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The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Witness
14 The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Witness
I trust you can see the logical flow and relationship among this cluster of the fruit of fearful faith. As you apply them to your life, you will find that they will displace the dreadful fear that you may be experiencing with joy and reverential fear of the Lord.
As we have seen, our reverential fear of God must begin to produce within us a new sense of worth. Then, as we mature in the Spirit and the Word, we will increasingly see His wisdom manifest in our thinking and living. Correct knowledge of God will naturally overflow in a true spiritual worship that is “in spirit and in truth.” Then, our worship will naturally spill over into our work as our job becomes our ministry. As a result, we will work “as unto the Lord,” and therefore have a greater integrity and witness in the marketplace.
WORTH WISDOM WORSHIP WORK WITNESS
Look with me now at several key verses that have to do with the relationship between our fear of the Lord and our witness for the Lord.
• “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:11).
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• “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 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). • “Because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear [phobos]” (Philippians 1:14). • “Submit to one another out of reverence [phobos] for
Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). • “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12–13). • “Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence [phobos] of your lives” (1 Peter 3:1–2). • “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect [phobos], keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak
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maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:15–17). • “For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’
Therefore, ‘come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.’ And, ‘I will be a Father to you and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’
Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence [phobos] for God” (2 Corinthians 6:16–7:1).
It is obvious from these verses that there is a direct relationship between our reverential fear of the Lord and our witness of Him to others. Let me quote again the verses that reveal how this motivated Paul:
So we make it our goal to please him . . . For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others . . . For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from the worldly point of view . . . Therefore,
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if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:9–20).
Clearly, it was Paul’s reverential fear of the Lord that transformed his understanding of his calling as God’s minister of reconciliation and as Christ’s ambassador, motivated by the love of the Lord Jesus. It mattered not whether he was preaching, teaching, mentoring, or making tents, he was Christ’s ambassador. And, sometimes, he was an ambassador who was “in chains for Christ”—which only emboldened him and others in their witness. He came to see that even his jail time was for witnessing. That’s why he could say, “I am put here for the defense of the gospel” (Philippians 1:13, 16).
Paul saw his witness through word and deed as God “making His appeal through him.” It was no longer just Paul speaking and working. It was God witnessing to the life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus through him. It was his reverential fear that motivated him to seize every opportunity to share the Good News of Christ. When it would become his time to stand before the “judgment seat of Christ,” he did not want to stand alone. He wanted to be standing with a host of others whom he had won through his witness for the Lord Jesus during his life. It is only the reverential fear of the Lord that will result in that kind of lifestyle of witness.
Now that we better understand the relationship between our fear of the Lord and our witness for the Lord, let’s turn to the sixth fruit of fearful faith.
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