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February 10 - March 23, 2021
My aim now is to cut through this discouraging confusion. I want you to rejoice in this strange paradox that the gospel both frees us from fear and gives us fear. It frees us from our crippling fears, giving us instead a most delightful, happy, and wonderful fear. And I want to clear up that often off-putting phrase “the fear of God,” to show through the Bible that for Christians it really does not mean being afraid of God.
Children have grown up so protected that they are not expected to be able to cope with opposing viewpoints or criticism. It is just one indicator that they are considered more fragile than students were a generation ago.
Though we are more prosperous and secure, though we have more safety than almost any other society in history, safety has become the holy grail of our culture. And like the Holy Grail, it is something we can never quite reach. Protected like never before, we are skittish and panicky like never before.
When your culture is hedonistic, your religion therapeutic, and your goal a feeling of personal well-being, fear will be the ever-present headache.
our moral confusion today and our general state of heightened anxiety are both the fallout of a cultural loss of God as the proper object of human fear.
what does our culture do with all its anxiety? Given its essentially secular self-identity, our society will not turn to God. The only possible solution, then, must be for us to sort it out ourselves. Thus Western, post-Enlightenment society has medicalized fear. Fear has become an elusive disease to be medicated.
the loss of the fear of God is what ushered in our modern age of anxiety, but the fear of God is the very antidote to our fretfulness.
If men would but dig to the root of their fears, they would certainly find unbelief there, Matth. viii. 26. Why are ye afraid, O ye of little faith! The less faith, still the more fear: Fear is generated by unbelief, and unbelief strengthened by fear; . . . and therefore all the skill in the world can never cure us of the disease of fear, till God first cure us of our unbelief; Christ therefore took the right method to rid his disciples of their fear, by rebuking their unbelief.
Anxiety grows best in the soil of unbelief. It withers in contact with faith. And faith is fertilized by the fear of God,
Moses here sets out a contrast between being afraid of God and fearing God: those who have the fear of him will not be afraid of him. Yet he uses the same “fear” word root (ירא, yr’) for both terms (יָרֵא, yare’ / יִרְאָה, yir’ah). Evidently there are different types of fear. Indeed, there are different types of fear of God. There is a fear of God that is good and desirable, and there is a fear of God that is not.
sinful fear drives you away from God. This is the fear of the unbeliever who hates God, who remains a rebel at heart, who fears being exposed as a sinner and so runs from God.
It is, Bunyan says, the devil’s work to promote a fear of God that makes people afraid of God such that they want to flee from God. The Spirit’s work is the exact opposite: to produce in us a wonderful fear that wins and draws us to God. It is to this happy, Scripture-commended, Spirit-breathed fear that we turn now.
the fear of God commended in Scripture “does not arise from a perception of God as hazardous, but glorious. In other words, it flows from an appreciation of God.”6
Sometimes fear of God and love of God are put in parallel, as in Psalm 145: He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. (vv. 19–20)
The reason it is not immediately obvious to us that fear and love are so comparable is that we easily misunderstand love. Love is a word bandied around in our lives. I “love” sitting in a cozy armchair reading a good book; I “love” my family; I “love” a good laugh with my friends. And so I can blithely assume that “love” for God is just more of the same, meaning nothing more than a (perhaps vague) predilection or preference. Where some enjoy pudding, I enjoy God.
the trembling “fear of God” is a way of speaking about the intensity of the saints’ love for and enjoyment of all that God is.
True fear of God is true love for God defined: it is the right response to God’s full-orbed revelation of himself in all his grace and glory.
What both ירא (yr’) and פחד (phd) show is that, if we are to be faithful to Scripture’s presentation of the fear of God, we should ideally use words that encompass that spectrum of positive and negative experience. What פחד in particular helps us see is the common feature of those fears: trembling. It shows us that the fear of God is no mild-mannered, reserved, or limp thing. It is a startlingly physical, overpowering reaction. And so, respect and reverence are simply too weak and grey to stand in as synonyms for the fear of God. Awe seems a much better fit, though even it doesn’t quite
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Perhaps, then, as we seek to speak of the fear of God, it is best to recognize the shortcomings of all words in isolation. The word fear has its own baggage to be sure, but it is well established, and no one word can adequately and completely replace it. If people are to appreciate how the fear of God is distinct from all other fears, synonyms alone will not do: it must be unfolded and taught.
