Love Over Fear
Summary
Dominic Jackson closes 1 John by arguing that Scripture frames the true opposite of love not as hate but fear—“perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). He traces how fear is instilled in us through advertising, news, and social media, then shows how our anger and hatred often mask deeper fears—of loss, insignificance, or lack of control. Drawing on voices like Nouwen, Thurman, and Baldwin, he shows how beneath each sin lies a temporary identity crisis. In Christ, however, Paul’s “to live is Christ, to die is gain” becomes a settled posture that defangs fear.
Practically, the path isn’t sin-management but turning toward God in the moment of fear—through prayer, community, and “seeking first the kingdom” (Matthew 6:33). The closing “homework” from 1 Corinthians 13 (replace “love” with your own name) exposes our limits and points to Jesus as the only one who truly fits that definition. His perfect love—not our performance—drives out fear.
Questions for reflection
Where do anger or cynicism in me actually trace back to fear? What fear is underneath?
When fear hits, do I tend to fight, flee, or freeze—and what would turning toward God look like instead?
How might a one-week fast from social media or news change my fear levels?
Read 1 Corinthians 13 with your name in place of “love.” Which line convicts you most, and why?
How does my picture of God (Matt. 6; Phil. 1:21) reshape my picture of myself when I’m afraid?
Where have I slipped into “sin-management” rather than inviting Jesus into my mess?
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This morning we wrap up First John, and I think I've said that three times already, but I really mean it this time. In our last message here, I'd like to talk about a theme that comes up over and over throughout not only 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, but also the gospel according to John, and it is this contrast between love and fear. Something that has always fascinated me is how in the Bible, how the Bible defines love and fear so radically different than we do, and how those terms or emotions or allegiances according to Jesus are so different. Additionally, equally interesting is how according to the Bible, the opposite of love is not hate as most of us would probably assume it is not hate, but instead the opposite of love is actually fear. John writes again in one John four 18, there is no love and fear, but perfect love drives out fear.
Here we get the prescription, but if you are like me, you're probably thinking, okay, what does this even look like? Practically? I know what the verse says, but what does this look like in my life? Is it really that simple? If so, I would love to know because I have plenty of things that terrify me. Some are irrational. I will just confess. When I was a kid, there was a movie, some of you're old enough to remember it was called Harry and the Hendersons, anyone. It terrified me. It kept me up at night and it's like this cheesy little cute family film about a family who adopts Bigfoot basically on a, B, c family or something, and it terrified me as a kid. That was then. But now I still have irrational fears like self-checkout lines or Roomba of vacuum cleaners. I don't know what it is.
Pretty much all robots. I blame the Chuck E Cheese animatronics, those creepy things. I don't know, sorry. To my friends who work in robotics, I love you. However, I also have plenty of other fears, normal but improbable fears like getting bit by a poisonous snake or my car blowing up when I'm getting gas. We've all heard those warnings. But then lastly, there are very real fierce things that are terrifying. The ones that often will find us in the middle of the night, death dying, an incurable disease, a diagnosis or something happening to one of my loved ones. All of us here probably have a laundry list of things we're scared of. Maybe it's not 1980s family films or spiders or whatever, but I'm sure if the Bible is actually suggesting there is a way for us to be less afraid, there is a way for me to be less afraid of spiders or robots or spider robots or existential dread or World War III happening at any moment or whatever is on your list if the Bible is suggesting that it might be worth looking at. So let's pray and then see what the scriptures have for us today.
Lord, I recognize that all of us here are entering into this space in many ways from different places. I imagine that there are some here with some very real fears with legitimate concerns. Additionally, there are probably many here now with deep pain and hurting. We read in the scriptures that you, Jesus are nearest to the broken hearted that you sit with us in our pain. We see that beautiful poetic picture of you in the Psalms of collecting our tears in a bottle as the poet says, not to discard or explain away, but to consume, to take on just as you did on the cross. So Lord, meet us here. We know victory is yours. We know how the story ends. We know one day every wrong will be made right, and yet still we long for your peace and comfort and your love to meet us where we are today in our hopes, in our fears, in our love, but also in our hatred, our anger, our sadness. So Lord, meet us here this morning and then once we experience your presence, help us to recognize that you were there all along. Pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
If you are like me at some point in your life you probably found yourself in a scary situation, terrified of the future of what was to come. You saw options ahead of you and they were maybe bleak at best. Maybe it was a loved one. I remember when my grandmother was sick, maybe a loved one was not doing well or maybe for you it was like, if I don't pass this test, I'm not going to graduate college or my marriage is on the rocks, or my kid got kicked out of the last school in the district that was my mom's or my job is having layoffs and my boss just emailed me to see him on Monday morning. Whatever the situation was, maybe at one point either you went looking for answers in the scriptures or somebody opted to provide them for you. And after pouring out your heart to that person and maybe even to God, all that was going wrong in your life, all that you were scared of, terrified of somebody simply responded with what you know, perfect love, cast out fear and you're probably a better person than I am.
