66 - 1Jn 4:18
Φόβος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ τελεία ἀγάπη ἔξω βάλλει τὸν φόβον, ὅτι ὁ φόβος κόλασιν ἔχει· ὁ δὲ φοβούμενος οὐ τετελείωται ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ. The apostle’s exposition in 1Jn 4:17 has shown that we have in the ἀγάπητετελειωμένη [“love made perfect”], which involves in it the μένεινἐν τῷ Θεῷ[“abide in God”], the parrhesia, because we are thus conformed to Christ the standard of the judgment. But he has now another method of exhibiting the connection between love and confidence, that is, by reference to the nature of love itself. To the parrhesia, he says, fear is utterly opposed, I as this is incompatible with love: where love is, there is not fear, but confidence. This is generally the substance of 1Jn 4:18. That confidence and fear are opposed is a presupposition of the verse which is not further demonstrated; the emphasis rests upon the evidence that fear and love are not reconcilable with each other. “Fear is not in love:” love is the feeling of internal union with another, the opening out my person to that other; fear is the sense of wanting harmony, and therefore the separation and shutting up of my person as it respects him. Love springs from the feeling that God is for us; fear, from the feeling that He is against us. Thus it is plain that the two ideas exclude each other. Yea, so little do they agree together, that, on the contrary (ἀλλά [“but”]), love, where it exists, has the power and tendency to drive out fear. But certainly it can do that only where it is τελεία [“perfect”], that is, penetrates and fills the whole life and being of man. That love must cast out fear, however, appears from this (ὅτι [“because”]), that fear κόλασινἔχει [“has punishment”]. For the explanation of this idea we are directed to Mat 25:46. There it is said that the ungodly ἀπελεύσονται οὗτοι εἰς κόλασιν αἰώνιον, οἱ δὲ δίκαιοι εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον [“these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”]. We therefore perceive that κόλασις [“punishment”] is the punishment, the condemnation itself, not merely the feeling of it; the objective condition, not the subjective sense of it or pain. As this is required by the verb ἀπέρχεσθαιεἰς [“to go away into”] itself, so still more is it demanded by the antithesis to ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”]: as it would be highly forced to speak of going away or entering into a feeling, so the state of eternal life is not the description of a subjective feeling, but of a condition appointed. Similarly, in our passage κόλασις [“punishment”] cannot be understood of a mere painful feeling; for it was surely not necessary to emphasize that fear is in itself a sentiment of distress. Rather, the pregnant thought of St. John is this, that in fear, which has been shown to be fear of punishment, the punishment itself is already included and involved. If we remember the saying of the Gospel, that he who believeth not is condemned already; that the condemnation consists simply in this, that light shineth into the darkness and declares it to be darkness,—it will appear plain that in St. John’s thought condemnation is consummate in separation from God. Now, as we have seen that fear has its ground in the feeling of being sundered from God, while this separation from Him is in St. John’s doctrine already the state of judgment or condemnation, it is evident that fear contains in itself the element of judgment: φόβοςκόλασινἔχει [“fear has punishment”]. The last clause of 1Jn 4:18, which is linked by δέ [“moreover”], does not intend to introduce the antithesis of φόβοςκόλασινἔχει [“fear has punishment”], that is, does not carry further the argument brought in by ὅτι [“because”], but contains the inverse of the clause ἡ τελεία ἀγάπη ἔξω βάλλει τὸν φόβον [“perfect love casts out fear”]. It is perfectly clear that St. John might have exhibited this proposition, that where fear is, love cannot be perfected, as the conclusion of the first clause itself; but it is clear, at the same time, that the form of the antithesis is justified as it is, and is more appropriate to the Johannaean genus dicendi.
Thus, then, the proposition which was laid down as a theme in 1Jn 2:28 has been argued out on all sides and justified; while, at the same time, the end has been reached which St. John, according to 1Jn 1:4, set before himself in this Epistle, that the Christian church should attain the perfection of that joy, which, according to 1Jn 1:3-4,[N] consists in fellowship with God and with the brethren. For the τετελειωμένη [“made perfect”] or πεπληρωμένηχαρὰ [“fullness of joy”] is nothing but the παῤῥησία [“boldness”], the feeling of perfect unity and harmony with God, which will approve itself even before the rigours of the final judgment. How, in fact, this consummate joy rests upon the two things which 1Jn 1:3 lays down, communion with God and communion with the brethren, it has been St. John’s object throughout the whole Epistle to show. Every section of it is based upon this double relation. But there is one thing yet wanting that had to be evinced; and that St. John introduces supernumerarily in the paragraph from 1Jn 4:19-21, 1Jn 5:1-5: the exposition, namely, how these two aspects, which had been hitherto viewed always as co-ordinate, the relation to God and the relation to the brethren, form an internal and indissoluble organic unity, so that neither of them can be conceived without the other. Our relation to God has been presented by the apostle under various phrases: sometimes in act, as ποιεῖντὴνδικαιοσύνην [“to practice righteousness”] positively, and negatively as νικᾶντὸνκόσμον [“victory over the world”]; sometimes as the energizing potency lying at the root of the act, the confession to Christ. In this last section, which is to exhibit the unity of all these aspects by the ἀγαπᾶν τὸν ἀδελφόν [“to love the brother”], we accordingly find all these expressions gathered up again: the actual side by τηρεῖν τὰςἐντολὰς [“to keep the commandments”], 1Jn 5:2 ff., as also by νικᾶντὸνκόσμον [“victory over the world”], 1Jn 5:4-5; the principle by πιστεύειν ὅτιἸησοῦς ἐστινὁΧριστός [“to believe that Jesus is the Christ”]. In what preceded, the relation to God has been based upon the acknowledgment of the mission of the Son of God; the relation to the brethren upon the divine love infused into us. In order now to show the internal unity of the two relations, the apostle begins by deriving both first from the idea of love, and then from that of faith in the God-man. The former occupies 1Jn 4:19-21, the latter 1Jn 5:1 ff.