Love and Fear by Central Christian Advocate

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 40.

Love and Fear.

By Central Christian Advocate

MANY superficial Christians talk flippantly and with a show of great progress about their freedom from fear; in fact, they discard fear as an element in religion, and set love over against it as its contrast and conqueror. There is slavish fear, which hath torment, from which the Christian is freed; but filial fear grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength.

This fear is the foundation and constant support of all true piety. To discard it is to destroy the foundation and reduce faith to an airy thing, baseless and insubstantial. This sickly and nerveless piety retires fear to the dim and shadowy regions of Old Testament virtue, and felicitates itself that it has passed to brighter and happier regions, and that fear, and all its strong elements of awe, reverence, adoration, are to be retired; and sweeter, milder, more attractive graces are to fill their places. All such views are damaging in the extreme; they emasculate the whole system, and leave it limp and boneless, breeding sentiment instead of faith. Discarding fear, love dies because it has been digged up by the roots.

This fear is called by Archbishop Leighton the compendium and summary of religion, having in it, as he says, chiefly these five things: "1. A reverential esteem of the majesty of God; 2. A firm belief of the purity of God; 3. A right apprehension of the bitterness of his wrath and the sweetness of his love; 4. Sovereign love to God; 5. A more earnest desire to please him."

This filial fear is the basis and support of all genuine piety; to set love against it is to create schism in the body of Christ. The smallest acquaintance with the New Testament will discover the flippancy and sentiment of such hollow and childish views. A summary of the condition of the church makes this sentiment:—

Acts 9: 31: "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied."

In 2 Cor. 7, fear becomes the handmaid of holiness, and conducts to its perfect state.

In Phil. 2: 12, fear is made an abiding principle to run parallel with the entire struggle and toil of the work of salvation.

In 1 Peter 1: 17, we have fear as the companion of prayer, and covering in its duration the whole of our earthly sojourn.

In 1 Peter 2: 17, fear is formulated into a sharp and direct command.

It is an essential element in all acceptable worship, and it takes grace, much grace, to serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, as enjoined in Hebrews 12: 28.

This fear exists in the heavenly world, and forms part of the ascription of that which is due to God. Rev. 7: 14.

Our Lord settled the matter in Luke 12, when he taught the true object of fear:—

"And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him."

—Central Christian Advocate.