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Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom
I have tried to work out my salvation without fear and trembling, and I found I lacked an important tool for living.
In the introduction to this book, I mentioned that there were surprises along the way. Perhaps the biggest was finding out that there was a right way and a wrong way to fear God. I thought I knew how to relate to God’s wrath. It seemed to come naturally to most people, and I considered myself pretty good at it. Over time, however, the word of God showed me differently.
In the next part of my story, I will describe how I got to know God as the Judge of the earth. It was a turning point in my life, and I carry the inner trembling it inspired to this day.
I know that some of you can’t imagine fear being a good thing. It makes you want to run away from God. In order to help you understand what I will describe next, I will take a break from my story to share some scriptures that I believe will clear up some misunderstandings.
We often make a mistake while trying to find the courage to approach God. In order to make Him less intimidating, we redefine the fear of the Lord to mean respect. We quote verses like the following:
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
I certainly am blessed by these scriptures, but I think we misinterpret them if we say that they rule out all fear. I believe they instead tell us that God sets us free from being afraid of Him in the wrong way. He releases us from a hopeless dread of Him, but there are other kinds of fear that He very much wants to be a part of our lives. These are more than mere respect.
One Greek word that is translated “fear” in our Bibles can refer to terror,[11] and many verses make it clear that we should be very afraid.
And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!
Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. And again, "The LORD will judge His people." It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
When I looked at God’s judgment as a young man, I tended to “freak out.” Hell was too overwhelming for me. The stakes were too high. I didn’t know how to handle what the Bible said concerning God’s punishment of sinners.
I wanted to think, “My Father in Heaven couldn’t be someone who would cause me to react like this, so maybe I misunderstand Him. His wrath can’t be as bad as it seems.” I felt like I needed to “fix” the Judge of the universe – to turn Him into someone I could handle.
I misunderstood the problem. The real difficulty wasn’t with Him; it was with me. My trouble came from the fact that I didn’t know how to come to grips with the fear and trembling He inspired. I tended to turn it into a kind of phobia, an uncontrolled horror that God never intended. I needed to be fixed, not God.
Unfortunately, what I was missing wasn’t optional.
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling …
I have tried to work out my salvation without fear and trembling, and I found I lacked an important tool for living. I am not talking about a physical trembling, but a trembling deep in my spirit, because I know the God I am dealing with. It is a kind of guarded terror that helps me walk with Him.
We sometimes suffer when we aren’t mature enough to handle fear and trembling. We become afraid in the wrong way, and this motivates us to turn from God rather than toward Him. Then when we find ourselves running from him, we try to deal with it by removing anything we would want to flee. But this keeps us from successfully working out our salvation as Phil 2:12 describes. In time, we feel guilty, read some verses that scare us, and fall back into anxiety, only to react another time and once again reject anything that frightens us. We flip flop back and forth between two mistaken alternatives with gnawing anxiety in our souls.
God has something better for us. Though the fear of the Lord can be difficult, He wants to help us to discern it. Only as we grow to see it as He intended it to be seen can we properly make it a part of our lives.
Then you will discern the fear of the LORD…
(Proverbs 2:5, NAS)
One of the main causes of misled fear is the mistaken belief that we have to earn our way out of God’s judgment.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
God has rules, called His Law, that tell us how to live. They include loving Him above all else, being kind to people, and not being involved in sex outside of marriage.
Romans 3:19 tells us that the purpose of God’s Law isn’t to show us how to be good enough to go to heaven, but to show us how God wants us to live and to convince us that we could never be that good on our own. In telling us what He requires, the Law convinces us that we cannot boast about our righteousness (that every mouth may be stopped) or think we are guiltless before Him (all the world may become guilty before God).
My first eight years as a Christian convinced me that I didn’t have the ability in myself to obey God. Before knowing His requirements, I might have been able to tell myself that viewing girls as sex objects was OK. (After all, it seemed to be the natural male response to their beauty.) Once I read the Bible, I knew that this wasn’t acceptable. God’s Law made my sinfulness clear.
But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
I learned from hard experience that something in me, called sin, resisted God’s commandments. When I tried to follow Him, my desires fought back.
For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
Sin kept me from obeying God perfectly, so if perfection was the standard for making it to heaven, I wasn’t going to make it. My mouth was stopped, and I knew I was accountable to Him.
If we are honest about God’s Law, we realize that we all disobey Him, which is the same as saying that we all sin (by the Law is the knowledge of sin). Because of this, we could never be good enough to be considered righteous by Him (which is what it means to be justified by the deeds of the law). None of us can earn our way to heaven.
The mistaken belief that we have to earn our way to heaven makes it difficult to embrace the fear of the Lord. We are doomed from the start, and how can our hearts embrace a life of certain failure, rejection, and dread of judgment? We are right to want to escape from this kind of looming terror, but we have to do it in God’s way, not our own.
Often, we try to do it by deceiving ourselves into believing we are doing better than we are. We bury the truth about our sin or try to change God and His requirements to make it look like we are OK. We may fool ourselves for a time, but deep in our conscience, we know we are in trouble. When our guard is down, our guilt pops up and accuses us. There are few events as scary as a suppressed conscience that surfaces occasionally to remind us of our hopeless condition.
Jesus wants to set us free from this kind of fear. When we believe in Him, we become acceptable to God on the basis of what He has done rather than what we do. He shows us favor (which is what the Biblical word “grace” means) by making a way for us to become God’s friends.
