Faithing Down Your Fears

6 Faithing Down Your Fears

In chapter 5 we looked at some of the many faces of fear. We saw that fear may have the face of man, the face of a past experience, the face of a memory, the face of a besetting sin, the face of a demon, and even the face of God.

However, when fear has the face of God, it is the face of an unbiblical God whose image has been distorted in our minds by bad parenting, bad church exposure, bad spiritual experiences, bad teaching, or bad theology. Those spiritual distortions do not result in a reverential fear but in a resentful fear. Resentful fear is the result of a distrust of God based on a distortion of who He really is. And it is spiritually and psychologically impossible to really love a God who you secretly resent because you distrust Him. No one in their right mind will commit themselves fully to a God they distrust! They will reluctantly and resentfully give to Him as little as they can.

But in spite of these many distortions of God, reverential fear is still the decisive religious motivation of the Bible. Recall that over 75 times the phrase “do not be afraid” echoes out of the pages of the Old Testament. We can summarize this motivation of the Old Testament saints as a fearful love of God.

When it comes to parental authority, wise parents understand that they have to first create reverential fear in a child that will cause him or her to respect and obey their author-

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ity. While parents might wish their children would obey because of reverential love, they quickly learn that is not the case. That’s because every child is born with a sinful, selfish, rebellious, stubborn, disobedient nature just like their parents were born with! Every child is born with a desire to please themselves, do their own thing, and have their own way when they want and how they want! And any appeal that says “if you love me you will obey me” falls on deaf ears. Love never motivates a rebellious will that is bent on getting his or her own way.

So, wise parents must first instill a reverential fear in their children until their will is broken. It is only then that children have the possibility of obeying their parents out of reverential love. But it is not until those little ones are transformed by the love of Christ that they are really ready to be motivated by reverential love rather than resentful fear.

That, my friend, is a succinct summary of the message of the Old Testament. Because of the sinful, rebellious nature of His disobedient children, God had to motivate them first by law before he could motivate them by love. As Paul would write, the law was the schoolteacher, the tutor or guardian to bring them to Christ so they could then live by the law of love. Until that happened, there was at best only half-hearted obedience. Children may obey their parents on the outside, but on the inside, they are still rebellious. There hasn’t been a change of heart, or what the Bible calls repentance. We all know from experience that until the heart changes, nothing else changes. And law can never change the heart; only love can.

No mature parent wants to keep their children forever

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under a resentful fear or even a reverential fear that only motivates them to obey the law of the home. God does not desire that either. He wants His children to obey and serve Him wholeheartedly through love and overflowing from a true reverential fear rather than a half-hearted, resentful fear.

That’s why in the New Testament fear is also a dominant theme, but with a change of emphasis from law to love. The New Testament saints have a loving fear rather than a fearful love of God, as we have already studied. However, these different motivations of fear and faith were not contradictory, but complementary. One prepared for the other. Each had their appointed role and season of training. That’s why the Apostle Paul reminded saints in the first century of the same spiritual truths we need to understand and live by in the twenty-first century:

Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith . . . If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. . . . Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir (Galatians 3:23–4:7).

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Paul echoed very similar words to the Roman Christians that American Christians (and Christians in other places as well) need to remember:

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:14–15).

Through those verses, we can clearly see again the principle of faithing down your fears. It is the only way we can move from living with a slave mentality to living with a son or daughter mentality. One is the service of duty while the other is the service of delight. Everything else is substandard Christian living, which is not the abundant life that Jesus came to give.

So, if our fear is to be a reverential fear of God rather than a resentful fear, what fruit of this reverential faithing fear should we expect to see in our lives?

The biblical summary is clear: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13). So, if a godly fear produces wholeheartedness, what does a lack of fear produce? The answer to that is the primary focal point of this part of our study.

No Fear of God Produces Wickedness

If the reverential fear of God causes us to hate sin and shun evil, the opposite is also true. Where there is no love or fear of God, evil, rebellion, and wickedness abound. Note a few biblical examples:

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• “I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: There is no fear of God before their eyes. In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin. The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful; they fail to act wisely or do good. Even on their beds they plot evil; they commit themselves to a sinful course and do not reject what is wrong” (Psalm 36:1–4). • “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks

God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. . . . There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10–11, 18). • (Parable of the persistent widow) “[Jesus] said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared

God nor cared what people thought . . .’” (Luke 18:2). • “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong’” (Luke 23:39–40; note: one thief died as he had lived, without a fear of God; the other died with a fear of God!).

Therefore, without this wholehearted love and reverential fear of God, sin, self and Satan dominate our lives personally and collectively. As a result, there is neither purity nor power

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in our personal lives or in the church; there is little serious dedication, discipleship, or discipline. Wilderness Christianity is the norm—especially in the American church.

That being the reality, let’s now look at the direct relationship between the fear of God and the resulting fear of sin.

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