The Faces of Fear

4 The Faces of Fear

As we saw in the previous chapters, fear is man’s oldest spiritual and emotional enemy. It has dogged mankind since the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, fear has stalked their children and descendants to the very ends of the earth. That’s why there are no fearfree zones anywhere on planet Earth. Every country, climate, and culture is plagued by fear.

Freud, the Jewish messiah of psychoanalysis, said, “I have never met a man who was not thoroughly afraid!” As we saw earlier, Jesus, the true Jewish Messiah, the Master of spiritual analysis, said that one of the characteristics of the “last days” would be the growing universal phenomenon of people fainting from fear (Luke 21:26).

When a person faints, they lose consciousness and control. They cease communicating. Life stops for them for a while. They lose touch with reality. Jesus was saying, then, that people would be increasingly immobilized by fear on a global scale. Sadly, that is an apt description of millions of people on planet Earth today.

However, God does not want people, especially His children, to be immobilized by fear. He wants them to immobilize fear through their faith in Him. His desire is for each of us to faith down all of our fears through the authority of His Word and the power of His Holy Spirit. Only then will we

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not be immobilized, benched from the game of life.

By way of review, then, let’s quickly remind ourselves of the six basic Principles of Fear that we looked at in the last chapter:

Principle #1: Fear is a feeling or emotion that is primarily mind-driven. Principle #2: Fear (unlike anxiety) must have an object. Principle #3: Fear is spiritual by nature. Principle #4: The loss of God-consciousness produces fear. Principle #5: Believing Satan’s lies results in fear. Having faith in God’s truth results in peace. Principle #6: The only lasting antidote for fear is faith.

We can clearly see, then, that not all fears are equal. Some are positive and others are negative; some are healthy, while others are unhealthy; some are rational, but most are irrational. Therefore, the reality of our fears depends upon two things: the origin of our fears and the object of our fears.

With that understanding, let’s look at some of the many faces of our fears. Fear can come at us in a myriad of masquerades—almost as many and varied as we are. Our fears may have the face of a parent, a sibling, a relative, a teacher, an abuser, a demon, an experience, a memory, or of God.

One of the faces of fear that I personally see is my fourth grade teacher. Math was so easy for her that she had little patience for any student who didn’t get it the first time around. I fell into that category. I can still see where I was seated when she called me to the blackboard to solve the problem

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she had just written there. Standing in front of all my classmates, I was paralyzed, sweat dripping down my back. “Let’s see how long J.L. has to stand there before he figures out the right answer,” she said sarcastically.

The snickering from my classmates seemed to echo like thunder in the room! After several hours (that may have been only minutes), my teacher tersely instructed me: “Sit down!” I did so in defeat and humiliation, wounded to the core of my being as a young boy. To this day, I still tend to go numb whenever I have to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. (I’m so glad Patt likes to balance our checkbook!)

But for others of us, like my wife, Patt, the face of one of her elementary school teachers always brings fond memories—almost awe and reverence. Mrs. Holland was accepting and loving, and school was a safe place to be. Her reverential fear of Mrs. Holland was to please her and obey her rules so she wouldn’t be disciplined for her disobedience.

I am sure that each of you could share your own story of a particular face of fear that haunts and torments you! Patt’s and my personal examples bring us to this chapter where we will focus on the two different kinds of fear.

In his letter to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul put words to one of his fears, a fear that I can personally relate to as a preacher and teacher:

When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive

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words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1 Corinthians 2:1–5).

Obviously, the fear that Paul talked about here was not at all a negative fear. It was not a phobic fear. It was a positive and healthy spiritual fear that motivated his life and ministry. So, there are good fears and bad fears, rational fears and irrational fears, positive fears and negative fears, and fears that produce good motivations and fears that result in bad motivations. That being the case, let’s look more carefully at the various biblical words for fear that we find in the Bible.

Biblical Definitions of Fear

There are several key words translated “fear” in the Bible. In the Old Testament, a primary Hebrew root word for fear means to quake, to tremble, or to cringe; to fall back before superior powers or forces, whether in man, nature, or God.

In light of that definition, most biblical scholars agree that fear is the decisive religious motivation in the Old Testament. As a result, in the Old Testament the Jews stood before God in both fear and love. Thus, their fear is what I would call a loving fear and a fearful love.

Because of the prevalence of fear, the words “do not be afraid” (“fear not” in some translations) echo through the pages of the Old Testament—over 75 times in various forms (Genesis 15:1; Judges 6:23; Isaiah 44:2, etc.). At almost every theophany, or appearance of God in human form, there are the words “do not be afraid.”

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In the New Testament, fear is also a dominant theme. There are many objects of fear listed in the New Testament:

• God (Acts 9:31; 1 Peter 2:17; Revelation 14:7) • Angels (Luke 1:12; 2:9) • Jewish rulers (John 7:13; 20:19) • End time events (Luke 21:26) • Death (Matthew 10:28; Hebrews 2:15)

In the New Testament, there are three primary Greek words for fear. First, there is deilos, which comes from deos meaning “fright, dread, fearfulness, or cowardice.” It is never used in a positive sense in the Bible. Here are a few examples:

• (Jesus to His fearful disciples in furious storm): “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Matthew 8:26). • “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27). • “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid [deilos], but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). • “Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly [deilos], the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (Revelation 21:7–8).

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Second, there is the word phobos (noun); phobeomai (verb). It means “fear, terror, fright, or reverence.” This is the more normative word for fear in the New Testament. The verb phobeomai is used 95 times, while the noun phobos is used 47 times, for a total of 158 times in the New Testament. This is probably the word that best describes my debilitating fear of math—minus the reverence part!

Third, there is the word eulabeia (noun). This word primarily signifies “reverence, godly fear, holy fear, or fear mingled with love.” This would be Patt’s word for the affection and awe she felt toward her primary school teacher.

Eulabeia denotes man’s perspective and piety toward God. As we saw in the Old Testament, the emphasis is on fear, while in the New Testament the emphasis is on love. So we might characterize the Old Testament saints as primarily motivated by fearful love, while the New Testament saints were more motivated by loving fear.

There are only two uses of this word in the New Testament:

• “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” [eulabeia;

“piety” nasb; “feared” kjv] (Hebrews 5:7). • “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship

God acceptably with reverence [eulabeia] and awe, for ‘our God is a consuming fire’” (Hebrews 12:28).

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As we consider how to faith down our bad fears, let’s focus on what loving, reverential fear looks like. It is what I call felicitous fear. While it is not a common word in most of our vocabularies, felicitous is an accurate word to use here. The word felicity or felicitous means “happiness, well-being, or bliss.” Therefore, it is a fitting word to describe the faithing fear that we Christians are supposed to have. It is the spiritual fear that brings about total transformation. It is the fear that ultimately results in true happiness, in well-being, and in bliss.

If that is the case, what is this felicitous fear? Simply put, it is the fear of God! So let’s carefully examine this most important of all fears. There are many examples found in both the Old and New Testaments. Here are a few to read carefully and prayerfully.

• “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning” (Exodus 20:20). • “The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today” (Deuteronomy 6:24). • “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods” (1 Chronicles 16:25). • “In the council of the holy ones God is greatly feared; he is more awesome than all who surround him” (Psalm 89:7). • “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).

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• “Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name (Malachi 3:16). • “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread” (Isaiah 8:13). • “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” (Matthew 10:28). • “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened.

Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers” (Acts 9:31).

It is obvious from these verses that this reverential fear of God is the only solid, unshakable foundation to build our lives upon. In the last chapters of this book we will look at the wonderful fruit of this kind of reverential fear that can lead to a life of fearless living.

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