Father, let me not become so casual with you that I forget who you are.
Everyone fears something. If you do not fear God, you will fear men. And if you do not fear God or men, you will fear death or disease or poverty or rejection or loneliness or some other thing. It is unavoidable. Fleeing fear is like fleeing your shadow.
We do not control the universe and deep down we know it. We cannot shake it. And we fear that some of our thoughts might actually be true. Fear touches our deepest desires and unites them with our impotence. Sometimes we are powerless, and sometimes we are powerless concerning our greatest yearnings. The mother who stays up on prom night fearing for her daughter’s safety does so because she has an intense desire for her daughter’s welfare. That welfare is now out of her hands. She might lose her greatest treasure and now she can do nothing. We may say that her fear is unwarranted and deem her a worrywart, and perhaps she is, but her fear is still the child of her desire. Where our fears are will tell us where our treasures are. The people who say they have no fear are really saying they have no treasures, and it is not true. They are humans whether they want to be or not. They cover their fears with a coat of paint.
God alone has the power to give life and take it, to judge our eternal fate, to grant us heaven or hell. Consequently, the fear of God must be real. It is a simple acknowledgement of God’s position. Our culture does not like the idea of fearing God, and many within the church have given the culture great weight. They fear that the culture may laugh at them. They fear the wrong thing, and they lack spiritual power because of it. The fear of God is still the beginning of wisdom.
The fear of God is not a cowering from an abusive beast. It is a reverence. It is a respect. But it is more than these. It is the prophets seeing God and falling on their faces. It is the terror of holiness. It is the dread of coming face to face with power that melts mountains. It is not a terror of evil but of a good so burning and white-hot that we do not know what to make of it. It is not a dread of piddling things but of a glory and a power vaster than imagination itself. As personal and kind-hearted and merciful as God is, He is still God; and the most fearful thing you will ever do is see Him. Fear is the natural result of seeing God. People who do not fear God do not see anything of Him.
Fear is also a natural result of justice. Criminals fear the authorities. That is why they hide. In countries where justice is absent, criminals strut about fearlessly. But anyone who begins to see anything at all about God quickly comes upon the immovable wall of His justice. And justice produces in us a natural apprehension, for, if the truth be known, we would really rather keep our deeds to ourselves. But we cannot. God sees them and will treat them justly. Now if we are merely afraid of God with a sick sort of fear, we shall try to hide both ourselves and our deeds. But if we have a healthy fear of God’s wrath, we shall work on changing our lives. When we know we shall bear the consequences of our actions, we adjust those actions. The adjustment is the result, at least in part, of fear. In this sense, the fear of God is really quite practical.
Some quote the Bible and say, “Perfect love casts out fear.” They use this to mean that we no longer are to fear God in any sense. They misunderstand. Love does cast out a certain type of fear, but godly fear does not inhibit love. It works with love like loggers on two ends of a saw, one pushing, one pulling. It is not love’s opponent but love’s partner. We can love God and fear Him at the same time. We can also know that God loves us and still fear Him at the same time. We may tremble before His greatness, but we will never fear any caprice or ill will from God. We may revere who He is and show much respect for what He can do, but we can also run up to Him and jump in His arms and cry, “Daddy! Daddy!” We may yearn to see him as a bride yearns for her wedding day, but seeing him is no frivolous thing. He may be kind but he is also piercing.
The moment you meet God, you shall find that He cuts you open and turns you inside out like a section of orange and then begins to cut out all the mold and rotten spots growing on your own inner flesh. It hurts. Oh, it hurts. And no matter how simply you trust Him, the fact that He is touching and doing surgery on your raw innards is a fact to make you shudder. He is good. His surgery is for your benefit, and you will be glad when you get home that he cut you open. But all sane people have an apprehension of open-heart surgery. They may willingly lie down on the table, but they do not do so without thinking through the consequences first. As the beaver in Lewis’ story spoke of Aslan: “Good? Oh, he’s good all right. But he isn’t safe.
One of the most compelling illustrations of our utmost need to fear God is to look at people who don’t. Of all people, they are the least courageous and the most empty. They claim for themselves freedom from a thousand inhibitions yet remain bound to their own lusts. They claim to be bold by insisting on being their own person but end up being cowards because they cannot say “no” to their own person. They think it an extraordinarily marvelous feat of courage to indulge their appetites in the face of “outmoded” strictures but never realize that there is nothing particularly courageous about doing what one wants. “Be bold! Be strong!” they say, but their words are spiritual machismo, emptiness dressed up as bravado.
People who do not fear God are empty because their main focus never gets beyond self. They lack courage because they opt for the easy road. They will not die. They will not serve another. They stand proud against fleas but quake when a real blizzard hits. They have nothing of substance to stand on.
The one who fears God, however, has greater courage in the blizzard, for she has already faced something far more fearsome and knows she can never lose her most treasured possession. The one, however, who does not fear God knows, at least subconsciously, that his most treasured possession could disappear in a moment. One of the great paradoxes of the faith is that real courage comes from a right fear. For this much is certain: if you do not fear God, you will fear something else. But if you fear God, what else could there possibly be to fear.
