When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man

by Edward T. Welch

Jesus both experienced shame and took our shame on himself, so shame no longer defines us. In fact, by grace through faith, it is no longer part of us. Then, in an act that seems inconceivable, God goes a step f...

Chances are that she believes that God reigns over all things, but that his love toward her is small. She has succumbed to Satan’s suggestions that God is not really for his people. Only persistent meditation on the cross of Christ is sufficient to allay this fear.

Then she will know that there is no person capable of thwarting God’s good purposes in her life.

So all counsel given Janet must be filled with compassion for her and anger over the injustices she suffered. Otherwise, it is not biblical counsel.

Such a tragic history does not mean that we ignore sin in Janet’s life.

to ignore Janet’s sin would be to further victimize her. It would keep her from knowing true freedom from guilt, the joy of forgiveness, and the greatness of God’s love.

The problem with many Christian books on victimization is that they never really take us out of ourselves and allow us to put our hope in Christ alone.

Jeremiah 17 is the classic biblical text on the fear of man.

Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.

Consider meditating on another section of Scripture. When Jesus was sending out the disciples to call others into the kingdom, he reminded them that they would encounter a number of problems. People would reject them, they would be turned over to town councils for public flogging, and their ministry would be divisive, thus angering even more people. In other words, the disciples would be tempted to fear people. As a result, Jesus sent them off saying, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

The only immoral act in such a culture is to say that your version of God is superior to anyone else’s.

As these assumptions have gained more acceptance, there has been an unprecedented increase in depression and an astonishing rise in the number of people who confess to rage against God.

There is a grass-roots cry from people who are demanding both answers and “rights” from God. Then, in perhaps the zenith of self-exaltation, some clergy and counselors actual...

pastors of many growing churches preach almost weekly about healthy self-esteem, as if it were taught on every page of Scripture. Too many Christians never see that self-love comes out of a culture that prizes the individual over the community and then reads that basic principle into the pages of Scripture.

“Mary, how do you know that you should marry him? How did God tell you?” “Pastor, I just feel it. I know it’s right.” The conversation is now over. Mary has just appealed to the highest authority — her feelings. In two years, she will appeal to this authority again.

Even in worship services, the goal for many is that people feel something.

Schleiermacher, a German theologian of the 1800s, made this the essence of religion.

Have you heard preachers who hope to create an aesthetic response to the sermon?

The church’s emphasis on emotion may be more dependent on cultural traditions than on Scripture.

Listen for the popular question at Bible studies, “What do you feel about this passage?” Is it possible that our feelings are often more important to us than faith?

When God and spirituality are reduced to our standards or our feelings, God will never be to us the awesome Holy One of Israel. With God reduced in our eyes, a fear of people will thrive.

If this is so, we should be careful about saying, “Jesus meets all our needs.” At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ is a friend; God is a loving Father; Christians do experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God’s love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term “needs” is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs.12

The result is that our goal can be self-improvement rather than the glory of the Holy God.

At the other end of the spectrum is a fear reserved exclusively for those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ. This fear of the Lord means reverent submission that leads to obedience, and it is interchangeable with “worship,” “rely on,” “trust,” and “hope in.”

Like terror, it includes a knowledge of our sinfulness and God’s moral purity, and it includes a clear-eyed knowledge of God’s justice and his anger against sin. But this worship-fear also knows God’s great forgiveness, mercy, and love.

This knowledge draws us closer to God rather than causing us to flee.

The world, our own flesh, and the Devil conspire to elevate other people (or what we can get from them) over God.

it the practical theology of most Christians? I know that it can be my own. I am a good guy — a nice guy — who occasionally does bad things. Such thinking ignores the depths of sin in my own heart, and, in essence, it elevates me so that I am just a mildly flawed imitation of God rather than someone completely dependent on him. Fear of the Lord is then impossible. To make sin even more difficult to see, it often rides on the back of many good things. For example, work is a good thing, but sin can take it and exalt it to the point where it rules us. We become workaholics who say we are doing it for the kids, but we are really doing it for ourselves. What about financial planning? Isn’t it wise to establish a nest egg for the future? This, too, is a good thing, but it can grow to ruling proportions and we forsake generosity. Most sins are ungodly exaggerations of things that are good. As a result, we can supply

proof texts to justify our behavior long after it has become idolatrous.

The world takes these tendencies and rationalizes them. The world reminds us that, whatever our sins or “shortcomings,” we are only ...

Therefore, we cannot rightly say, “My God is not a God of judgment and anger; my God is a God of love.” Such thinking makes it almost impossible to grow in the fear of the Lord. It suggests that sin only saddens God rather than offends him. Both justice and love are expressions of his holiness, and we must know both to learn the fear of the Lord. If

we look only at God’s love, we will not need him, and there will be no urgency in the message of the cross. If we focus narrowly on God’s justice, we will want to avoid him, and we will live in terror-fear,

fear, always feeling guilty and waiting f...

Consider the Bible God’s school in the fear of the Lord.

Even more than the Grand Canyon, I prefer considering the ocean. I worked as a lifeguard on the beach for five summers and never grew tired of its expanse. I have been cooled by it as a reminder of God’s refreshing grace, and I have been battered by it as a reminder of God’s great power. God’s ocean reminds me that he is much bigger than any person.

The farmer did not cause the crops to grow. The crops come from the ground as a gift from God. Rain is an expression of his care, lightning of his power. Furthermore, God owns creation. “In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him” (Ps. 95:4). We are walking on privately owned land.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (Ps. 8:3-4)

When reading Genesis through the lens of the fear of the Lord, every event becomes more dramatic. The flood is an awesome display of God’s justice; Noah is an awesome evidence of his love. The Tower of Babel demonstrates God’s great power and justice; he will not let man glorify himself. But

Can you already get a sense of the expulsive power of the fear of the Lord? A growing knowledge of God displaces the fear of people, and it casts out our tendency to be casual with our secret sins. And the good news is that it can be learned. God is absolutely enthusiastic about blessing us with this knowledge. You don’t have to be a patriarch of Israel. You simply must be a person who prays (Eph. 1:17) and seeks after this great gift.

After the Israelites left Egypt, they were eventually led to the mountain of God. Being close to God’s abode, they were commanded to symbolically cleanse themselves and be separated: they could not touch the foot of the mountain, they washed their clothes, and they abstained from sexual relations when they convened around the mountain. They had to prepare themselves to be close to holy ground.

What they witnessed was astounding. Fire descended on the mountain; smoke was everywhere. The entire mountain trembled, and the sound of the trumpet, announcing the coming of God, grew louder and louder. The senses of the people must have been pushed to the limit.

The law is wonderful in that it reveals the holy character of God.

What may seem like nit-picking to us was actually a beautiful revelation of the God who protected the oppressed and poor, hated injustice, loved mercy, offered forgiveness and cleansing, and was morally pure. In the law, God set a new standard for holiness that the world had not known.

I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. (Lev. 11:44)

Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.” (Lev. 19:2)

You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own. (Lev. 20:26)

Too often our mountain-top experiences are quickly overtaken by the clamor of the world, and God once again is diminished in our minds. The goal is to establish a daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God.

This is where the book of Proverbs can help. The heart of the book is the fear of the Lord:

Those who fear the Lord will fear nothing else (19:23).