So you probably didn't respond the way that I did to that though you might've had the same thought, which is great. Thank you. John really clears things up. Thank you for the spiritual bandaid on what feels like an amputation. Next time I'm scared of something, I'll just work on being a more loving person. Thank you very much. Versus like Lee's just pulled out of passages, pulled out of context can often feel, at least for me, like biblical fortune cookies, right? Soon a stranger will reveal a sacred truth in you. That was my last fortune cookie from a few days ago, which sounds a whole lot like perfect love, cast out fear. However, on the other side of this situation now where I stand and I look back at my life, I have learned something somewhat surprising, shocking. Even though I would much rather have a punch list from John or Jesus himself, do these five things and your problems go away.
As much as I would prefer that the truth is this passage really does have the answers that my heart desires. The truth is it really is that simple to defeat fear, we need love, true love. It really is that simple, but it definitely isn't easy. Those are not always synonymous. And so for today, we're going to talk a bit about fear and we're going to talk about love, no surprise there. And then we'll look at a couple of practicals, what we could take with us and what we do with this information. Sound good? Okay, that's where we're going. Pretty straightforward message. I don't know why I asked that One day someone's going to say, no, it doesn't sound good and I don't know what I'm going to do, but so far we're in agreement. Thank you. So fear, we'll start there. When it comes to fear, first, let me say I believe this is my belief.
I believe that fear isn't our fault, but it is our problem. If you watch television for 10 minutes, listen to the radio or even drive around and look at the billboards that are covering the sky. If you look closely, you'll notice that so many of them with their glossy coats of paints and they're airbrushed models, they may look like they are rooted in opportunity to be healthier or cooler or richer or more attractive or to look and feel younger. However, instead of opportunity, what's really underneath of them is they're actually rooted in fear in the way of the heart. Henry Nowan writes about driving through what he calls the land of the words, which was Los Angeles in the 1980s, and he's taking a trip and he's driving down the street after being in the desert for a long time, and he describes these countless billboards surrounding him and the noise that pollutes every inch of every mile.
He says, and he goes on to explain that these advertisements aren't even about what you could have or who you could be, but instead if you look deep enough, it's all about what you lack or all that you aren't. And this was in the 1980s. I definitely don't think we've gotten any better since then. The reason I may pause and look at an Instagram ad or a commercial longingly, one perfectly curated for me isn't because I think how cool it would be to be six four and have a six pack and be rich and to be tan. I've never been tan in my life. I just turned pink, but still, it's because under that billboard or that Instagram ad is the question, since I am not that person, since I am not the ideal or the standard, who am I in society? What place do I have fully acknowledging that I'm not Chris Hemsworth or Jason Momoa or whoever is on the cover of men's health this month, but however, I still check many of the boxes and I'm acknowledging that or at least I could blend in a bit better.
I'm straight, I'm white, I'm of average height and weights. I'm married, I'm educated, I'm middle class, I'm able, I'm American, et cetera. I imagine this message only rings louder or communicates to young people, aging people, to folks with disabilities, to people of color, to unmarried folks, to people who are in poverty, to people who are considered underweight or overweight, teenage girls or honestly, I would imagine women in general, whatever the beauty or success standard is, whatever this does to me, I would imagine it might sting even more so others. Yet for all of us, these ads exist to tell you that you are not enough and what they go after isn't your hopes of being cooler or more popular or attractive. No, they feed off of our fears, which I believe is a tactic of the enemy. When I daydream about winning the lottery, I think I'm thinking about buying a bunch of cool stuff, but in reality, I'm fantasizing about no longer having needs or wants or somehow this will fill some of the empty spots inside of me.
