One of the toughest theological questions is this: what relationship does the Christian have to fear? There are numerous passages about fearing God, after all. For example, in Proverbs 1:7, we read that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” In finding true knowledge in this world, and true wisdom, we must humble ourselves. We must recognize that God is holy, righteous, all-wise, and we are none of these things.
As in the Old Testament, so too in the New Testament. For example, in Philippians 2:12–13 we read this: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” As Christians, we might think that this means that we are to fear the wrath of God when we sin. But this would contradict other Bible passages like Romans 8:1, which tells us that there is “no condemnation” for those who are in Christ.
Approaching God as a Father, Not an Enemy
Paul’s own words in Philippians 2:12-13 go against the idea that believers should fear that they will lose their salvation or be lashed by the terrible rage of God. No, Paul tells the church in Philippi that God is working in them. He is doing so, furthermore, for “his good pleasure” (13). This is corroborated by Romans 8:15-17, which instructs us directly in our relationship to God the Father:
[15] For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” [16] The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, [17] and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
This passage is positively reformational for the common—but misguided—view that God the Father is angry at the church. In fact, Paul refutes the precise position that I think many Christians hold, at least at a functional level: he tells the Roman church that they are not terrified captives of God. Instead, they are adopted—and thus richly-loved—sons (15). The cry of the beloved child is not, “Don’t hate me, Dad!” but rather the deeply trusting “Abba! Father!” (15). This is intimacy of the deepest kind between father and child. This is the cry of a son who is loved in the most powerful and demonstrable way.
Lloyd-Jones, no touchy-feely proponent, summed up this kind of relational affection as follows: “Grown-up people may be standing at a distance, and showing great deference, and being very formal; but the little child comes running in; he rushes, and he holds on to his father’s legs. He has a right that no one else has. It is not a matter of argument or logic or understanding; it is instinctive, a confidence born of knowledge that is deeper than words, deeper than understanding itself.”
Wonderful words, these. We’re not quaking, cowering children; we’re beloved sons. Nor is the Father alone involved here. The Spirit ministers continual encouragement and assurance to the believer—to every believer, not those who have paid for the special Spirit Assurance Upgrade Package for a low $99 per month. Every Christian enjoys this special blessing from the Spirit; before we get to any discussion of our holy walk and how it builds confidence (as it does by God’s grace), Paul tells us that it is the “Spirit himself” who “bears witness” to us that “we are children of God” and “heirs of God” (16-17). This is not wacky charismania talking; this is the theology of the Word of God. The Spirit bears witness to us that we are in fact adopted of the Father.
All this shows us quite clearly that we are not to live in bondage as Christians. We are not to fear the wrath and condemnation of God. We are not to approach God as if he might blow his temper at any moment against us, and start attacking us and spewing curses at us. This is grossly-incorrect theology. It fundamentally misunderstands both the character of the Father and the definite realization of our salvation through the Son. It fails, furthermore, to reckon with the total possession and indwelling of the Spirit. This grossly-wrong view is basically Christianity with the saving Trinity stripped out. All that is left is us, our sin, and our unrelieved misery.
The Father Disciplines All He Loves
Recognizing true biblical fear does not, however, enfranchise carelessness. We must not sin so that grace may abound—no way (Romans 6:1). Nor should believers conclude that God has decided to do away with fatherly discipline. As Hebrews 12:5–10 shows, the Father disciplines those he loves (6). Please re-read that sentence: it is those God loves that God disciplines. Discipline, then, is not the exercise of Fatherly hatred; discipline, hard as it can be for all of us to understand, is the exercise of Fatherly affection. Earthly fathers, Hebrews teaches us, “disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them,” but God the Father “disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (10).
Again, if we just pay attention to Scripture and are not led by our feelings or anxious thoughts, a clear picture of the Father emerges. The Father does not discipline us out of raging anger; this is not how he approaches his church in the era of the New Covenant, the era of grace in Jesus Christ (John 1:14, 17). The Father disciplines us out of his own Fatherly love in order to make us holier. How this should motivate us to pursue godliness, to pray for it, and to embrace what discipline God brings into our lives.
