Fear God; Love Jesus

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Fear God

The fear of God is paradoxical. Like many biblical truths (love your enemies, those who save their lives will lose it), the fear of the Lord seems to defy conventional wisdom, yet...

 • Without it, we can't even begin to fathom the magnitude of our sin and our separation from God.
 • Without it, we can't begin to grasp the unbelievable richness of God's grace in Christ.
 • Without it we can't fully worship or praise or honor the Triune God of the universe.

But, the fear of God also leads us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to life. Prv 19:23 says “The fear of the LORD leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied.” A healthy fear, a true appreciation of who God is and who we are doesn't drive us away from God, but to Him. We will come back to Isa. 6 in a minute, but that passage is a great picture and reminder for us that seeing God as He is is really the beginning of life.

And, as believers, our fear of this holy, awesome, majestic God blends with the grace and love and peace and joy that have no height nor breadth nor length nor depth. Why is grace amazing, if there is not some component of fear in what God could have done instead of saving us? What is so glorious about coming directly into God’s presence if He is not fearfully awesome and simply terrifying in who He is. In the end, we are quite simply compelled and constrained by the love of God that is poured out on us in Christ (2 Cor 5:14).

It has been said that this would be a lot easier if we could see God. In one sense, I agree. But in another sense, I would say we have seen Him. Jesus states it clearly in Jn 14:9 “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” And if we are looking for a New Testament equivalent to Isa 6, we need to look no further than the cross. How can we not fear God when we see first hand the full punishment our sins require? And yet how can we not rejoice and adore and surrender our lives to the one who took our place turned our fear into faith?

At this point, we need to consider some things.

• Do we take certain aspects of God and make them the whole?
• Do we tend to make God in our image?
• Do we so want a God whose job is to make our life easy and comfortable that we neglect the fact that He is the awesome and powerful Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of the universe?

Most of all, we need to ask: what is the purpose of a God who is rightly to be feared? Place the scene from Isa 6 in your mind. Isaiah saw the glory of God and it crushed him. He said “I am undone” What did this fear of the Lord accomplish in Isaiah's life? Isaiah's fear of God drove him to despair of his own ability to save himself. “Woe is me! For I am lost;" He was then able to receive the salvation God provided. "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” This, in turn allowed him to follow Jesus.

Do you see that pattern? Do you see that we cannot grasp the salvation Christ has procured for us until the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the reality that our sin will bring us face to face with a fearsomely holy and righteous God? Do you see that this true, healthy fear drives us to a free salvation that exchanges fear for faith and then compels us to serve the one who gave up everything so that we could be free of the fear the immobilizes us and that we can embrace the fear that brings God all of the glory He so richly deserves.

Love Jesus

Again, the word to describe following Jesus is paradoxical. Pause and consider this: Jesus says without Him we can't do anything. Yet, He says my true followers are the ones who do the will of the Father. He says he will draw all people to himself. Yet he says go a make disciples. Throughout the New Testament there is this expectation of obedience. Yet Jesus, Paul, Peter, John and even James insist we are saved and sustained by grace. How do we bridge this gap?

Perhaps it will require us to relearn (or unlearn) things about the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Can we try to listen to Jesus as if we are hearing him for the first time? Let His words, more than that, the heart behind those words sink into your minds and hearts and souls.

Think about the pretensions Jesus was seeking to expose when he asked questions along these lines: "Why do call me Lord and not do what I say?" What if you or I were in the crowd when he said that? Remember when Jesus said this he had just finished taking every single aspect of Jewish moral obedience and driving it to the root issue: the human heart. So when He asks, "Why do call me Lord and not do what I say?" He is not simply asking why aren’t you obeying the 10 commandments. He is not simply asking why aren’t you obeying the current church culture’s version of what’s right and what’s wrong. He's asking something deeper.

External obedience has its place, but Jesus always, always goes for the jugular. He wants to know why my heart doesn’t look like his heart. I can’t follow externally until I am changed internally. So, if we call Jesus Lord, but deep in our heart we’re still Lord, we're not doing what He’s calling us to to do. That is the first step in obedience. But there is another side to the obedience coin.

Jesus also quoted Isaiah in reference to the legalistic Pharisees, "They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" Jesus knows we can claim to follow him and have our lives not look anything like his. That is a real concern. But Jesus also knows we can have super spiritual lives and we can fool everyone around us and yet have a heart that is far from God. In both cases, Jesus is pressing on our tendency to want to do the bare minimum. But Jesus' expectation is we will be "all in”. All in in our devotion to Him. All in in our obedience to the Father. All in in our love for His bride, the church.

Think about this: if Jesus loved the church, the people he is rescuing from every tongue and tribe and language. And he died for them to be able to present them as his holy, blood washed bride. And, he is calling us to respond to His love in such a way that our hearts and live begin to resemble his heart and life. Then what should this local church look like? Don’t answer. Just ponder… And pray.

