Extorted fear, extorted fear

My dearest friend,

I thank you for your note. You wrote asking a very crucial question: what does it mean to fear God? I understand your confusion. Scripture in myriad places indicate that the fear of God is a virtue (Psalm 31:19, 112:1; Proverbs 1:7; Luke 1:50) that ought to be found amongst God’s people. Yet elsewhere John tells us that believers who fear God’s punishment have not matured in the love of God (1 John 4:18). How should one understand the fear of God then?

Why should we fear God?

Scattered throughout Scripture, we see glimpses of a thrice holy God who is jealous for His own glory (Exodus 34:14), abhors wickedness (Psalm 26:5), brings destruction upon evildoers (Psalm 92:7; Proverbs 10:29), whose wrath makes people rather be crushed by mountains than face it (Revelation 6:16). This thrice holiness is what makes evil intolerable to Him and likewise makes Him intolerable to evil.

However, the God we see from the pages of the Bible is far removed from the God preached in pulpits today, where preachers have either relegated or denied the need to fear God, or diluted it beyond any recognition. At best, they call it a “reverential fear of His displeasure”, but at worst, they do violence to the biblical tension of unholy man coming face to face with a holy God.

If we are talking about the same God as the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles, then surely the fear that the Scriptures commend, even command, us to have of this God must go beyond whatever softness preachers today are peddling. For the God that these men spoke of was a fearsome God, a dangerous God whose holiness often broke out in severe violence towards evil in His domain. He was the God who opened His heavens to swallow the earth in water, who rained sulphur and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah, who slew the firstborn of all Egyptian households in His deliverance of Israel. He was the God who crushed His own Son for the iniquities of His people (Isaiah 53:6-10), thereby saving for Himself a church bought with the greatest instance of His wrath.

Why should we fear God? If one has any modicum of familiarity with the Scriptures at all, the answer is obvious enough. We fear God because that is the only correct response that a sinful man can have when meeting the sovereign of all creation, whose holiness we must scream in terror of and fall to our faces in trembling. This, I trust, you are not in disagreement with.

“Reverential” fear?

In a right minded attempt to distinguish between the fear that unbelievers and believers ought to have, some have suggested that we understand the fear of God in two distinct ways. The first, being the one proper to unbelievers, is what they call “servile” or “cowering” fear. This is the fear that manifests itself in denial, suppressing of truth and ultimately, impious hatred of God. It is a fear that makes atheists of men, who in cowardice, rather deny the manifold attributes of God evident to them in the light of creation than acknowledge Him and all His holiness.

The second is what has been called “reverential” fear of God’s fatherly disapproval. This is a fear unique only to believers in Christ, who apprehend God not as the wrathful Judge, but as a loving Father who disciplines His children to their correction and sanctification. It shows itself in pious submission and obedience to His will, perceiving Him to be for their good.

Of course the virtuous fear that the Scriptures speak of cannot refer to the impious kind that plagues the unbelievers who sit under the curse of God. However, as you correctly observed, there is something unfortunate about the nomenclature of “reverential” fear of God’s disapproval, for all the truth that is communicated by it. I shall attempt to diagnose it.

I think it to be a nomenclature that says too little on two counts. On the one hand, it says too little by neglecting to consider that all believers ought to have a fear that is servile or slavish towards God, since the Apostle called himself a slave of Christ (Romans 1:1). The believer also fears God as his Master and prostates himself before Him slavishly. On the other hand, it also neglects to consider that the fear of God’s wrath ought to belong to all men, believer or not. Christ, when sending out his disciples to minister to the people, instructed them that the fear of God’s wrath that destroys both body and soul should abide in them (Matthew 10:28) to displace their fear of men.

Therefore, we note that the virtuous fear of God must be both servile (in its strictest sense) and reverential, and be directed towards both His discipline and wrath. How then shall we make sense of this?

Extorted fear, exhorted fear

To this, I suggest a revision of the nomenclature that might perhaps communicate better the truth of the matter: that the fear of God ought to be proper to all men. After all, both the believer and unbeliever come into contact with the one true and living God, who is wholly immutable and simple in His being. Therefore the holiness that the believer sees is the same holiness that the unbeliever does. However, we must distinguish between the ways in which both kinds of men see this holiness.

