pray for rain. The citizens of the state favorably received that overtly religious appeal from their chief executive. Some of them, when interviewed, pledged to incorporate a petition for rain into their own prayers. Religion infused all dimensions of daily living whether socially or personally.

 

I recall reading numerous articles in The Sumter Daily Item about law enforcement seizures, arrests and prosecutions of makers of moonshine. This underground and alternative market liquor was also known as “Joy Juice,” “White Lightning,” “Corn Liquor” and “White Whiskey.” Made in the moonlight to avoid law enforcement raids, this type of alcohol competed significantly with “legal” and taxed alcoholic beverages sold in grocery, ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) and liquor stores. Retrospectively, I realize that the State of South Carolina prosecuted moonshine makers because their underground market yielded a considerable loss of tax revenue. One of her main tactics was to condemn moonshine makers for corroding the moral social fabric. Preachers and elected officials were vociferous in their contempt about the moral dangers of allowing moonshine to remain unchecked. Newspaper articles cited myriad potential dangers to people’s health and quality of life. Sermons characterized moonshine as “the devil’s brew.” Without question, distilling, packaging, selling, distributing, sharing, buying and consuming moonshine was sinful beyond being illegal. On a morally reductionistic level, some preachers opined, “You can’t get to heaven by drinking moonshine. People who do so will go to the other place.”  Leaders of state government, law enforcement officials, journalists and clergy cohered in their moral condemnation of consuming moonshine. Conveniently, they ignored obvious contradictions about tax collections and “blue laws” prohibiting the sale of alcohol from midnight on Saturdays until six o’clock in the morning on Mondays in all venues except ABC stores. Parenthetically, it would be interesting to see if the state collected data on traffic fatalities and accidents during that thirty-hour period over the weekend to ascertain whether the “blue laws” reduced those unfortunate events. Chances were people simply stocked up on Saturdays in anticipation of Sundays prohibitions. Nonetheless, religion and moralizing heavily influenced the denunciation of the underground sale and use of moonshine.

 

On an individual level, the threat of hell was used widely as a discipline strategy. Children who engaged in common, unruly and disruptive behavior, relative to their developmental stage, were told sternly and humorously, “Boy, you keep acting like that and you’re going to burn in that fire. People who act the way that you do end up in that fire. Do you want to be in that fire?” I vividly recall hearing those questions on multiple occasions during my childhood. They conditioned me and other children and youth to uncritically accept “hellfire and brimstone” sermons. That motif flowed through Southern preaching like the Amazon, Nile, Mississippi or Yukon rivers run through their terrain as a life-giving force. Probably, countless conversions to Christianity occurred pejoratively as “eternal life insurance.” Instead of coming to the Lord in response to His incredible love, grace, mercy and redemption, church goers and adherents to Christianity sought to avoid eternal damnation and punishment. In church services, annual revival meetings and radio, television and multimedia preaching, clergy emphasized the need “to get right with God,” renounce a sinful life and pledge to live a righteous life worthy of admission to heaven upon physical expiration.