Yet what's fascinating is that this fear seems to be universal across the board. I remember this ad came out 20 years ago, I think it was from Dove, the soap company, but they had all of these supermodels men and women who were talking about all the things they would change about themselves and their own bodies, and I remember seeing that and thinking shut up. I remember seeing that and thinking, come on, but in reality, instead of seeing this as annoying or tone deaf, I should have seen this as heartbreaking and depressing. Even these folks are susceptible to this and it's not just in looks right. John d Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the early 19 hundreds was once asked How much money is enough? Rockefeller answered just a little bit more. Minnie initially cited this as proof of Rockefeller's greed, assuming he was never satisfied no matter how rich he became, but there was something darker and more broken to this response.
In his biography, his wife shared a story about somebody asking What is it like to live with the man who gets the best sleep in the world in reference to him no longer having cares or needs in which he said, I wouldn't know when pushed on this. The reporter has said to have asked, Rockefeller is worth $900 million and this was like a hundred years ago, $900 million. What could possibly keep this man up at night in which his wife stared off in the distance and responded $901 million. For so many people who finally get the thing they're after that they believe will feed this part of their soul that they are lacking hurting whether millions of dollars or extensive plastic surgery or being in a relationship with someone you're infatuated with or a promotion or a new title, whatever it is. Often when people receive this after discovering the emptiness they have that led them to this desire which is rooted in fear, they realize their problems didn't go away.
They just look different. John describes this as not where you and I are lacking, but how the enemy is attacking, which we talked about in week three in this series, the Reason you are on edge, we are on edge, we're humming along at a constant four, which has become normal or constantly anxious. Isn't because something is wrong with you, it's because something wrong is around you or against you or can make its way inside of you and me. Not to say we're off the hook or blameless in this, John goes on to mention the three areas that we open the door to attack lies of the flesh, desires of the eyes and pride of life, which he says in one John two, we are opening that door in our sin, but what enters that door is fear and no wonder we all are living in a constant state of terror.
This was not God's design. More on that in the next series before. Now I just want to call out the obvious. The more you hear something, the more it affects you. John Mark Comer says, all of us are being discipled by something. We just have to choose who it is. Who is discipling us. Though there are dozens and dozens of examples I could have used. I used probably the most prevalence or obvious social media. These are not my words, but experts way smarter than cooler than me. Both of faith and not unanimously have found the more time you spend on social media, the more anxious you are, the more depressed you are and the more anger and resentment you hold. It's not coming from me, and I say this lovingly as someone who spends a good amount of time online and on social media, if you find yourself in a constant state of fear, anxiety, rage, I'm not asking you to care less, but to funnel that differently, maybe consider taking a week off social media and see what that does.
Pray about it. I don't know. We'll see. I'm talking to myself here, but back to fear. When you are told that you should be terrified, petrified, constantly, not just all the things we lack and the people we should be and all the failures we have in life, this fear also grows into everyone else that we encounter. It doesn't just stay within us, but it stays how we see everything and everyone, whether that be the immigrants, the police officer, public school, microplastics, robots, politicians, universities, et cetera. I'm not suggesting that there are not some real problems and real risk, but what I am asking is what is a healthy response to these fears? Not to put your head in the sand and pretend that everything is perfect, but also not to let them rule your life. In the book Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman, I highly recommend MLK noted as his biggest influence next to Jesus and his father written in 1949 in his chapter on hatred.
Thurman says, all of us live with some sort of hatred in our hearts, every living person, but society gives us all the excuse or reason. We need to justify that hatred and call what is evil good and to reconstruct that hatred as virtue rather than bias. Think about the group you feel the strongest against. Not a person, not someone you know, someone who has hurt you or a family member or something, but a group of people. Chances are under this ill will. These negative feelings that we have is a fear of them, fear of the power they seek, the influence they have, the destruction they are capable of. If you are angry and vilify your child's teacher, for example, who represents a hyper political movement which has infiltrated the public school system on either side, it's not because you hate who they are or hate what they believe.
