Holy Fear

Peter writes here, if you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your exile, that is during your brief stay on earth.

Conduct yourselves in fear. Author paraphrased it well, create a way of life marked by reverence for God. This is really another way of saying as children of your Heavenly Father behave. The Bible speaks of a time when God will judge the heart and actions of every person. Since that's true, it's important that we understand what God's judgment is like.

For example, what criteria God uses when He makes His judgment. And it's also really important that we know how to live in light of that judgment. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davies suggests that we are to live in a state of holy fear.

Well what does that mean? How do we love God and also fear God? Don't those two things contradict each other? This is Wisdom for the Heart and I invite you to stay tuned to find out. We have begun a series of studies that I've entitled In Pursuit of Holiness and in our last study we defined holiness according to the meaning of the original word hagios from which we get our word holy. One author put it well when he wrote, holiness is everyday living. Holiness is the regular business of every Christian.

Holiness evidences itself in the decisions we make and things we do hour by hour, day by day to reveal we belong to God. And that definition by the way fits perfectly with Peter's perspective as he writes to these scattered believers in his first letter. So if you're not there already, let's go back to 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 16. Remember he repeats that command from the Old Testament to be holy. He isn't commanding the Christian to start some pilgrimage toward perfection.

He isn't calling believers to leave their world but literally to engage their world by demonstrating they belong to God. Now in the next verse, Peter corrects not only the idea of true holiness but he adds another thought that sort of conjures up misconceptions as well and we're going to need to clear it up. It's something that we'll simply call for our study today, holy fear. Holy fear. Look at verse 17. If you address as father the one who partially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth. How's that for a favorite verse to memorize?

I've never seen that on a coffee mug. Conduct yourselves in fear. Frowny face. That's a good motto. In fact, Peter evidently thought so.

But what did he mean? Does the believer have reason to fear and why? Well, I want to break this verse down into several defining qualities of what we'll simply call qualities of holy fear. And in the process, we're going to cover other material. We're going to take a visit to the judgments. In fact, I'm going to give you this morning, for those of you that take notes, three outlines. Okay, three outlines. And the first one is this, the first defining quality. That'll be one set, the defining qualities of holy fear.

I'll try to keep you updated as we move along. The first defining quality of holy fear is remembering your incredible privilege. Notice again the opening words. If you address as father the one who partially judges you. So right off the bat, keep in mind that Peter is not writing this concept of fear to unbelievers who, of course, have many reasons to fear God. He's writing to Christians, to those who call God father, those who really are related to him as father and child. In fact, here in the text, Peter moves forward the word father to emphasize it in the original language so you can translate it this way, if as father you are addressing him.

In fact, the word if is an assumed condition. You could understand it to mean if and since you do as father address him. So this is to believers.

There's no way around it. Clearly, Peter is highlighting the intimate family relationship that you the believer have with God the father because you've come to believe in God the son. You can't call him father unless Jesus is your savior.

But we're supposed to fear God the father? Well, think of it this way. Suppose you're driving on I-40 heading to the airport. You're late. You've got to catch a plane. It's 65 miles an hour along that stretch. And everybody is just poking along doing 65. You're weaving in and out and you're trying to get through that blockade.

You're saying, what is wrong with these people? I'm not speaking from experience. I've seen you drive.

Okay, just so the record straight. And then you spot it just ahead in that right lane. You've gone far enough in your weaving that you finally spotted that highway patrol car in the right lane. And everyone dutifully, conspicuously driving behind them.

And you do, too. You fear them, don't you? You fear them. They're driving in fear and you, too.

That is not what Peter has in mind. Fearing God in a biblical context. If I could use that same driving analogy. It's more like you getting your driver's license and having your first solo drive home and your father is driving behind you. He's not driving behind you and you're afraid that he's going to catch you doing something wrong. You fear him and that you want him to see you do it right. You want him to be proud of you.