Consider also the fact that Jesus was totally honest with those he called to follow him. What do we do with the idea of the narrow gate and the hard way which leads to life? (Did I mention this was paradoxical?) What do we do with the reality that Jesus describes in which those who try to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for the sake of Christ will save them. It really comes down to this, whatever we receive from Christ in this life, the narrow road we are called to walk on will require our minds and our hearts fixed on Him.

The good news is that this is all part of God's great design. This summed up powerfully in the book of Ephesians.

• We have incredible spiritual blessings in Christ, including our holiness and blamelessness and adoption and redemption and forgiveness
• We have an inheritance from God, secured by Christ and guaranteed by the giving of the Holy Spirit
• We have unbelievable power in Christ through prayer. It is access to the same power that raised Christ from the dead
• We have been rescued from the domain of darkness and our allegiance to Satan and from our spiritual death
• We’ve been given life and love and we are already considered to be in the closest fellowship with Christ, all by the mercy and grace of God.
• We are joined with fellow believers of every age through the unifying power of the blood of Christ
• Together we (the church) are considered by God to be his temple, the place where he will manifest His presence in the world.
• Together we (the church) are God's declaration and demonstration of wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
• We have a Father who has lavished on us a love that is too high, too wide, too long and too deep to comprehend, but in Christ He makes the incomprehensible love known to us.

With all of this in his mind Paul then says: "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Our following Jesus doesn't precede our faith in Him, it is fueled by it. And, our obedience to God doesn't earn or pay back his grace, it is a fruit of it.

So, why would we follow Jesus? That question is especially compelling given the upside down nature of God's economy and the promised hardness of the way. One answer is that it is simply a privilege. This goes back to our full appreciation of who God is (including our fear of Him) and who Jesus is. If we knew Jesus even as well as the demons do, we would be pleading to follow Him. In Luke 8 Jesus encounters a demon possessed man. Verse 28 shows the demons know who Jesus is and rightly fear him "When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” Jesus delivers the man from the demons and man's response is not simply gratitude. It is not simply praise and adoration. It is this overwhelming desire to follow Jesus and spend the rest of his life serving the One who delivered him.

But, there's another aspect to why we would follow Jesus. There is simply no other option. We can pretend there are alternatives and make up a faith system the requires a simple one time acknowledgment of Christ. But when our alternative reality meets God's ultimate reality, our house of cards will collapse.  A great example of this is in John 6. The chapter starts with Jesus feeding over 5000 people. Then Jesus and the disciples left for the other side of the lake. On the next day the crowds tracked Jesus down, looking to make him king. Jesus rightly diagnoses that they simply want more bread. So he tells them that the real bread, the bread that leads to life is Jesus himself. He says that He is the bread of life. He says that he is the true manna from heaven. He says in Jn 6:53-54,“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." The response of even some of his own disciples was “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” So Jesus grew his followers from over 5000 to 12. Then he's ready to go to square one and asks the 12 if they are ready to leave too. And whether they understood the bread of life stuff or what it meant to eat the flesh of the Son of Man, they understood one thing clearly. Peter speaks for the group in Jn 6:68“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,"

Does Peter's statement resonate with you? That thought should be where we are in our perspective and devotion and allegiance to Jesus. Quite simply we ought to have Jn 6:68 tattooed on our hearts. "Where else can we go? You have the words eternal life."

As we close here are some questions to consider:

• How would you assess your own fear of the Lord? Is He a harmless teddy bear? Is He like a grandpa or Santa Claus? Is He an evil ogre or a cosmic killjoy? Or, does your fear have at least the beginnings of a biblical framework to it? We need to allow God's own Word define for us all of His dimensions, including His awesome fearfulness.

• What do you do with the fear of God? Do you run and hide? Do you simply live as if it didn't exist? When you pray, do you consider the incredible privilege you've been granted and rightful fear that should captivate your heart and mind? When you look to the cross do see Jesus exchanging your fear of just judgement with peace and hope and mercy and grace? This rightly understood fear should inform all of our life.

• Do you consider yourself a follower of Jesus? Why? What is the basis of that claim? Does it match biblical reality? If so, praise God! But consider this: how close a follower are you? Would Acts 4:13 apply to you? "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus."

• What drives you? What is the engine of your life? Is it money? Power? Fame? Someone's opinion? Avoidance of pain? Or is it humiliated and bloodied and gloriously resurrected Savior?

• Does any of this leave you saying in effect, "Woe is me. I am undone."? Great! That was the prayer and the goal! We need to take this to God. We need to ask him to cover us in Christ, to restore us in Christ, to empower us in power of the Holy Spirit.

• And, if you are not yet a believer in Christ, today can be the day of salvation. Know that the fear of God is real and you will face Him one day. And without Jesus, you will be utterly alone. And at the point when you face Him, there will be no second chance. But the good news today is that Jesus will not simply stand with you, He will stand in your place. Your task is to simply accept what Christ purchased for you on that bloody cross and begin the not always so easy journey of following Him.

To God Alone be the Glory.