Our desire for God and delight in him are not intended to be lukewarm. As our love for God is a trembling and wonder-filled love, so our joy in God is, at its purest, a trembling and wonder-filled—yes, fearful—joy. For the object of our joy is so overwhelmingly and fearfully wonderful. We are made to rejoice and tremble before God, to love and enjoy him with an intensity that is fitting for him. And what more befits his infinite magnificence than an enjoyment of him that is more than our frail selves can bear, which overwhelms us and causes us to tremble? Normally our joy in God is cold and
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For the nature of the living God means that the fear which pleases him is not a groveling, shrinking fear. He is no tyrant. It is an ecstasy of love and joy that senses how overwhelmingly kind and magnificent, good and true God is, and that therefore leans on him in staggered praise and faith.
Edwards’s experience of the creation was different because his knowledge of the Creator had been infused with the knowledge that the high and holy one is the most gracious Redeemer. It meant that as he looked around creation, he saw it not only as the work of the Creator but as the work of the one who was both his Creator and his Redeemer.
Recent scientific studies confirm some of these benefits of awe for healthy living. In 2018, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reported on a series of studies that sought to show how experiences of awe promote greater humility. They found that “when individuals encounter an entity that is vast and challenges their worldview, they feel awe, which leads to self-diminishment and subsequently humility.” They also found that “inducing awe led participants to present a more balanced view of their strengths and weaknesses to others . . . and acknowledge, to a greater degree, the
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It is the experience of something “wholly other,” something he called a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. By that he meant that the numinous is (1) mysterious and inexpressible, (2) tremendous or awe-inspiring, and (3) fascinating.
“We were totally unable to come to a recognition of the Father’s favor and grace except through the Lord Christ, who is the mirroring image of the Father’s heart. Without Christ we see nothing in God but an angry and terrible Judge.”
we need to hear Professor John Murray’s helpful wisdom: The fear of God which is the soul of godliness does not consist, however, in the dread which is produced by the apprehension of God’s wrath. When the reason for such dread exists, then to be destitute of it is the sign of hardened ungodliness. But the fear of God which is the basis of godliness, and in which godliness may be said to consist, is much more inclusive and determinative than the fear of God’s judgement. And we must remember that the dread of judgement will never of itself generate within us the love of God or hatred of the sin
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the nature of the god in question shapes the appropriate fear response.
Holy fear leads us to dread anything which might cause our Father’s displeasure.
the filial fear the Son shares with us is quite different from the sinner’s dread of God and dread of punishment. It is an adoration of God that dreads sin itself, not just its punishment, for it has come to treasure God and so loathe all that is ungodly.
When Christian teachers know the importance of the theme in Scripture but misunderstand the right fear of God as nothing but the fear of the Creator, they can actually rob believers of their filial fear. It is all too easy to point people to God’s grandeur as Creator—which is absolutely right to do—but then fail to point to the gospel and God’s grandeur as a compassionate Savior. A telltale sign of such truncated teaching is that it will lack the Savior’s compassion and therefore come across as angry, hectoring, and unkind. God may appear great, but he will not appear good.
Slavish fear dreads nothing but hell and punishment. Filial fear dreads sin itself. . . . The one is mixed with hatred of God, the other with love to him—the one looks on him as a revenging judge, the other as a holy father, to whose holiness the heart is reconciled and the soul longs to be conformed.
fear of any sort is something that runs deeper than behavior: it is something in the very grain of the heart that drives behavior. Thus, sinful fear is not merely a matter of sinful actions: it hates God, despising him as a revenging Judge, and therefore acts sinfully. In contrast, a right fear loves God, cherishing him as a holy Father, and therefore has a sincere longing to be like him.
It shows us that entering the life of Christ involves a transformation of our very affections, so that we begin actually to despise—and not merely renounce—the sins we once cherished, and treasure the God we once abhorred.
In fact, the fear of the Lord is the reason Christianity is the most song-filled of all religions. It is the reason why, from how Christians worship together to how they stream music, they are always looking to make melody about their faith. Christians instinctively want to sing to express the affection behind their words of praise, and to stir it up, knowing that words spoken flatly will not do in worship of this God. Knowing that our God rejoices over us with gladness and exults over even us with loud singing (Zeph. 3:17) makes us rejoice and exult over him in heartfelt, melodic return.