You want him to say, hey, you did a great job driving home. A demonstration of all you've learned. That's the idea here. When Peter mentions judgment or fear, he's emphasizing the judge you fear just so happens to be your father. And that changes everything. So point number one is holy fear begins with remembering your incredible privilege. Secondly, holy fear is accepting personal accountability. Notice you are addressing, since you are addressing as father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work. Stop there. Peter describes this moment where God is judging.

I could make a point that it's in the present tense and literally he does daily hold us accountable. We're going to focus on what comes to mind. Ultimately, the culmination of judgment, which is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians in Second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 10, where he says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Well, what is that place? The judgment seat. Well, the original word translated judgment is beimatas, or we call it beema. It referred literally originally to a step like the steps on your front porch. You took steps up to a platform. Later on, the word just simply came to refer to the platform that you access by steps. When Peter was alive and writing, there were beimas in the open.

They were in political palaces or areas. Pilate sat on a beima when he judged Jesus. So you have to ask yourself, well, what's happening here? We're going to stand before, we're going to step up to a platform, as it were, before our triune God, who happens to be both father and redeemer. What's going to happen to me then? Well, let me begin by telling you what's not going to happen, and this is the second outline.

So pull over, and here's the first point. The beima is not a place where your eternal destiny is decided and finalized. The Bible makes it very clear that every single human being will one day stand before God. For those who don't belong to Christ, that appointment is called in Scripture the great white throne, specifically. John the Apostle is given a vision of that final and terrifying judgment in Revelation chapter 20. That's an awful event where every unbeliever of all of human history will be shown their guilt. As the books are open, Paul says in his letter to the Romans that every mouth will be stopped.

That is, nobody will have any argument when God's done. Their suppression of the truth of a creator God, Romans 1 says, is enough to condemn them. Their defiant resistance to their conscience and the law of God written on their heart is enough to condemn them, Romans chapter 2. For many of them, their denial and rejection of the gospel of Christ is presented to them by another believer or a tract that they may have picked up, or maybe it's a Bible in a hotel room, and they open it up and then they put it back in the door and they slammed it in distaste and unbelief. God will be the judge, and the book of Revelation informs us that all who stand there before that great white throne will be given a guilty verdict.

That's why they're there. They're simply there for God to deliver the justification of the verdict. And John writes, then and where they are thrown, the smoke of their torment will rise forever and forever.

Revelation 14, verse 11 and chapter 19, verse 3. So the great white throne is for unbelievers only. Now you have another judgment called, and that's what we're talking about here, the judgment seat of Christ, and that one is for believers only. In fact, if you're standing there one day, it will be defining proof that you are eternally safe. The only people standing at the bema, the bemitas, are believers. So you need to understand that the bema seat is not an intersection where God's going to decide, okay, he goes to hell and he goes to heaven.

It isn't an intersection. The destiny is already settled. In fact, if we understand the doctrine of atonement and the crosswork of Christ, we can gain a better perspective than what I have heard in the past preached, what I've seen written in books, this future judgment. The Bible tells us that sin, your sin, all of it, past, present, and future, was judged in Christ on the cross. And because you stand by faith in Christ who has been judged already, you will not be judged for sin. In fact, the Bible tells us that your sin was placed on Christ, that he bore it in his body on the tree. Peter will write in 1 Peter 2 and verse 24, Isaiah, the prophet said that the coming Messiah has borne the iniquity of us all, Isaiah 53 verse 6. That's why Paul can write that wonderful, rather staggering phrase to the believer, therefore, Romans 8, 1, there is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ.

I often tell people who are wondering if they got kicked out of the family because of sinning. And John tells us in chapter 1 that if you say you don't sin, you're deceiving yourselves, so make sure you confess often, not for the sake of sonship, but fellowship with God. Well, here's Paul writing, there is therefore now no condemnation as it relates to our status. All of our sin has been taken care of, we're freed.

