So there is a kind of fear that is not repulsive. Nehemiah 1:11: “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name.” Delight to fear your name. “There is terror when outside of Christ and a different kind of trembling when in Christ.”īut the other aspect of fear is what we should keep and enjoy. So we can be done - we should be done - with a cowering fear that we might not be saved and enjoy our care and our security in his house. We would be really content in his acceptance. So if we can get to the point of perfect love, we wouldn’t fear God’s rejection of us. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” So, God doesn’t want us to cower like slaves in the household where the children should be enjoying sweet peace in their Father’s care. 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. So 1 John describes the kind we want to be done with. We want to be rid of some aspects of fearing God, and we don’t want to be rid of some aspects of fearing God. Fear what? Fear the prospect of becoming proud, and arrogant, and self-sufficient, and drifting away from the living God in a kind of hard-heartedness. So do not become proud, but fear.” So he is commanding believers who are standing fast in faith to fear. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So, it says in Romans 11:19, “You will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’” In other words, Jews were rejected so that I, a Gentile, could be grafted into the Abrahamic covenant. So, Romans 11:19–21 shows how you not only experience the fear of God as a right way of worshiping him in reverence and awe, but you experience the fear of God as an incentive not to run away from him. You don’t come near him without reverence and awe. In other words, the same thing is there: We are safe. “And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29 see also Deuteronomy 4:24). Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” That is security. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. So, for example, Hebrews 12:25, 28: “See that you don’t refuse him who is speaking. “Fear of God is contrasted with a hard, unperceptive heart” There is terror outside of Christ, and there is a different kind of trembling inside of Christ. God’s grace in Christ is the refuge from God’s wrath outside Christ. We should fear in the sense that we seek refuge from God away from God’s terrible wrath. So, the New Testament treats the fear of God as a motive for not turning away from him. And I think it means the sheer awesome presence of God in our lives working for us, not against us, should produce trembling. You should fear and tremble because God is working to keep you. Now, is that just for the Old Testament? What does the New Testament say? Philippians 2:12–13: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.” This is really interesting. We are blind if we think we can do that without trembling. It would be insane to think we can just stroll up to the Creator of the universe and have a cavalier spirit. The sheer majesty of God, as well as the holiness, and justice, and power, and wrath of God, cannot be approached in a cavalier spirit. Or Isaiah 66:2 says, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” So again, fearing is corresponding with humility and lowliness and sensitivity of heart. Proverbs 28:14 says, “Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.” So fearing God is contrasted with a hard, unperceptive heart. The Old Testament, of course - everybody would think of the Old Testament, I suppose, as strewn with commands to fear the Lord and warnings of the terrible things that will come if we don’t and the blessings that come if we do. The fear of the Lord is a pervasive and important topic, and I think it is needed today, because we are so quick, I think, to solve the problem of God’s fearsomeness with the gospel that we may not give people a chance to really let them sink in how deeply sinful they are or how fearful God really is. I would say this is a very important topic. Erik writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, can you please explain the fear of God? I have heard different definitions of what this means to fear God as a believer.”
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