Holy Fear

We’re now in our third week of listening to the Apostle Peter unpack for us what it means to live in the light of the grace of God. The first part of this first chapter unpacked the grace of God revealed to us in Jesus—past, present, and future. And now Peter instructs us on how to live in the light of that grace.

Two weeks ago we considered his first command, which is that we would set our hope fully on the grace to be given us when Jesus is revealed from heaven. In other words, the future grace of Christ’s return isn’t to be a nice idea or one thing we hope for among others. It is to be our hope, full stop.

Last week we heard Peter tell us to be holy in all of our conduct as God Himself is holy.

And today, we come to his third command to us, which is found in verse 17 and then unpacked and explained all the way to verse 21. These five verses are one single sentence in the original language and are all built on one idea. And I’ll just let you know here that we’re not going to make it all the way through. Initially I thought this was one sermon, but on Thursday I realized we’d need to split this up. And so we’ll make it through verse 17 today, and then finish up this section next Sunday.

1. We Must Live in the Fear of the Lord

As we begin with verse 17, it’s important to note the small words in the Bible. Verse 17 opens with the word “and” which connects everything here with what came previously. This is not a new development or a brand-new idea but a continuation of what’s we’ve heard already.

And the main command here is this: “conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.” This command is surrounded by two reasons for this fear, which we’re going to look at in just a moment.

But right here we see that preparing our minds for action, being sober minded, setting our hope on Christ’s return, being obedient children, fleeing from the passions of our former ignorance, living holy lives in all that we do—it’s all connected to fear. And not just experiencing some fear some times. No, Peter tells us that the whole time of our life while we wait for Jesus to return—“the time of your exile”—we are to conduct ourselves with fear. All our behaviour, our way of life, is to be marked by a certain kind of fear.

I wonder if that seems strange to some of us. In light of all of the kindness and grace promised to us, fear might seem like an odd response, and a strange motivation for holy living.

a. The Biblical Witness to Fear the Lord

But this is not strange if we take this together with the whole Bible. Front to back, Scripture is full of passages that command fear of God, and connect this fear of God to holy living.

• “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,’ (Deuteronomy 10:12).
• “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”” (Job 1:8).
• “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
• “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!” (Psalm 112:1).
• “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31).
• “And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled” (Acts 19:17).
• “They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear” (Romans 11:20).
• “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).
• “…submitting to one another in the fear of Christ” (Ephesians 5:21, CSB).
• “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
• “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord” (Colossians 3:22).
• “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” (1 Timothy 5:20).
• “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it” (Hebrews 4:1).

It’s hard to miss the big idea here, right? Fear is an important part of what it means to know God and walk with Him.

And we can’t dumb this down. We can’t reduce “fear” to “respect,” or even try to redefine fear as a special kind of happiness like one author tried to do recently. That’s because some of these passages that we’ve just read connect fearing God to an awareness of His judgement, and the opposite of fearing people.

“Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4–5). If that’s not talking about being afraid of God, it’s not talking about anything. According to Jesus, there is a sense in which we are supposed to be afraid of the Lord.

b. The Tension Between "Fear" and "Fear Not"

And yet, and yet, what about all the times the Bible tells us not to be afraid? Like we’ve talked about here before, “fear not” or “do not be afraid” is the most common command in the Bible. Didn’t Paul say, “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!”” (Romans 8:15). Didn’t John say, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18).

So on the one hand, we have commands to fear. And on the other hand, we have commands not to fear. And sometimes we don’t have to go far to see them run into each other. Right after telling us to fear God who can cast us into hell, Jesus said, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6–7).

And perhaps the most striking example is in Exodus 20:20, where in one verse we read: “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.’”

So there is tension here between fearing and not fearing. And to better understand this, it’s helpful to remember where Israel was when Moses spoke these words to them. They were at Mount Sinai, God has just spoken the Ten Commandments to them, and we’ve just read, “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die’” (Exodus 20:18–19).

The people saw the awesome display of God’s power and were afraid. They were afraid God was coming to get them, that he had come down to kill them. And so they stood far back from him.

And in response to this kind of fear, Moses says “fear not.” Don’t be afraid of God in the sense that you stay away from Him. He’s not out to get you. Don’t be afraid to draw near.

And yet the display of power and glory is designed to install another kind of fear: the fear of sinning against God. There’s a reason that the law was given to Israel, not in a soft meadow with lullaby music playing in the background, but from a fiery mountaintop in the middle of a thunderstorm. God wanted his people to know that He meant business.

If they obeyed Him, they had nothing to fear, because all of that power would be on their side. But if they rebelled against Him, they had a lot to fear.

So here’s the best way that I can explain this idea of fearing and not fearing God. We are not to fear God in the sense of wanting to run away from Him. We are to fear God in the sense that we’re be afraid of what would happen if we ever did turn away from Him.

I think one of the best human examples of this appropriate fear is the relationship between a child and a good father. I have memories from when I was young that, I believe, capture the right balance of this relationship.