You can tell yourself that that's what it is, but under this hatred is a fear of what they will teach your children and who your kids will become. We love our teachers by the way, just an example of something that I heard from somebody recently, but it's the same thing with anyone. The immigrants, the politician, pastors, whoever it is you feel the strongest chances are it is rooted in fear, not just of who they are but what they could do. Anytime I catch myself reading something or hearing about some group doing something contrary to my worldview and I catch myself drifting into anger or rage under this is they are coming for fill in the blank, my freedom, my community, my rights, my theological worldview, my hope, my family, my comfort, my way of life. Civil rights activist James Baldwin wrote, I imagine one of the reasons people clinging to their hatred so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain and that pain is terrifying.
It's easier to fear and it's a lot easier to hate than it is to hurt. The reason that hatred isn't the opposite of love is because hatred is rooted in power. You take, you hold, you control, you possess something when you hate though fear is rooted in weakness. Powerlessness, timidness, anxiousness under our hatred is pain, is fear is lacking, and once we open that we recognize all that we aren't. However, when we are living in faith, believe it or not, this is actually good news. Our weakness is actually good news. It is where we have the opportunity to meet Christ the clearest. He must increase, I must decrease, right? Many of us would rather the passage say he must increase and I must stay the same. Maybe that's just me. Jesus, keep getting bigger and bigger in my life so that you can meet me in my comfort zone instead of I am weak.
He is strong. How about we're both strong together, but the beauty of the gospel is that fear is actually an opportunity in our weakness to turn towards him. When we are fearful, whether that be masked as anger or hatred or it's terror or anxiousness, when we are fearful, we have an opportunity to either turn away from God or to turn towards him, but if you think about it, the one who is rooted in faith, true trust and belief and love has no fear because they are firm in who they are or more importantly, who God is. This is why Paul writes for to me to live as Christ and to die is gain, or my paraphrase, who cares whether I live or die lost, job lost, lost life a diagnosis. It doesn't matter because I'm solid in my faith, we are literally talking about the God of the universe.
Why am I upset about this thing? In the grand scheme of things, Paul is saying, who cares? In which I think, Paul, you are a crazy person, right? Am I the only one? But man, did he live it because he was confident in who he was and the God who was for him? A w. Towser has this famous line, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us, and I love towser and towser is way cooler and smarter than me read everything he's written. However, I have to disagree with this quote. I would add the most important thing about me isn't what I believe about God. The most important thing about me is what God believes about me, who God says that I am. Because if you think about it, if you trace back your sin, my sin, our sin, the last time we sinned under this is fear.
Fear of loneliness, fear of letting go, fear of intimacy, fear of uni, importance of being replaced, of being invaluable, of being insignificant and under this for the follower of Jesus, under every sin, I believe is a temporary identity crisis. I'll never forget a friend sharing a prayer with me that radically changed my life and my faith for years. When I would sin, screw up miss the mark, I would beat myself up so bad. I would say, what a failure. You can't even keep it together. You can't even go 24 hours without messing up and you call yourself a Christian. Really, these are the conversation that would take place in my head, and this led me to trying to wheel my life into sinlessness. You could imagine how that went and my friend shared this prayer with me, a prayer of repentance that he began praying, moving the focus off of him and moving it towards how God saw him and he would pray, Lord Jesus, I'm sorry, I forgot who I was in that moment.
And then after I began praying this, instead of trying to just do something on my own, I invited God into the mess with me. Perfect love, cast out fear. God is love. We can't do this on our own. That is the whole point. Many years ago, I'd just come to faith and I was praying and thinking about getting baptized, and my friend Mike, who was my pastor at the time, we were talking and he asked me again, Hey, are you ready? Do you want to take this step towards baptism? And I remember saying, Mike, I'm really close, but there are things in my life that I'm trying to get under control and I keep struggling with the same sins over and over and I have these anger problems and I have this rage inside of me. Sometimes I get so angry I just want to punch a wall or something and don't even get me started on my ego and I started listing off all of these sins, all of the areas I was messing up.
And I remember telling him, Mike, I'm doing so much better than I was last month, but I feel like every time I'm making progress I just keep on messing up. But as soon as I figure this out, Mike, yes, sign me up for baptism and I'll never forget, he said, I'm not going to force you to do anything and I don't want to rush you. But that's not the way baptism works. If we were all supposed to wait until we were perfect to step into the water, only one person in human history would've ever been baptized. This is a step in inviting Jesus into that mess. This is committing to following him, to obedience to him, to trusting him, and maybe underneath of all of your commitment to growing or faithfulness or seeking perfection or desire or self-control, maybe underneath of this is a lack of trust.