And I often tell people to just circle that text and that word that says now. There is therefore now no condemnation. Isn't that a great word? Isn't that a great text? There is now no condemnation. Paul didn't write, well, I sure hope one day I'm not condemned. I sure hope that one day I'll experience the fact that I'm not under condemnation and I'm just biting my fingernails until I get to that point when I die and stand before him.

No, he writes now no condemnation. Your eternal destiny has been determined and even at this very moment you are already freed from condemnation because you're in Christ. So the bema is not a place where your eternal destiny is decided to finalize. Secondly, in this second outline, it is not a place where your earthly sins are displayed and forgiven. I've heard a lot of other nonsense related to this which defies and ultimately denies the doctrine of atonement. You are standing at the bema seat not to be forgiven but because you are and have been forgiven. There's no DVD. You know when I was growing up it was a reel to reel.

It's a big round thing with tape. There's no video of your record of sin that God's going to put on the big screen and everybody in the church is going to watch. You're going to, ooh and aah, you're in deep trouble now. No, the writer of Hebrews wrote with confidence, God chooses to remember our sins no more. Now wait, can God forget anything? No, he can't forget anything.

That's the glory of that statement. God is evidently choosing not to hold to our account anymore what has already been paid for in Christ. His son, not to bring to his memory so to speak as it were, he's chosen to effectively erase from the record books the record of your sin which is why you confess your sin as a believer not so that he'll accept you but because he has and you want to please him like that young man driving home from the DMV with his license for the first time. He chooses to forget.

He chooses to recall them no longer. Micah the prophet said of God, you will cast your sins into the depths of the sea. The record of your sin then has been buried as it were in the deep blue sea. And God is promising never to dredge that sea. Drain it and bring him your sin. He has acid washed your record. Not so that people can't find it but because he has forgiven it.

Listen to what God says about your security and his forgiveness. I don't know how it could be any clearer. He writes to the Colossians, Paul does, when you were dead in your transgressions, that is prior to your conversion, you were made alive together with him, that's at your conversion, having forgiven us all our transgressions, all by the way, not just up to that point but all, past, present and future. Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees, that is your record, which was against us and which was hostile to us and he has taken that record out of the way having nailed it to the cross. So this is why we need to correctly rethink the Bema. In fact, this is why the Apostle Paul can write to the believers living in Corinth about this judgment and he can end his discussion in chapter 4 and verse 5 by saying, and then when it's over, we're all going to end up praising God. We're going to end up praising God? I never thought about the Bema being a place where I'm going to praise God because we have looked at it unbiblically, we will be praising God at the Bema.

Why? Because the Bema is not a place where our future is decided or forgiveness is determined because the Bema is a place where our future has already been decided and our sins are forgiven and we're going to see it so much better than God one day will evaluate our service and we're going to be in that evaluation ever so thrilled with his grace and his forgiveness. You're there, beloved, at the Bema because you're his bride. So what kind of bride are you? You're there because he's your father.

So what kind of child are we? See, holy fear means accepting accountability for behaving as his child or living as a bride to be in light of our bridegroom's imminent appearing. Paul encourages his readers by telling them that when he judges, look at verse 17 again, his evaluation will be impartial.

Now he's not saying that because he's wanting to clobber these believers with, oh boy, he's going to miss anything. Now he's making this point because the judicial system in his day was plagued with bribes. Judges were known to be partial. Judges were often partial to those who could pay them.

In fact, you go around the world as we talk about taking these trips and you talk to those who are serving globally and discover that a big part of the problem is they can't get their stuff off the dock unless they pay a bribe and they've chosen not to and it can be held up for days, weeks, and months. First century, the courts favored the rich, favored the well-connected. The more status a person had in the community, the more likely the verdict would go in their favor. Aren't you glad that only happened in the first century, even in this country? No, it happens in every century, in every country. There is perhaps no greater tragedy than injustice sitting on a bench or corruption in a courtroom.

