Albert N. Martin
A Foundational Principle
First of all, there is a general principle that we must understand and walk in the light of if we are to increase and maintain the fear of God in our hearts. Simply stated, that principle is this: When it comes to living the Christian life, the concern of your conscious spiritual endeavors is to be whatever God declares to be His own work in you.
Let me illustrate. Galatians 5:22-23 states that, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self control.” Wherever you see a person who manifests genuine, selfless, Christian love, you must attribute the presence of that love to a deep, powerful, inward work of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love. This means that love is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work. Wherever you see genuine joy and peace and these other Christian graces, it is the work of the Spirit. This is beyond dispute. If we have any acquaintance with Scripture, we know that these graces are only brought into the life and only flow out of the life by the work of the Spirit.
However, the same God who tells us that these things are the fruit of His working tells us through the same apostle in Colossians 3:12, “Put on therefore, as God’s elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering.” Then he says in verse 14, “And above all these things put on love.” The Bible asserts that love is the fruit of the Spirit, and it is God’s work to produce it; yet at the same time, it tells us to put it on. And “put on” is a verb of action. You didn’t lie in bed this morning and wait for your clothes to crawl onto you. You had to get up and go to them and get them and put them on yourself. Putting on is activity. Now, which is it? Is the presence of love and meekness in the life of a man the work of God or is it the work of the believer? The answer is that it’s not either/or, but it’s both. The fruit of the Spirit is love—put on love. And the same thing is true with all these other graces. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, and yet Philippians 4:4 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, ‘Rejoice.’”
This principle is most beautifully stated in Philippians 2:12-13, where Paul says, “So then, my beloved, as ye 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; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.” That is, apply yourself consciously and diligently to the outworking of God’s saving purposes in your life, with particular reference to the development of these graces which constitute a blameless life. Yet the command for us to work is based upon the fact of God’s working in us. God’s working does not negate our working, and our working does not cancel out His working. They are coextensive in the life of the believer.
It is essential to understand this principle if we are to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts. Putting the fear of God into the heart of a man is distinctly declared to be a sovereign work of God as a distinct blessing of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 32:40). In light of this, someone could reason that if it is God’s work to put His fear in our hearts, then the way to increase the fear of God is obvious—you’ve just got to pray and trust that the Lord will do it. But that is not how it works. The principle is this: what God declares to be His work in us is to be the concern of our conscious labors and endeavors.
In our efforts to be directed by the Word of God, we must not allow the accusations of legalism and moralism to scare us away from seeking to discover in Scripture the specific guidelines that God has given us by which we may develop and increase the fear of God in our hearts. Someone once asked a Puritan why he lived such a precise life, a life in which he had constant regard to the principles of Scripture. He answered, “Sir, you ask me why I live a precise life? My answer is simple. I serve a precise God.” Why should we be concerned with discovering specific rules and guidelines for maintaining the fear of God? Because the God who has made us and before whom we walk has given us these principles in order that we might know how better to increase His fear in our hearts.
The conscious, deliberate effort of the child of God is not self-effort in the sense that he is negating the grace of God. No; God alone can put His fear into our hearts. He is working in us to will and to do His good pleasure. But we must work out with fear and trembling the cultivation and development of that fear.