Maybe your attempt at dealing with sin is sin in itself. At least it's coming from your own power, your own will. Mike was a straight shooter, as you could probably imagine, but it's true, perfect love, cast out fear, and the way we experience that love is knowing God and then it is knowing ourselves, our true selves, knowing who we are and whose we are. So much of our fear is rooted in how we believe God sees us. Is God punishing us? Does he even know us? I lived the first decade of my life as a follower of Jesus being 70% sure I was in, and that was terrifying, and my faith became about trying to just up those odds, doing better, doing more good deeds and less bad things for me, faith became about sin management and ultimately the cross. If I was honest with myself, the cross didn't seem like enough.
I read the verses, I sang the songs, but why did I still have this fear inside of me? Why did I still question if God was cursing me? Anytime something bad happened in my life, why did I still at times even question if God was even there or listening to me? Do you see how it's a two-way street? How fear is often not just rooted in knowing who we are, which is why a billboard or a stupid comment or a bad day can send a spiraling but deeper than this is not knowing truly who God is.
And I say this not for conviction, not for shaming or guilt. I'm talking to myself here, but for invitation, Jesus says in Matthew six, therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body. What you will wear is not life more than food and the body more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Listen to this. Are you not much more valuable than they and any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life? Then he goes on to talk about the flowers and how beautiful they are in their splendor, and yet we worry about, he says things like what we're going to eat and drink and how we'll dress, and then verse 33, he concludes with this, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.
All these things, the answer is seek first the kingdom and this will give us a new perspective. We can seek God or we can seek things, we can rest in God or we can rest in our fear. So what do we do with this? I talked a lot about fear, a quick word on love. I like to try and end on a good note. The thing about this perfect love is that love is meant both to be received and to be given. We are invited into love and we are invited as followers of Jesus to extend love, and there is a connection there. This relationship is connected to this relationship, and so first, how we experience love when we are fearful, this can either lead to a fight or a flight or a freeze response fight. I mean rebel against God or sin. If you're stubborn like me or respond to that fear flight, run from God or freeze, do nothing but sit in it.
This is again, temporarily forgetting our identity in that moment, but we also have another option in our fear. Invite God into it instead of fighting or fighting or freezing, it's praying, holy Spirit, I need your presence right now. I can't do this on my own. When you and I are fearful, when you feel far from God, move towards God. This can be in community with a brother or sister. So often God speaks to me through you guys, especially when I'm at my lowest. It could be in scripture in prayer and service and fasting, whatever it is learned from my mistake, instead of trying to deal with it and then going to God, it is laying it down, inviting God into it and knowing he has and will deal with it. So that's the love we experienced. And secondly, we have the opportunity to be love just as he first loved us. Albert Hubbard has this great line. He says, the only love that we keep is the love that we give away. So how do we give it away? I'm going to close with a homework assignment for all of us, and I will admit I have some bad news and then some worst news and then some good news.
I would make the worst professor or teacher ever. The thing about this homework assignment is you're not going to be able to do it, nor will I. And then the worst news is I'm going to ask us to do it anyway. Lastly, some good news. I'll share that even though you and I can't do it, it is still possible to get done. We just have to find somebody else to do our homework for us. Once again, man, rate your professor.com. I would be getting low marks right now. Here's an assignment. You're going to fail. Good luck. Okay, so here's the homework one. Corinthians 13 is probably one of the most famous Bible verses ever. It's read at weddings on hallmark greeting cards, not even just in the church, but everywhere. You are probably familiar with this passage. In this passage. The Bible gives us a perfect definition of love.
This is it. Here's the answer right now. What is love? Here it is. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. I shared this once a while ago, but something I like to do from time to time is to take this verse, the verse on love and to use it and to see how I am doing in the love department, almost like a litmus test for myself. What this looks like is replacing the word love with my name and asking myself, is this true? Can I actually say this with a straight face? And this is our homework assignment too, is ask yourself the same thing.
