LAWSON: Well, the more you grow in the fear of God, I believe you automatically
decrease in the fear of man, that the greater fear displaces the lesser fear.
To grow in the fear of God is to grow to know God more deeply and more personally in who He is,
and that is made known to us in a general way in creation but in a special sanctifying way in His
Word. And as we grow to know the attributes of God, as we grow to know the names of God,
as we grow to know the triunity of God, as we grow to know the eternal decree of God,
as we grow to know the acts of God, there is a healthy, holy, reverential awe that
swells and grows within our heart. It's cultivated through prayer and through worship.
It's cultivated by being with other believers who take God very seriously. It's cultivated by
time in the Word, and time really under the Word, even hearing a sermon like Edwards preached,
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, all of that together cultivates a
reverential awe and a holy fear rightly so of God. And that's so important.
Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," and Ecclesiastes 12:13 says,
"The end of all matters is this: to fear God and to obey His commandments." And so,
the first step of entrance into the kingdom of God is to fear God. All true saving faith has in it
the fear of God. No one giggles through the narrow gate. No one skips into the kingdom. We all come
with a reverential submission to God, but we grow in the fear of God throughout the
entirety of our Christian life. We never outgrow fearing God. We grow to
worship Him and adore Him and love Him more and more in our sanctification, and then the end is
above all to fear God. So our whole Christian life is a progression
in the fear of God. And if you just took the book of Proverbs alone and isolated all the
different passages that talk about the fear of God, you would see that it is part and parcel of
really our spiritual journey with the Lord. So, the more we fear God, the less we will fear man.
THOMAS:
A couple of things. I think if we were to be honest, the fear of God is not uppermost in
the modern church, and I don't think it is uppermost in the modern Reformed church.
If we were to think of attributes of the local church or characteristics of the local church,
I'm not sure that the fear of God is one of them, sadly, and so it's a missing element I think.
But secondly, I was thinking of my dear friend Steve's biography of R.C., and I've read it and
I hope you all bought a copy of this biography. Are there any left? I hope so. It's a very moving,
moving biography, but I was familiar with the narrative but was reminded of the details of it,
how R.C. read Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy, which is actually a difficult book to read. It's
meant for scholars rather than laypeople. But he talks about that mysterium tremendum,
"the holy tremors," and how that deeply affected R.C. and really was a mark,
the holiness of God, I think it was a mark of his ministry for the rest of his life, a great
big God before whom we walk in fear, a fear of reverence.
You know, I was thinking of that line in Prof. John Murray's book, Principles of Conduct,
and he asked the question, "Is it right to be afraid of God?" And his answer was,
"It is the height of folly not to be afraid of God if there's a reason to be afraid of God." But here
I think we're not talking about the fear of being afraid, but it's the holy tremor fear and that
sense in a worship service where God has come down and you're no longer simply aware of one another
and you're not thinking about a shopping list and what you're going to have for dinner and so on.
You are consumed by the presence of this majestic God. I think Sinclair spoke about it yesterday
in the interview, and that is what I look for in corporate worship, but also in my personal life.