1 John 4:18 - There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear

1 John 4:18 (ANIV) states, ‘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 is a wonderful promise of God for us to appropriate for ourselves, in our lives. That we need not fear anything or anyone, because perfect love drives out fear. How awesome!
Jesus love FOR us is already perfect. Loving, FROM us, towards Jesus & other people, is as imperfect as anything else. Loving, like pretty much everything else in our lives, is an on-going process. We are “on-going projects”, after all!

But what if you DO fear? Does that mean you don’t love perfectly? Perhaps the application of the scripture simply means that we have not applied the perfect love of Jesus into that area of your life where we experience fear. The scripture reads, ‘The one who fears is not made perfect in love’. It’s not that we won’t ever be made perfect in love, but that we have not yet reached the point in our journey, where we have BECOME perfectly mature in our love… we have that to look forward to! But there will be a point, somewhere in our future as Christians, when we WILL be made perfect in our love.
Wow! Can’t wait for that to happen to me!