Fearing God as Father

The filial fear that the Son shares with us is quite different to the sinner's dread of God and dread of punishment. The right fear is an adoration of God that dreads sin itself, not just his punishment. It is an immense privilege for us as Christians to be able to address God as Father, our Father in heaven, and understanding this aspect of our relationship with God helps shine additional light on what it means for the true believer to fear God.

And that will be our focus today on this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. This week, you're hearing messages from Michael Reeves' series, The Fear of the Lord. Dr. Reeves introduced us to the concept of the fear of the Lord yesterday, helping us see that when we rightly fear God, all other lesser fears melt away. Here's Dr. Reeves on Fearing God as Father. John Calvin divided up our knowledge of God into two steps or levels. So there is the knowledge of God the Creator, that was Book 1 of the Institutes, and then the knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ, which is Book 2 of the Institutes.

And to be clear, Calvin didn't think it was acceptable or possible for Christians to stop with the knowledge of God the Creator. In fact, he said those who only think of God as Creator are lost and accursed. Now, he wanted Christians to think of the Almighty Creator as their Father, as He's redeemed us in Christ.

He wanted to draw his readers on to know of the Son, he said, returning us to God, our Author and Maker, from whom we've been estranged, in order that He may again begin to be our Father. For without that knowledge of the Son as our Redeemer and the Father as our Father in Christ, without that knowledge we don't really know God. So it is the fear of God as our Father that we're going to press into now. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and that deeper knowledge of God, the knowledge of God found through Christ in His redemption, that will lead to a deeper, richer, sweeter fear.

The mere knowledge of God the Creator. It leads us from knowing God as the Creator to knowing Him as our Redeemer and Father. And it's not that we ever stop knowing God as our Creator, of course not. It is rather that the knowledge that He is our Father makes His creative awesomeness purely wonderful to us.

We rejoice in His power because of who He has kindly revealed Himself to be. By opening our eyes to know God aright, the Spirit turns our hearts to fear Him with a loving filial fear, a family fear, the fear of children before the most loving Father. And that is the fear that is appropriate for Christians who are brought by the Son, not merely to be accepted creatures before the Creator.

We are brought to be beloved, adopted, adoring children before our Heavenly Father. Now, Martin Luther knew very well how much Christ's redemption and the fatherhood of God changes how we fear God. From his earliest days, Luther had feared God with a loveless dread. He said that as a monk, his mind was filled with the knowledge that God is righteous and hates sin, but he didn't see any further into God's character than that, into who God is. He couldn't see what His righteousness is or why He hates sin. And the result was, he said, I did not love God.

I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. I was angry with God for not knowing God as a kind and compassionate Father, a God who brings us close, Luther found he couldn't actually love God. And so what happened is, he and his fellow monks transferred their affections to Mary and the saints, because Mary seemed compassionate.

You could open up to her. And so it was Mary and the saints they would love, Mary and the saints they would pray to, because they won his affections. They seemed to have a compassion that he didn't see in God. And all that changed when he began to see through the gospel, God is a fatherly God who shares, who gives us His righteousness, who shares with us His blessedness.

And very strikingly, looking back later in life, he reflected that he'd not actually been worshipping the right God. He said, it's not enough to know God as the creator and judge. He said, although the whole world has most carefully sought to understand the nature, mind, and activity of God, it's had no success in this, but God has revealed, disclosed the deepest profundity of his fatherly heart, his sheer inexpressible love. He said, we were totally unable to come to a recognition of the Father's favor and grace, except through the Lord Christ, who is a mirroring image of the Father's heart. Without Christ, we see nothing in God but an angry and terrible judge.

Without Christ, all we see is an angry and terrible judge. Through sending his Son to bring us back to himself, God, Luther saw, had revealed himself to be fatherly. And what Luther found was not only does that give great assurance and joy, it actually wins our hearts to him. For he said, we may look into his fatherly heart and sense how boundlessly he loves us.