First, we speak of the unbeliever, which includes both the self-professed atheist and the one belonging to the false religion. His is a fear grounded in the apprehension of divine judgment, a fear that is birthed by having one’s unpropitiated sin laid bare before the Omniscient Judge of all the earth. It was Calvin who said that it is a “forced…fear which divine judgment extorts…” (Institutes 1.4.4). It is an extorted fear, in that divine holiness squeezes and extracts from the impenitent a fear that makes him turn away from his Creator and bury his head in the sand of unrighteousness. To the falsely religious one, it compels him to work by the efforts of his own bone and sinew to earn the merit that he needs to stand before the Holy One, only to painfully discover the inadequacies of his work. It is a fear that is married with hatred, for just as Luther before his conversion testified, “You ask me if I love God. Sometimes I hate Him!”, the unbeliever who fears in this way must necessarily hate the object of his fear.

Second, we speak of the believer. Although he does perceive God in all His holiness and divine wrath, his is a fear grounded in the appreciation of divine judgment, a fear that is birthed by having his propitiated sin mediated before God by Christ. Only the one who is spared divine judgment can begin to properly contemplate the depths of destruction he has been spared from, without any nervousness of his impending doom. It is an exhorted fear, in that divine holiness makes his heart well up in praise of the glory of his Creator. It is precisely exhorted because he beholds the weight of the gospel that saved him: that God in all His holiness poured out His righteous judgment upon the sinless Lamb (John 1:29), that he might be free to call Him Father (Galatians 4:5). This same holiness is now the attribute he craves the most and desires above all things. Although he knows what divine holiness is and entails, he no longer shuns it as he did prior to his regeneration, but loves it and welcomes it, as it exhorts in him a healthy understanding of who God is, which can only be appropriately called fear.

Extortionary fear, exhortative fear

When we examine the issue further, we will notice that extorted fear is precisely called that because it is by nature an extortionary fear as well. You know very well that the atheist appeals to the “cruelty” and “viciousness” of God’s judgment upon evil to nurse his unbelief and that of others, extorting further fear and thereby further unbelief. To the falsely religious man, his extorted fear results in him proselytising of a god who demands perpetual efforts to merit his favour, thereby extorting further fear from his acolytes.

Conversely, it is called exhorted fear because it is also by nature an exhortative fear. The believer who has beheld God in His holiness and wrath, will preach a gospel exhorting others to flee the coming wrath not through self-earned merit or deeds, but by clinging to Christ for his righteousness and refuge. It is a fear that exhorts, for it drives the believer, just as it drove you, to make his Master known to all peoples of all nations, that they too may have an exhorted fear of God. I was exceedingly glad when I heard months ago that you were going out on the streets entreating others to hear the gospel and be saved, the same gospel you are saved in.

To fear is to love

In sum, while the God of all is a God who invokes fear in all men, there is a fear proper to His enemies and a fear unique to only His people. In His enemies, His holiness inflicts an extorted fear that is extortionary in its extension, rolling over in bitterness and hatred, spreading like a cancer in a dead and dying world. In His people, this same holiness imparts an exhorted fear that is exhortative in its extension, rolling over in sweetness and reverence, spreading like leaven through the lump (Matthew 13:33).

My friend, do you not see? Only the one who is exhorted to fear God can be said to truly love Him. For true love requires true knowledge and true knowledge begins with exhorted fear (Proverbs 1:7). I am certain that your fear of God is one that was exhorted by the Spirit who made you alive in Christ and killed you to your sin (Romans 6:11), who opened your eyes to the holiness of God and just how much you have been saved from. I am comforted by your life as this exhorted fear spurs you on to exhort others to fall to their faces in worship of God.

Our God is truly a God worthy of fear, for there is no speck or mite of sin that shall escape His holy eye. In His omniscience, He searches the hearts of evil men and in His omnipotence, He rains down His almighty wrath in retribution upon them. But you and I, who have been redeemed and bought by the blood of our Lord, we rejoice in Him who made us His. Now we look at His holiness and shall not be ashamed of it, for we love Him and all that is in Him.

We can be confident of the exhortation we give to people to turn to Christ, for He who exhorted a holy fear in us will work through and in us to do likewise in the hearts of His elect. We have the singular honour of being instruments of the triune God in His exhortation to the whole of creation to come and worship Him in all His glory.

The grace of God be with you through His Son and in their Spirit.

 

In Christ with love,

Mark