Northgate Christian Community

Pastor Jon spoke on the third message in the series on community. He explained that we are a community of God’s love, which sets us free to worship Him openly. Pastor Jon offered three points of encouragement to the congregation: we are a community of God’s love, God’s love sets us free to worship, and God’s love sets us free to see as He sees. He mentioned that we are to “love God because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Pastor Jon also illustrated the concept of fear and explained how scripture references fear as ‘phobos’, which in Greek is where we derive the word phobia. The New Testament uses at least three different derivatives of this same root word. The first example references an anxious fear, phobos, and is found in 1 John 4:18: “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.” The second refers to a respect, or submissive fear. 1 Peter 2:18 offers wisdom to respect the authority that has been placed