My argument, then, is not that Fatherly discipline is a light and glancing thing. It surely is not; Fatherly discipline challenges all of us. But we must never mistake the loving discipline of God the Father for the raging condemnation of a caricature of the biblical Father. Scripture, in the simplest analysis, does not teach that Christians should “fear” the Father in terms of incurring his eternal fire and fury. We should not, and must not. The “fear” of the Christian is a spirit of “worship or adoration,” as John MacArthur has said. “It’s having a reverence of God,” he added. This is on the mark.
So says Calvin in his magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion. Speaking pastorally of the believer’s experience, he captures our simultaneous struggle with sin and unbreakable assurance of God’s love:
Even though they do not yet clearly feel that sin has been destroyed or that righteousness dwells in them, there is still no reason to be afraid and cast down in mind as if God were continually offended by the remnants of sin, seeing that they have been emancipated from the law by grace, so that their works are not to be measured according to its rules. Let those who infer that we ought to sin because we are not under the law understand that this freedom has nothing to do with them. For its purpose is to encourage us to good (3.19.6, citation via Heidelblog).
As always with Calvin, there’s much food for thought here. For our purposes, home in on this one part: “there is still no reason to be afraid” of God. For the Christian, Calvin denies that God is “continually offended by the remnants of sin” such that the believer should tremble under threat of God’s rage. No, Christians have instead been “emancipated from the law by grace.” What a glorious word of freedom this is!
Spurgeon: Christian Fear Drives Us to God, Not From Him
Some centuries later, Spurgeon concurred. In his typical flowing eloquence, Spurgeon explicitly disavowed a certain kind of fear. Read this tremendously encouraging passage, confused Christian (which is based on Proverbs 14:26, “in the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence”):
There is a fear with which a Christian has nothing to do. The fear of the slave who dreads a task-master we have now escaped from. At least we ought to be free from such bondage, for we are not under the law, which is the task-master, but we are under grace, which is a paternal spirit and has given us the liberty of sons. Brethren, if you labor under any dread of God which amounts to a slavish fear of him, do not cultivate it.
What is the “fear,” then, that the believer experiences? Spurgeon gives us a marvelous answer, one drenched in grace and Fatherly hope.
The kind of fear commended in the text is not such as appals the senses and scares the thoughts. It is a fear that has not anything like being afraid mixed with it. It is quite another kind of fear. It is what we commonly call filial fear of God, like the child’s fear of his father. Just think for a minute, what is a child’s fear of his father? I do not mean a naughty child, a child that is obstinate, but a young man who loves his father—who is his father’s friend, his father’s most familiar acquaintance.
What is the ground of this adoring awe, this worshipful reverence? It is the character and work of God on our behalf, according to Spurgeon:
…they that fear God know God to be infinitely loving to them, to be immutable and unchangeable, to be unsearchably wise, and omnipotently strong on their behalf. How can they help having confidence in such a God? They know next, that a full atonement has been made for their sins. Jesus has borne the wrath of God for them: how can they help being confident? They know that this same Jesus has risen from the dead and lives to plead for them, and in their ears they can hear the almighty plea of Jesus ever speaking in their favor. How can they help having confidence? They believe that this same Jesus is head over all things to his church, and ruler of providence. How can they help being confident in him? To him all power is given in heaven and in earth. They believe that everything is working together for their good. How can they help being confident, I say again? They believe that the Spirit of God is in them, dwells in them. What confidence can be too staunch and stedfast for men who know this to be true? They know that there is a mysterious union between them and the Son of God; that they are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
I recognize that this treatment of Spurgeon’s thought is not exactly short, but let me give you one last short quotation from the London preacher. It’s a terrific summation of everything we’re laying out here:
“The fear of the Lord does not drive you from him. It drives you to him, and when it drives you to him you have got a place of refuge.”
That’s it, believer. That’s where all this goes. Your reverential awe does not drive you FROM God; your reverential awe drives you TO God.
Sproul: Christian Fear Is Not a Servile Fear
In his own teaching ministry, R. C. Sproul agreed: “When we talk about the fear of God in Scripture, such as when the Old Testament wisdom literature says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” we are quick to say that the fear the Bible speaks of is not a servile fear that a prisoner has for his torturer, but rather a filial fear of offending our Father. It has more to do with living before God in a sense of awe and reverence.”
