Fearing God

When the Lord spoke to Moses on Mt Sinai, speaking of the children of Israel and by extension, you and me, he said, "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me..." (Deut 5:29a).  As I read that verse just a little bit ago, my mind immediately went to 1 Jn 4:18, which reads, "There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear..."

The contrast is nothing if not stark.  This would be one of those "inconsistencies" that some Bible critics would raise.  And, I can see why it would raise an eyebrow or two.  How is it that God, who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) would call us to fear him when love "drives out fear?"  On the surface, this doesn't seem to make much sense.

Although it doesn't seem to make sense, it is recorded in the pages of the Bible and therefore needs to be understood so that we can embrace the teaching or debunked so that we can reject it as either unbiblical (added) or the Bible as untenable.  We can't simply ignore the difficulty the passages present.

I think the problem comes from making judgments on the surface, much like the problem of proof-texting, where someone takes a single passage, lifts it from its context and espouses a doctrine based on that small amount of text.  Here, by not reading further and deeper, we come out with contrast instead of cohesion.  But let's take it a little deeper and see if that contrast will stand.

Going back to Deuteronomy 5:29, let's read the rest of the verse: "...fear me and keep my commandments always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever."  Do you see the foundation for this "fear?"  God wants our best and desires that we fear or respect his word so that we will have the best.  This is the desire of all loving parents, not to have their children recoil in fear but to have them fortified with wisdom, which they offer as a gift.

Fear that recoils has to do with the potential to harm; the rest of 1 John 4:18 clearly says, "...love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment."   The fear that God calls us to has to do with establishing our greater good (the premise of love), while the fear he warns us against has to do with the consequences of choosing the wrong path.  When we embrace the way of God (love) we have nothing to fear.  When we embrace the way of the world (selfishness) we have everything to fear.

Do you recall the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:13-14?  “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.?  One path leads to life an love where there is no fear.  The other leads to death and destruction where fear abounds.  Which one we chose will be determined by whether we "fear" (respect, honor, believe) God or not.  Jus' Say'n.