Perfect love

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

In Genesis there was fear, judgment and punishment and they were cast out of the garden. John says all that is done away with in perfect love. That perfect love is manifest to us in Jesus and John says that love is perfected in us in order that we have confidence in the day of judgment. That is all wonderful stuff, we don't have to hide ourselves when He comes, but there is more to the Christian life, more than abiding in God's love than simply having confidence and John knew it and said it before he got to this bit.

John says also, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." That is the pretext for the confidence. He says if we don't have that love for one another then we don't have a right to the confidence of the love of God. Salvation has implications for the way we live towards others too, it isn't just our little gift we will unwrap in due time.