It turns all our stomachs. So Peter is saying this to reassure the believers who are being mistreated in the courtrooms and in the culture of their day. He knows they're ever so slowly being pushed to the margins of their culture. They're losing their rights to own land, to own a house, to have a job, to worship their Lord and Savior.

Christianity is in the process of becoming illegal in the Roman Empire. And so he says, I want you to know when your father looks at your service, he's impartial. In fact, the word Peter uses for impartial literally means who does not receive face.

I like that, who does not receive face. In other words, it's not going to be based on appearances. He isn't going to get into the celebrity status of the church, those famous people, those best-selling people, those people in the body that have the loudest name and the biggest smile and everything looks great. No, he's able to see the heart. He doesn't play favorites.

He doesn't care about status. His courtroom is holiness and righteousness. Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1.15, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief.

I'm the biggest sinner on the planet. It sounds like Paul's heading in the wrong direction. He's actually gaining ground. He's becoming more aware of his sinfulness and more aware of God's grace. Do you think he's ready and willing and anxious to stand at the Bema because he's arrived? He can't wait because he had the proper picture. He had seen the Olympic winners.

Maybe you have too. Those athletes as they stand, in fact, even before then as they all march in. They'll have that opening ceremony, every one of them thrilled to represent their country.

Then you've seen those athletes step up on that Bema and that practice is still carried to this day, that little platform. Tears fill their eyes. Their national anthem is played for that gold medalist and he's filled with honorable patriotic pride. Paul had seen all of this and he said, I can't wait to see my heavenly country represented in those things I did for his glory.

I'm going to be there one day. That gives your life a sense of awe, doesn't it? That gives a sense of gravitas, gravity, to your life and mine. Holy fear begins with remembering your incredible privilege. Your judge is your father and he wanted to be proud of you. Secondly, holy fear is accepting personal accountability. Thirdly, holy fear is refusing to act like spoiled children.

Refusing to act like spoiled children. Peter writes here, if you address as father the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your exile, that is during your brief stay on earth. Conduct yourselves in fear. One author paraphrased it well, create a way of life marked by reverence for God with everything in mind that we talked about. This is really another way of saying as children of your heavenly father, behave.

You will stand before him and we all will wish there were more that was indeed worth rewarding. In fact, Solomon would put it this way then, blessed is the man who always fears the Lord. Proverbs chapter 28 verse 14, the writer of Hebrews said that in holy fear Noah built an ark.

Hebrews chapter 12 verse 21 tells us that the sight of God was, and he just saw the hinder parts as it were of the glory of God, was so awesome that Moses was filled with fear. When the church was birthed in Acts chapter 2, and the spirit of God was doing amazing things through signs and wonders, we're told that every soul was in fear. Translated in my text, in awe of God.

Same verb used here. One Puritan author wrote, the one who lives with a sense of holy fear lives with a sense of God's continued presence. Holy fear of offending God born out of love, he writes.

Born out of joy. These graces grow together, fear, love, joy, awe, respect. When you have them all and they grow together, the believer is all the more reluctant to displease God. Thanks for listening today. Stephen Davies' message is called Holy Fear, and it comes from his series, In Pursuit of Holiness. If you ever miss one of these messages and want to keep caught up, we post them online at wisdomonline.org.

You can go there any time to either listen or read the messages you hear on this program. If you'd like to contact us, our email address is info at wisdomonline.org. In addition to being our daily Bible teacher, Stephen is the president of Shepherds Theological Seminary. How would your life be impacted if you set aside one year to study God's word, take a trip to Israel, and earn your master's degree in theological studies? Well, Stephen invites you to consider the Shepherds Institute. This unique one-year program offers a life-changing opportunity to all believers, no matter your vocation. Invest one year of your life to equip you for the rest of your life. Learn more at shepherds.edu. We're out of time for today, but we'll be back with another message from God's word next time, here on Wisdom for the Heart.