Sproul would emphasize as well that we “tremble” before the holiness of God, which we do. But even there, we must always remember just how significant God’s work of atonement is. Redemption accomplished by Christ and redemption applied by the Spirit means that we do not hang back from the King. The King has called us to his magnificent throneroom, a place over-spilling with glory, and he has not demanded us to “STOP!” when we enter. He has not commanded us to stand far back from him. He has not paused everything to scorch us and torch us for our horribly insufficient Christian life. He has instead run toward us like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).
Figuratively, in the work of his Son and the work of his Spirit, he has thrown the doors open and run toward us, bear-hugging us when we come to him, weeping with delight over our salvation. This is what Jesus told us occurs in “heaven” when just one sinner turns to God: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Did you read that rightly, believer? There is “joy in heaven” over repentance. Heaven is no static, arid, or gloomy place. It’s a place of rejoicing, of celebrating God and his grace, of welcoming undeserving sinners home.
There is so much more we could say about the “fear” of God in the Christian life. For now, I trust the point will suffice: Christians do not, should not, and must not dread the wrath of God. When we sin, we really do disrupt our fellowship with God, and we should surely confess that sin and repent of it in the Spirit’s power. We should know, furthermore, that we can slip into patterns of sin, and drift from God, and “grieve” the Spirit (Eph. 4:30). Our daily Christian walk is thus a walk of grace-powered obedience, holiness, and progressive sanctification.
2 Corinthians 9:8 gives us the flavor of our daily life: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” The born-again believer is not indifferent to the upward call of Christ; the born-again believer has pre-calibrated settings such that they want to abound in good works as Paul says. But the way to get there is not to cower under fear of the wrath of God against any of our sins; for Christians, the way to abound in good works is to savor and claim the abounding grace of God, which blesses us with “all sufficiency in all things at all times.” Wow, what a promise that is!
Practical Steps: Run to the Father
The Christian fears God, yes. But the fear of the Christian is not a fear of condemnation. The fear of the Christian is a grace-drenched comprehension of God as awesome, powerful, perfectly holy, resplendent and terrible against his enemies, and mighty to save sinners like us. The fear of the Christian is not hopeless terror, defeated destitution, paralyzed inaction, joyless gloom, or perpetually-renewing misery. The fear of the Christian is reverential awe, trusting adoration, worshipful marvel at the character and works of our majestic Sovereign.
The fear of the Christian looks especially at the cross to see the depth of love God has for his people, that the Father would give the Son for us, and the Son would endure the agony of Calvary for the Father’s glory and our salvation. The fear of the Christian takes careful note as well of the resurrection, seeing in it very dawn of our everlasting life, and the ascension, which shows us that Christ is indeed a triumphant warrior-savior who has won our redemption from the grave.
All this means for us Christians that we run toward God, as noted above, not away from him. Of course, in our sin, we all fail on this count. We all try to hide after we sin as Adam and Eve did in the Garden (Genesis 3:8-9). We have our own ways of running and hiding, to be sure. Some of us make excuses; some of us drown our sorrows in worldly things; some of us feel bad for ourselves; some of us lash out at others; some of us cover up what we’ve done; some of us feel the tug of conscience, but bat it away repeatedly; some of us deny sin’s effect at all, and carry on in fake cheerfulness. We all stumble in many ways, this is true (James 3:2).
But here’s the great news: we need not run from God. We need to run toward God. God does not want us to cower and quake; God wants us to come and confess. God welcomes us straying Christians back, over and over and over and over again. God urges us to come back to him, to be forgiven afresh, to be renewed in grace, and to start over. God is the God of miraculous love and continual kindness. God will not cast us wayward believers out; God will always, and I do mean always, welcome us home.
At the rest-place of God, the home into which the Christian has been adopted, the light is always on. Sinners may always come when they come in repentance and faith in Christ; Christians may always come when they come in repentance and faith in Christ.
Conclusion: Fear God
The Christian, in sum, fears God as a delighted, beloved, adored child fears a perfectly-good, perfectly-holy, perfectly-wise, perfectly-loving father. This father is not a mystery to us; this father is truly the heavenly Father. And this Father has saved us in the Son, and brought us to himself in the Spirit. So our salvation is truly a Trinitarian salvation; so our sonship is a sonship not of terror, but of adoption, of belonging, of hope, of everlasting love.
Be freed, believer, from a wrong fear—and from a wrong vision of the Father.