By default, I was not afraid of my dad. I loved my dad and when he’d come home from work, it was one of the highlights of the day. Most of my best memories from the first five years of my life involve him.

And, nothing could make me tremble like my mom saying the words, “I’m going to tell your father about this.” I remember specific times when I really pushed the limits and she said those words, and on those days, my dad’s footsteps on the front walk were not a cheerful sound. I knew he was going to discover what I had done, and that he’d be disappointed in me, and that I’d probably face some form of discipline. And I felt fear, not because my dad was bad, but because I had been bad.

And that was appropriate. It was an appropriate fear of my father that made me not want to disobey him in the future. And I’d suggest that this father/son relationship is a good picture of the kind of fear we should have with our Heavenly Father that leads to a holy life while we wait for Christ’s return.

And the reason I say that is because that’s what Peter says. After all, his first reason for why we should conduct ourselves with fear is rooted in the fatherhood of God.

2. Because Our Father Is the Impartial Judge

This is how the verse opens up: with an if-then reasoning: “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17).

“If you call on him as Father.” What a wonderful phrase. The words “call on” refer to prayer. Calling on God as Father is one of the great privileges given to us by Jesus, who taught us to pray “our Father.” When we pray, we don’t talk to a distant deity but to our Father.

And yet—and yet—He is not just our Father. He is also the impartial judge. “And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds…”

Our Father is also the judge. And he doesn’t play favourites or give his kids special treatment. It’s like a human judge whose kid shows up in front of him one day. He’s not going to give him a pass just because he’s family. God, though He is our father, is going to judge us impartially for what we’ve done.

a. Judgement and the Christian

Maybe the idea of being “judged” by God is strange to you, because you know that Jesus died on the cross to save us from the judgement of God. And He did. When we have trusted in Jesus, we can rest in the words of 1 Thessalonians 5:9: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And yet, what is the proof that we have trusted in Jesus? What is the fruit of resting in Christ? It’s a life marked by holiness, like we heard last week. Good works, that don’t get us saved, but prove that our salvation is real.

And because good works prove that our salvation is real, the Bible can repeatedly speak to us and promise is what one day our lives will be evaluated by God. And that we will be judged, in the sense of being evaluated, based on what we have done. “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27).

“He will render to each one according to his works” (Romans 2:6).

Listen to these words from Paul: “We make it our aim to please Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:9-11).

Numbers of times, the New Testament warns us away from sin with promises of the wrath of God, either in this life or in the final judgement.

Why should we submit to our government? “Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience” (Romans 13:5).

“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19–21).

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–6).

“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4).

b. Judgement and Salvation by Grace

But, but, I thought we’ve been saved by grace through faith? And we have (Ephesians 2:8-9). But what is the fruit of grace through faith? It’s a new life marked by good works: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10). And if you want to know whether someone has been saved by grace through faith, you look for those good works.

John Piper once said that if you want to know whether someone is alive or not, you don’t ask for their birth certificate—you check for a pulse. If we’ve been born again, “Grace through faith” is our birth certificate. But a holy life of good works is the pulse that proves we’re alive. And when we stand before God someday, He, the impartial judge, is going to check our pulse.

I wonder how you respond to that idea. Maybe “good works” has sounded like a nice idea to you, but the thought that God is going to evaluate your life someday based on what you have or haven’t done—that might make you tremble. That might give you fear. And that is exactly appropriate, according to Peter.

“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Peter 1:17).

Because our Father, who has caused us to be born again, is also the impartial judge, we should live our lives in a sense of holy fear while we wait for Jesus to return and end our exile.

This means that as we prepare our minds for action and are sober-minded, as we set our hope fully on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as we refuse to be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance, as we live holy lives as God is holy, we do so in a sense of holy fear.

Conclusion

But let’s remember that this fear we’ve been called to live in is not an “oh no” kind of fear that God is coming to get us. This is an “oh wow” kind of fear, as we stand trembling aware of the kind of mercy we’ve been shown by a God this great and powerful.

It’s the kind of fear you feel at the edge of the Grand Canyon, knowing a few wrong steps will mean you fall to your death, but it’s the most incredible thing you’ve seen in your life and you’re captivated.

For us, it’s a fear that comes from knowing who our Father is, and that He’s loved us and effectively redeemed us from our worthless heritage. Like we’ll see next week, it’s a fear that comes from the wonder of knowing that He’s redeemed us in an effective way at such a cost.

It’s the fear of God, the One in whose presence we rejoice and tremble.

And that’s why we’re ending this morning by singing together about our holy God. This is about Him. We’re going to sing in a moment here, “come and behold Him, the one and the only.” That is a call not just for something we’ll do as we sing this song, but a call for how to live our lives. Knowing and beholding God is the only way we’ll be able to begin to put these truths into practice.

One of the ways I put this into practice is a daily prayer that God would help me live before his face, aware of His presence, walking before Him. And whatever words you use, daily and deliberately drawing near to God is the only way to live in the fear of Him.

So let’s sing together and then pray that God will help us carry this attitude with us into the week that He’s planned out for each of us.