That would warm our hearts, setting them aglow with thankfulness. He saw that in the salvation of this God, we see a God we can actually wholeheartedly love, adore. Through his redemption, fear, our fear, is transformed from a trembling slavish terror to a trembling filial wonder. That's how redemption changes our fear. And it's worth mentioning Luther when coming to grips with this filial childlike fear, because you need a robust understanding of justification by faith alone if you're to enjoy a right fear of God. Because a right fear has to rest wholly upon Christ's redemption as sufficient.

It can't rest on our own works. A right fear won't be left wondering if our sins might outweigh Christ's redemption, or if Christ's righteousness needs some topping up by my own efforts. Only because it rests all on Christ and not on self, a right fear can remain constant, independent wonder and not terror. Indeed, its wonder is only increased by the perfection of Christ's redemption, the infinity of his grace towards such extreme sinners as us. So, the right fear we're brought to is a filial fear. But to understand a right, the filial fear believers have, we need to be clear it is Jesus' own filial fear that we are brought to share. Luke's Gospel tells us that as the boy Jesus grew, he increased in wisdom and stature.

That's Luke 2, 52. He increased in wisdom. Now, Proverbs 9 tells us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So, he could not have grown in wisdom without the fear of the Lord.

He couldn't have done it. He is the spirit anointed Christ, who Isaiah prophesied would come forth from the stump of Jesse. Do you remember? And the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord, Isaiah prophesied. Christ's delight, the spirit anointed one, the spirit of the fear of the Lord is on him so that his delight is in the fear of the Lord.

And God's great purpose in salvation was that the son might be the firstborn among many brothers, that the son might share his sonship, bringing us with him before the one that we can now enjoy as our father. And it means believers share the son's standing before the father, the son's status before the father, and we share the son's own delight in his fear of his father. And this filial fear is part of the son's pleasurable, it is his delight, pleasurable adoration of his father.

Indeed, it is the emotional extremity of that wonder. The fear that he has is not the dread of a sinner before a holy judge. It is not the awe of a creature before his creator.

What he has and what he shares with us is the overwhelmed devotion of a child marveling at the kindness and glory and complete magnificence of his father. And that is why the right fear of the Lord is not at all the same thing as being afraid of God. The son had no need to fear for himself being separated from his father's gracious presence, except when he hung in our place on the cross. And just so the adopted children of God don't need to fear in that way. If there is any fear of separation from God in believers, it's not the fear of being ultimately separated. The only fear we would have in that sense would be that our sins might part us from the warmth of enjoyed communion with God. That's what we don't want to be parted from.

The union can't be broken. We just don't want the warmth of communion to be cooled or fractured. The fear we're given is not the fear of what we might lose. It is the appreciation of God's character so that we hate sin, so that we long to be Christ-like. In other words, the filial fear that the son shares with us is quite different to the sinner's dread of God and dread of punishment. The right fear is an adoration of God that dreads sin itself, not just his punishment, because it's come to treasure God and so loathe all that is ungodly. Now, having a right knowledge of God is inextricably bound up with having a right fear of God. Those who don't have any knowledge of God as a merciful redeemer and compassionate father just will not have that truly filial fear. At the best, they'll tremble at his transcendent awesomeness as creator.

At worst, they'll only shudder at the thought that there is a righteous judge in heaven, and they'll hate him in their hearts. But those who know that God's holiness is not just his separateness from us sinners and his righteousness, it's not just his separateness from us creatures being creator. His holiness is the absolute incomparability of his grace, mercy, and kindness. If you see that, you see the completeness of the beauty of holiness.

You see the most glory. Those, the saints, who see that, the glory of the redeemer, they see the glory of the cross, the glory of a loving savior, the glory of a mighty but humble God who's not ashamed to call us his father. They can be amazed at a gracious redeemer like those who ran to Jesus in the gospels, astonished at all that Jesus had done for them. So all this means that we need to keep a careful eye on how we think of God, because the shape of the gospel we proclaim will speak loudly how we think of God.