Simply changing our habits, Luther saw, will not deal with those deeper, sinful inclinations. What we need is a radical renewal—not self-improvement but a profound change of heart—so that we want and love and long differently. We need hearts that freely love and are pleased with God (Ezek. 36:26–27; Mark 7:14–23; John 3:3). “How shall a work please God if it proceeds from a reluctant and resisting heart?” asked Luther.
The mere habit of going to church on a Sunday will not itself necessarily produce in us the right fear of God. Nor will reading the Bible, praying, and so on. I can maintain such habits like an unstoppable Swiss watch and still be utterly devoid of true fear of God. Those things do not convey grace ex opere operato. They are means of grace: they are points of contact with the gospel, which alone has the power to transform us. In other words, it is not the mere act of going to church that does us good; it is the gospel that we hear there. It is not the habit itself that transforms but the
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What father being evil would it not win to see the child with whom he was vexed running to his embrace? how much more will not the Father of our spirits, who seeks nothing but his children themselves, receive him with open arms!
All Christians should recognize something of this fear-filled reaction to the cross. It is an intense, wonderful, and normal experience for Christians. However, we also sigh at how it is too rare an experience. Our self-involved pride puts up its every barrier to such humiliation at the feet of Christ, even though that abasement there is so sweet. Such weak-kneed fear is a rare jewel because it is the experience of one who is willingly dying to self.
We have been asking why the cross is so fertile a soil for the fear of God, and we have seen one answer: that at the cross we receive great pardon for terrible sin. But there is another answer. For the grace of God serves as a bread-crumb trail, leading us up from the forgiveness itself to the forgiver. That is, in the light of the cross, Christians not only thank God for his grace to us but also begin to praise him for how gracious he is, for how beautifully kind and merciful he reveals himself to be in the cross. “Oh! that a great God should be a good God,” wrote John Bunyan, “a good God to
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God’s grace and kindness shown to you at the cross make you weep at your wickedness. You simultaneously repent and rejoice. His mercy accentuates your wickedness, and your very wickedness accentuates his grace, leading you to a deeper and more fearfully happy adoration of the Savior.
We are led from the gift to wondering at the glory of the giver, from marveling at what he has done for us to marveling at who he is in himself. His magnanimity and utter goodness undo us and fill us with a fearful and amazed adoration.
if the people are ever to fear God aright, with wonder and not with dread, they need leaders who have that right fear and who model it in how they live and how they talk every day. Fear is a state of the heart, but one we have seen in Scripture that often manifests itself physically. In other words, fear will out. The presence or absence of fear in a leader should, to some extent, be sensed by the people. It should be something—perhaps unnamable but beautifully Christlike—in the atmosphere around him. He should be clearly affected by the beauty and glory and majesty and goodness of God.
we cannot be content simply to transmit information as we teach. There is no true knowledge of God where there is no true fear of God. Pure and real religion is precisely where faith is “joined with an earnest fear of God.”29 Why? For the living God is so tremendously glorious in all his ways that he cannot be known without being adored.
Our love for Christ and joy in him are meant to be not lukewarm but pulse-raising and blood-moving.
we who are called to preach cannot preach in such a way that allows for indifference. As we have seen, the word of God is described as being itself “the fear of the Lord” (Ps. 19:9): it cannot go out listlessly. It cannot be rightly received coolly or unaffectedly. We preachers must share the fiery intent of that word, preaching so that sinners tremble and that the hearts of saints no longer creep in dread but quake in wonder.
Our fears are like ECG readings, constantly telling us about the state of our hearts.
We who love theology need to remember that there is no true knowledge of God where there is no right fear of him. The fear of God is the only possible foundation upon which true knowledge is built: all knowledge acquired elsewhere is counterfeit and will eventually prove itself as such.
You naturally expect that the fear of God would make you morose and stuffy, but quite the opposite. Unlike our sinful fears, which make us twitchy and gloomy, the fear of God has a profoundly uplifting effect: it makes us happy.
They become jealous in the same way that he is jealous. Adoring him, they cannot abide his glory being diminished or stolen by idols or by people. False teaching will distress them, not because it contradicts their views but because it impugns him. Self-righteousness becomes loathsome to them because of how it steals from the glory of his grace.
John Flavel agreed and wrote that the “carnal person fears man, not God; the strong Christian fears God, not man; the weak Christian fears man too much, and God too little.”
