If You Don't Fear God, You Don't Love Him Either

Christians have spent more time trying to find ways to make God not to be feared than they have not fearing Him. The irony is that for all their efforts to present a wedge between  the Old and New Testaments, distort the Bible, water down passages or simply ignore them, it demonstrates that they understand, by virtue of those efforts, God is to be feared. That is to say that if they take the Word of God, which is His testimony of Himself, at face value, He is most certainly to be feared. For both the people of God and His enemies (nonbelievers); thus they feel the need to "tone" Him down.

But God's consistent testimony of Himself and His people make clear that there is no wedge between the Old and New Testaments especially when it comes to His holiness. Adam and Eve hid from God in fear when they rebelled and first encountered the God in their fallen state (Ge. 3:8), Job despises himself after all his questioning of God; when God appears to him in a whirlwind and questions him (Job 42:1-6). When Isaiah encountered the holiness of God he became unraveled and pronounced a curse upon his own head (Is. 6:5)!

This is all consistent in the New Testament as well. When the soldiers and officers came to arrest Jesus and He reveals Himself as the great I AM, they fall down before Him (Jn. 18:5). John (along with Peter and James), the disciple that Jesus loved and often wrote much about the love of God, even became fearful (the text says they were "terrified") when he glimpsed the glory of Christ and heard the voice of God the Father (Matt. 17:6). Even Saul, the hater of Christ and persecutor of Christians, stood in fear of God when He too encountered the risen and glorified Christ (Ac 9:1-9).

Is not the fear of God consistent in both the old and New Testaments? Of course it is because the Bible is one as a whole and God does not change. If it needs to be pressed even further, we find these verses of Scripture "So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied" (Ac. 9:31), "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God" (2 Co 7:1); "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph 5:21). 


It is obvious that all these godly men were loved by Christ and loved Christ yet they still feared Him. Of course they did not fear the wrath of God for that was absorbed by Christ for all of His sheep (1 Jn. 4:18). Yet they sill are well aware of it and it moves them to stand in awe and reverence or fear of Him. Let me try to explain it another way. Many people have recorded tornadoes knowing they are perfectly safe but they see the destruction being caused as they watch the tornado from safety and yet still stand in awe and fear of it. Many even muttering, as they record, "wow!" Christians know they are safe in Christ but should be well aware that God is absolutely "holy, holy, holy."

It is true that not all people that fear God love Him. Martin Luther is a classic example before his conversion. But it is also true that all who love God fear Him and hope in His steadfast love just as the Psalmist declares, "but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love "(Ps 147:11). 


To be sure God was and is and always has been "holy, holy, holy" we find deaths like this (even in the New Testament)- "On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last" (Ac. 12:21-23). Now you must ask yourself why such a passage like that is recorded and revealed to Christians in the Bible.

If you do not fear God, you don't love Him either, for the two go hand in hand.

Soli Deo Gloria!