And so I read this out loud to myself and rank myself. Can I read this truthfully? I think we have a slide. You could put your own name in there. Mine looks like this. Dominic is patient. Dang it, I'm already failing right there, right? Dominic is patient. He is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast. He's not proud. Dominic does not dishonor others. He isn't. Self-seeking is not easily angered, keeps no record of, does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Dominic always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. And I look at this definition of true love, not what Netflix or Hallmark or cheesy nineties rock ballad will tell you what love is, but what God says that love is. And I ask myself, how am I doing? How is my anger, my protection, my trust, my patience and some weeks are better than others and some departments are better than others, but this also reveals some areas that I'm not doing so great in self-control.
This week I got so mad at my toddler for being a toddler. I dropped something and found a way to blame them as every good parent does. And in that moment, I was not loving, not according to what the scripture says, love is. Dan Horton says, A man is no bigger than the smallest thing that provokes him, whether it's a broken dish, a traffic jam, a stupid comment online, whatever, the smallest thing that you give the power to set you off. And for me, it was a spilled coffee mug all over the floor, took me 60 seconds to clean up, and still my response was as if it would take my entire weekend dedicated to this irreversible act. And the truth is, if I kept digging underneath of this and my response, if I kept looking under this was fear somewhere deep down, if I was sitting with God or my therapist, I probably would've been able to pause and say The reason this little thing that my kid did, which is really a thing that I did, the reason it bothered me so much wasn't because of anger, it was because of fear.
Somewhere deep down was this fear that I was a moron, that I was stupid, a failure for leaving this cup unattended. I should know better by now. And under that, a fear I was failing as a dad. I didn't recognize it at the moment, of course, but deep down was this fear or that I was going to have a kid grow up one day that would hurt me or embarrass me or let me down, or maybe it was a fear that I was robbing them of their childhood. And when they looked back, they wouldn't remember all the times I pushed them on the swing or had fun with them or love them. They would remember dad losing his temper while cleaning up a coffee spill. And if I kept going was a fear underneath of this that I was going to end up like my own father if I was really brave under that, a fear of being forgotten by my heavenly Father, that this was just another example of how sinful and screwed up and unloved I was because of how I responded to an accident.
And of course, this only multiplies when we start talking about politics and my neighbors and strained relationships and my ego and the list just keeps ongoing. And so as you see, this is what we strive for. Yes, it is a good check-in, absolutely want to be more loving, which we already explored will help us all be less fearful. Here's a good list. Print it out. I have read one Corinthians 13 and do so often. If you want to be a better spouse, a better parent, a better kid, a better neighbor, a better friend, and ask, how am I doing? Which areas can I grow in? For me, it's often patience, right? That's one right there. And just keep on going down. However, this is the homework I warned you about that we're all going to fail and I'm going to fail. And this is actually good news because of the good news, because we don't define love.
You and I don't. We experience it, we share it, we give it, but we aren't love. Here's the good news. Here's why We don't need to live in fear. And all of the junk in my life is so much more microscopic than I think, and that no matter what happens to me, it is going to be okay. Here it is. Because putting my name there doesn't work. And putting your name won't work either. Whoever is the kindest, most loving, sweetest person, if they are human, they cannot pass this test. They will fail. They won't be able to check every single box. We strive for it. We are discipled towards it. We grow in it, but we won't ever get to become it fully. I will never be able to fit my name in there perfectly, but there is someone who can. And here's the good news, here's the true definition of love.
According to the scriptures, the type of love that makes fear run in the opposite direction. Here it is. Christ Jesus is patient. He's kind. We see no envy in him. He does not boast. He is not proud. Christ. Jesus does not dishonor others. He's not self-seeking, never easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. We see that on the cross. Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do. Jesus does not delight and evil, but rejoices with the truth for our Lord always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. Brothers and sisters, perfect love, cast out fear, and we see that on the cross. All we need to do is to turn towards him. Let's pray together. Lord, we see in you a perfect picture of love. Perfect love is this to lay down one's life, which you have done for me, for us. Yet though you have defeated death, often it is our lives which we feel victim in to our fears, to our anger, our situations, our hopelessness. And so help us meet us where we are. Give us a hope, a true hope that can only be found in you. We pray this Christ Jesus. Amen.