"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." (1 John 4:18)
No more than two or three weeks after my friend Marcus married his husband—a simple ceremony with one our church's pastors—Marcus setup a pastoral counseling call with me. His voice cracked over the Zoom: "What if they're right? What if God has no choice but to send me to hell?"
This man who had spent years carefully, prayerfully studying every clobber passage. Who could exegete the cultural context of Leviticus and explain why arsenokoitai doesn't mean what the English translators claimed. Who had built a beautiful, affirming theology from the ground up.
And still. The fear.
Still that childhood terror lodged somewhere between his ribs and his heart, whispering that love might be a trap.
The Theology of Trembling
1 John 4:18 doesn't only say that love conquers fear. It says fear has to do with punishment. Which means John is making a direct connection between our theological frameworks and our emotional well-being. Between how we imagine God and how we sleep at night.
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