Cottage cheese? Yuk! “Mom, I hate cottage cheese! It’s all white and lumpy and oozes that white stuff all over my green beans.”
Mom wouldn’t stand for that, and I ate my white, lumpy, oozy cottage cheese — not because I enjoyed it, but because I had a deep, abiding respect for mom’s wooden spoon. “Three courtesy bites, Johnny.”
The Apostle John wrote, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love,” (1 John 4:18).
Christianity is a lot like eating cottage cheese. Many people are motivated to become Christians out of fear — the fear of going to Hell. However, as we grow and learn to know Christ and our Father, our fear of hell is cast out and replaced by the love of and for God. Our fears and guilt over sin are no longer our motivation. Our mature, perfected love has elevated us above the fear of punishment.
Of course I still hate greens, but that’s another story for another day.
Reprinted from one of John’s first bulletin articles, February 10, 1980, Tyler, Texas.