So let me give you an example. Think of the gospel presentation that only describes God as creator and ruler. The gospel is God is the creator and ruler, sin is simply breaking his rules.

Redemption is about being brought back under his rulership. Now that sort of gospel, you could never get a filial fear from it, could you? Because there's been no mention of God's fatherhood or adoption in the son.

So how could you be given the fear of a child before a father? That was never mentioned in that gospel. Such a gospel can only leave people with a fear of the creator.

So there were true words spoken in it, but it wasn't complete. Only when we're resolutely Christ-centered can we tell a richer, truer gospel. Only then does the story make sense that our sin is a deeper matter than mere disobedience.

It is a relational matter of our hearts loving the wrong. Only then will we speak of God the father sending forth his son than he might bring us as children into his family. And only that Christ-centered gospel can draw people to share Jesus' filial fear.

We have to tell the gospel of the father sending his son to adopt us as children or people will not enjoy that filial fear. And the issue is sharpest when we touch on the question of our fear of God. When Christian teachers know the importance of the theme of Scripture but misunderstand the right fear of God as nothing but the fear of the creator, they'll rob believers of their filial fear. You know, it's very easy to point to God's grandeur as creator, which is right to do, but then fail to point to the gospel and God's grandeur as a compassionate savior. And a telltale of the teaching that's only done one but not the other is that it will lack the Savior's compassion.

It will often come across as angry, hectoring, unkind. God may appear great, but he will not appear good. So the two steps that Calvin argued for in our knowledge of God need to be observed if people are to fear God are right. The knowledge of God, the marvelous creator, and the knowledge of God, the merciful Redeemer in Christ.

You need both. For those who know God as Father can have a deeper enjoyment and fear of God as the omnipotent creator and righteous judge. But those who only know him as creator can never enjoy his redeeming loveliness. If you know him as Redeemer, you fear him as both creator and Redeemer.

If you only know him as creator, you don't know him truly at all. So see, for example, how Charles Spurgeon's filial fear of his father enriched his wonder of the awesomeness of God as creator. So in great contrast to the young, unregenerate then, Martin Luther. Martin Luther who screamed with fear at the lightning of a summer storm.

Spurgeon said this, very different to the young Luther. Spurgeon said, I love the lightnings. God's thunder is my delight. Men, he said, are by nature afraid of the heavens. The superstitious dread the signs in the sky, and even the bravest spirit is sometimes made to tremble when the firmament is ablaze with lightning and the pealing thunder seems to make the vast concave of heaven to tremble and to reverberate.

But I always feel ashamed to keep indoors when the thunder shakes the solid earth and the lightnings flash like arrows from the sky. For then, God is abroad, and I love to walk out in some wide space and look up and mark the opening gates of heaven as the lightning reveals far beyond and enables me to gaze into the unseen. He said, I like to hear my heavenly Father's voice in the thunder. He could relish the transcendence and creative power of God with a trembling pleasure because he saw them as the transcendence and power, not just of a righteous creator, but of a loving Father. He loved the Creator more for being his Father.

The wonders of creation are best enjoyed by the self-conscious children of God. Lightnings, mountains, stars, wild oceans, they're all more marvelous to those who see them all as the creatures of their majestic and gracious Father. That was Michael Reeves reminding us of our majestic and gracious Father in heaven. Thanks for joining us for this Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. This week you're hearing messages from Dr. Reeves' series, The Fear of the Lord. But the entire series is eight messages and also has a study guide with reflection and discussion questions, review quizzes, and suggested prayers for closing each lesson if you're teaching it for a Bible study and several study schedules to help you fit it in with how your Bible study or small group meets when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org When you call us at 800 435 4343, we'll send you the series on DVD and unlock lifetime digital access to all eight messages and the study guide. You'll be able to listen to the audio or watch the video messages in the free Ligonier app. So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. Since we had a fear of the Lord, how do we grow in that fear? Well, join us tomorrow to find out here on Renewing Your Mind. .