“Do you not fear me?”
Is that still appropriate since the resurrection? We sometimes act as though fear no longer has
a place in our relationship with the Lord since Jesus came to make known the
love of the Father. He hasn’t changed
and in His grandeur remains something and someone to fear. I loved my dad when I was a kid but I also
feared him in the sense of breaking a rule would bring a certain amount of
anger down and my life would change in one way or another because of that. In the Chronicles of Narnia the fear of Aslan
is never gone, he isn’t safe but he’s good.
The fear of the Lord is part of the check on our behavior. Our acts will be judged and it is up to us
whether those will be found pleasing or burned up like so much stubble. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom in the sense that we begin to understand that our lives are like what Jeremiah
says of the sea, within boundaries set by Him.
The reason Jesus didn’t go about in Judea is that the Jews
were looking to kill Him. Does that mean
He feared the Jews? No, it means that
His time had not yet come. Initially, He
tells His brothers exactly that as a reason for not going up to the feast. Then, as with the wedding at Cana in Galilee,
Jesus does go to the feast, to eavesdrop as it were. What He hears is confusion. Some believe He is a good man and some believe
He is a deceiver but no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews. Fear of man is a very real thing and it is
based in what we see and know. Do we
think of God as less real because He is less tangible? It is easy to get lulled into a place where
we only think of God as forgiving and forget that He also judges.
Paul’s argument is that the purpose of the Law given to the
Jews is that they not be too proud of being His chosen people. The Law serves to show that even though they
are chosen, they are also as guilty as Gentiles of sin. Justification, he says was never about
righteousness in keeping perfectly the Law, no one ever did such a thing until
Jesus came. Justification has always
been about faith, faith in the efficacy of the sacrificial system to receive
forgiveness and, ultimately faith in Jesus’ sacrifice as the once and for all
propitiation, reversing God’s judgment and restoring God’s favor, for sin, of
which all are guilty. As there is no
temple in Jerusalem, the only way anyone, Jew and Gentile alike, can know for
certain they are in right relationship with God is in Jesus, and that certainty
comes from the resurrection, the proof that God accepted His sacrifice on the
cross. Perfect love indeed casts out
fear, we need not fear judgment to eternal damnation but we still need to fear
His anger against sin in our lives.
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