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, …
The word ‘propitiation’ means a substitution for sin. The idea is that when Jesus died on the cross, He was suffering the penalty we deserve for our disobedience. He cared enough about us to endure our punishment. His gift was to take our place in the most terrifying situation we could ever face, the judgment of our wrongs.
There is a story of a judge whose childhood friend came before him to face charges of public drunkenness. Some enemies of the judge saw this as a perfect chance to tarnish his reputation. If he let his old friend off with little punishment, they could accuse him of showing favoritism. If he was strict, they could accuse him of hardheartedness. It looked like he couldn’t win.
When the judge pronounced sentence, he gave his old friend the stiffest fine possible. Then he stepped down from his seat, put his arm around his old friend, and gave him the money to pay it. He was neither too harsh nor too lenient. He was both just and tenderhearted. He held up the standards of the law and yet showed mercy.
That is what Jesus did for us.
…that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
It would be wrong for the Judge of the Universe to simply overlook the sins of some while punishing the sins of others. Instead, God always punishes all sin; it is just a question of who gets the punishment. Jesus took the penalty we deserve, and this enables God to be just while He justifies (declares righteous) those who trust His gift.[12]
Verse 26 tells us the requirement for receiving God’s forgiveness; we must have faith in Jesus. Faith is more than an intellectual belief. It is a trust in Him that causes us to say, “I trust You enough to follow You and try to obey You.” Our faith causes us to turn from our own way to God’s way. When we make this commitment, we receive all of the blessings that Jesus gives, including forgiveness.
Though we have to follow Jesus, our pardon isn’t based on our perfect obedience. We may fail many times, but through grace and faith, we are still part of God’s family. We can delight in Him like a little child with his loving father, without fear of eternal punishment. The terror of His anger toward sin is overcome by the wonder of His love and mercy. God has given us the spirit of adoption by which we cry out, “Abba (Daddy) Father!”
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."
Some of us know we are forgiven, but we don’t think God likes us. We are afraid we aren’t good enough to talk to Him, so we try to avoid Him, if possible.
We may have had a parent who was always ready to explode in anger over any little thing we did wrong, and God seems to be like our parent. It’s not that we aren’t glad to be in His family; it’s just that we would rather keep a safe distance from Him in case we push Him too hard and He loses His temper someday.
This kind of fear leads to one of the most destructive habits of addicts, denial. We try to hide the sin in our lives and pretend it isn’t there. We downplay what we and others have done in the hope that if we don’t mention it, God won’t. Subconsciously, our hearts reason that since He has strong opinions about disobedience, it is best to avoid the subject.
Fear tends to produce a “fight or flight” response in us. We want to attack whatever scares us (fight) or run from it (flight). We know that we could never successfully fight God, so we choose flight …we avoid Him.
What we are doing is understandable, but God longs for us to realize that there is a third option. When we fear Him, we can run to Him. In fact, the Bible tells us that He wants us to do this. He sent His Son to face the same problems we do so that He could receive us with sympathy.
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Think about those words, “sympathize with our weaknesses.” He understands and wants to help. Yes, it is scary how much He hates sin, but if we understand His concern, our fear will make us want to race to His throne rather than from it.
There is no other good option. If He is really God, where could we run? Even if we are convinced that He is angry, can we find a safe place to hide? Nothing else makes sense but to flee to the one who is full of compassion and ready to forgive us!
Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Jesus is our High Priest, which means that one of His current jobs in the universe is to help people who struggle. We aren’t intruding on His free time when we go to Him for help. He lives to make intercession for us (to get involved with our relationship with God in order to aid us). He joyfully chose to work with people like us.
When we run to Jesus, we can confess our sins, and He will minister forgiveness to us, cleanse our hearts, and teach us to walk in righteousness.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
As we get to know Him, we develop a relationship that removes all misguided fear. We are made perfect (or mature[13]) enough in His love to handle Him (including His wrath) without freaking out.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.
This isn’t to say that we lose our healthy fear, but that we are secure in His love. We remain aware of the possibility that we might turn from His love, fall into His disapproval, and miss His promises. We don’t fear because we think He will reject us, but because we might reject Him.
Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
I have often heard that when we first come to Jesus we serve Him out of fear, but in time our motivation changes to love. I have also heard that a loving God wouldn’t want service based on fear.
I know that those who say this are trying to encourage unselfishness, and I understand how their words strike a chord in our hearts, but I don’t think this teaching reflects what God tells us in His word.
First, as I have shown above, God commands us to fear Him.
Second, on a practical level, if fear motivates us to run to God, it can be a tremendous help when our love wavers. There have been many times in my life when I haven’t loved God enough to obey Him. His commandments seemed too impossible for me to take them seriously. If all God had offered was a reward with no threat of punishment, I would have said, “Christianity is nice for people who are made for it, but it’s too hard for me. I’m not up to the task.” The scriptures about eternal torment motivated me to stay with Jesus during those times. Fear kept me in God’s love.
Finally, love and fear aren’t opposites. Jesus loved God perfectly, yet Isaiah prophesied about Him that His delight would be in the fear of the Lord.
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. His delight is in the fear of the LORD,… (emphasis added)
I love God more now than I ever have, and I also fear Him more. My love and fear work together side by side. In fact, part of the reason I love Him is because His righteous judgment scared me enough to cause me to run to Him.
After more than thirty years of walking with Jesus, I have few illusions about my ability to always choose love. I need all of God to save me from my sin, including His terrifying judgments.
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