Antithesis of love is fear and hatred

Who do you love? I know it is not February, but can we talk about love now?  I love my wife, I love the fall, I love cold mornings and good coffee.  I love sitting by a fire and sharing it with good friends.  There are a lot of things that I love, but there is a greater love in this world that we don’t always understand.

There are things that I don’t love, hot weather, broken cars, and mean people top my list.  How do we love the things and people that are tough to love?  A lot of the time we recite 1 John 4:7-8 to remind us of God’s love and our need for loving one another, but we don’t always know what will result from that love.  Love’s action results in a reliance upon God.

John continues his discourse on love in 1 John 4:16-21 where he challenges us to consider that God’s love transforms the way we live.

16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.18 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.

19 We love because he first loved us.20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

John calls us to live in and rely upon God’s love.  God’s love was demonstrated in Christ’s sacrifice for sin, we live in God’s love by actively following Him in all things.  We turn in repentance to Him and choose to obey His commands as an act of love.  Through this practice our perspective on life and relationship with others is transformed.

The antithesis of love is both fear and hatred.  When we live in fear, there is no room for love.  When we hold on to hatred, it consumes our heart. We must learn to live out love in every situation, whether we struggle with fear or hatred.  We must capture those emotions and responses as Christ did as He willingly went to the cross to die for the sins of those that hate God.

Once we hated God, but because of His love we are being reconciled to Him.  Our hearts must be transformed by God’s love, from fear to eternal hope, from hatred to compassion.  In this transformation God’s love is made complete in us.  His power is to turn us from what we were into His likeness and into more perfect disciples.

We are to be transformed in our actions towards others, not by what we have accomplished but what His love for us accomplished in us.  Let us turn in reliance upon God any time fear or hatred rises in us.  Let us turn from fear or hatred and be imitators of God in loving others as He first loved us.