Putting Fear and Love Together

If perfect love drives out fear, how can we be called to both love and fear God? It sounds like a contradiction. I’ve heard it said, “You worship that which you fear.” You begin to respect what you fear; you are in awe of it; you let it consume you. You even start to become what you fear.

Let’s say, for example, you have a co-worker who is blatantly anti-Christian. He makes rude comments and harasses those he knows are believers. You know that he would never leave you alone if he ever found out you were a Christian. So you keep quiet. Maybe you even smile at some of his choice words just so he won’t suspect you. You fear him. And what has that fear led to? You despise him because of the fear you have. You begin to think that there is no way God could love him either. You are stunted in your faith walk—there is no way you’re ever going to tell him about Jesus! You also, because of your silence, have become like him. You fear him more than you fear God.

Fearing Muslim extremists and terrorists leads to the same attitudes and actions. We wonder how God could ever love such people. How could God expect us to love them? We believe there is no way that they would ever accept the Gospel, so we don’t even try to bring it to them. So we stay away—maybe even flee like Jonah when he was called to preach to a wicked city. But that is fearing them over God. It certainly is no easy task to love such hateful enemies. But, as we learned in our study, we are not called to repay hate with hate. We are to stand out from the rest because of the love we demonstrate, even to the most unlovable.

We are called to fear God and him alone. A true fear of God is an attitude of awe, worship, and respect. There are many examples in the Bible of those who feared God above men. Take for example the two Hebrew midwives who did not obey the Pharaoh’s orders to kill the Hebrew newborns because of their fear of God (Exodus 1:15-17). Or Rahab, who hid the two spies and helped them defeat Jericho because she feared the Israelites and their God more than her own people (Joshua 2). Look at the stories of Noah, Esther, Daniel, and Paul—just to name a few. They feared and obeyed God even in excruciating and hard situations. What would have happened if they had feared men rather than God?

When we fear God—worship him for who he is—we also desire to imitate his character. The midwives and the others imitated aspects of who God is through their truth, goodness, righteousness, etc. Included in these attributes is love, for God is love (1 John 4:16). When we truly fear and love God, we no longer hate those we consider enemies. We begin to see them as God sees them—with his unconditional, never failing, and impartial love. We begin to see it our duty to show our enemies Christ’s love. We begin to pray and long for their salvation. We begin to live completely counter-culturally, which others notice. Instead of running from our enemies, we begin to run toward them. Love is what defines our faith: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Fear of God brings forth perfect love. Fear of anything less hinders that love. Let us fear God that we may love all people perfectly.