The third essential ingredient of the fear of God is what I am calling a constraining awareness of one’s obligations to God. In other words, to live in the fear of God is not only to know who He is and that He is here, but that in the circumstance in which I find myself, the most important issue is my obligation to this great God who is here. Do you see the connection of it? To walk in the fear of God is to walk not only with right views of God which will elicit awe and reverence, and to walk in the sense that He is here, but also to walk with the consciousness that the most necessary thing is to know and to discharge my obligations to Him.
To quote one servant of Christ,
The fear of God implies our constant consciousness of our relationship to God, so that, while we are also related to angels, to demons, to men and to things, our primary relationship is to God, and all other relationships are determined by and are to be interpreted in terms of our relationship to Him. The first thought of the godly man in every circumstance is God’s relationship to him in it and his relationship to God.
This point can be illustrated using the setting of a church worship service. As stated in this quote, the Christian has many relationships. As you sit in the pew and worship God, you are sustaining relationships to angels (Hebrews 1:13-14; I Corinthians 11:10) and to demons (Ephesians 6:12; Matthew 13:19). You sustain relationships to men: you sit next to your spouse, mother, father, brother, sister, friend or acquaintance. You are also related to things: you bear a relationship to the pew you are sitting on, the hymnal you hold in your hand, the clothes which are on your back. You have many relationships as you sit and worship God. But if you entered that church building in the fear of God, you came in and you sit there recognizing that the only relationship which really matters, the one which takes precedence over every other relationship, is that which you sustain to God. And your concern as you sit there is the answer to the question, What is God’s relationship to me, and what is my relationship to Him? What does He require of me, and am I rendering to Him what He requires of me at this moment? If you are worshiping in the fear of God, the most important relationship for you is your relationship to God. And your greatest concern is whether you are fulfilling your obligations to Him.
The importance of the fear of God, and the fact that it includes the conscious concern to discharge your obligations to Him, makes this question relevant and vital: What has been the most important relationship to you in the act of worship? Is it your relationship to God? Or is your relationship to your watch the most important thing? Do you say, “Well, I’ve suffered through three quarters of this; only another quarter of an hour to go”? Or is your relationship to your father or mother the most important? Do you think to yourself, “I’m here because Dad and Mom said I had to be, so I’ll suffer it out.” Or is your relationship to your reputation the most important thing? “I am a member of this church, and if I don’t go people will think I’m unhealthy spiritually, so I’ll just show up.” Is that what brought you to church? Do you see how practical this is? What is the most pressing issue to you from the time you walk through the sanctuary doors—and even before you actually walk through the doors? If you are walking in the fear of God, then you are overcome with a constraining awareness of your obligations to God.
The Essence of Our Obligations to God
If an essential ingredient of the fear of God is a constraining awareness of my obligations to Him, what then is the essence of my obligation to God? I believe that all of our obligations to God can be broken down into three great headings: to love Him supremely, to obey Him implicitly and to trust Him completely.
To Love Him Supremely
What is the first and great commandment? What is the summation of all that God requires of us? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). Here I am in relationships with men, with angels, with things. And in all of those relationships, the man who walks in the fear of God strives to remember and be constrained by the recognition of his obligation to God. He seeks to love Him supremely. Perhaps he sees that shiny new car glistening in the showroom and wishes he had it—not because it is part of a wise economic plan for his family, but simply because it looks so nice. Now of course, getting that car means he won’t be able to increase his giving commensurate with this year’s increase in salary. Oh yes, God says that we are to honor Him with the first fruits of all our increase (Proverbs 3:9), and the man knows that his giving is to be proportionate as God has blessed him; but it sure would be nice to have that shiny new car. He is in a relationship in which he is sorely tempted to love paint and chrome more than His God. He is not walking in the fear of God. If he is walking in the fear of God, he won’t have that idolatrous attachment to that new car.
Am I saying people shouldn’t get new cars? No. The point is that, if the motivation to get the car is a love for the car which rivals and supersedes the love one has for God—which ought to be supreme love—and it prevents obedience to God—which ought to be implicit obedience—then that is not walking in the fear of God. Jesus, when He calls men to Himself, says, “If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). He says, “If you come to Me, even legitimate love for yourself, which expresses itself in the desire to preserve yourself, must be sacrificed. A love for Me must take you beyond self-preservation to the point that you see your very own life as expendable.” Living in the fear of God means that you love God supremely no matter what the cost.
To Obey Him Implicitly
Then, as the only proof of that supreme love, to obey Him implicitly is the second thing. Jesus said, “Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you” (John 15:14). We must obey the laws of the land; God tells us to do so. We have to obey ecclesiastical leadership: “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them: for they watch in behalf of your souls” (Hebrews 13:17). We are to obey the government (Romans 13:1). We are to obey our superiors (I Peter 2:18). But God alone is to be obeyed implicitly. And if there is any contradiction of the expressed will of any superior appointed by God, be it civil, ecclesiastical, domestic or occupational, then Acts 5:29 comes into play: “We must obey God rather than men.” Notice the word “must.” We ought to obey God. It is our obligation, Peter says, to fear—to obey—God rather than man. Peter was a man walking in the fear of God; and walking in the fear of God, he said, “I have an obligation which transcends any obligation to obey you men. That obligation is to obey my God.”
To Trust Him Completely
And the third thing is to trust Him completely. “Without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). We saw demonstrated in the life of Abraham the constraining awareness of his obligation to God to love Him supremely. Abraham proved that he loved God more than he loved his own son when he took hold of the knife to plunge it into Isaac’s breast. He demonstrated that his obligation to love God was supreme. Of course he was to love Isaac his son; and he found this no burden. It was the delight of his heart. Isaac had been given to him and Sarah when they were past the age when men and women normally have children. It was no burden to love Isaac. There was a depth of attachment naturally. There was also love which had not only a natural stream but also a stream of spiritual identification and of spiritual purpose, because all the covenant promises were tied up in Isaac. Yet notwithstanding the great depth of that love, Abraham reveals his determination to love his God supremely, to obey Him implicitly and to trust Him completely. Thus, Abraham’s fear of God, which is the one virtue singled out above all others in God’s response to the test, is a fear that expressed itself in this constraining awareness of his obligation to the living God.
This is precisely the thing to which God calls us when He says to us concerning our “Isaacs,” “Lovest thou me more than these?” He calls upon us to walk in a course that immediately arouses the voice of natural affection. Parents, what are your ambitions for your children? If God were to summon you into His presence right now and gaze into your eyes with those eyes as a flame of fire before which all things are naked and open, so you couldn’t prevaricate; and God were to ask you what you want for your children, what would you answer? Could you answer almost without thinking and say, “Oh God, I have one ambition: that they be what You want them to be. If that means You want to save them at age seven and take them home at age nine, Thy will be done. If that means You want to lay hold of them and send them out to labor in the gospel in some obscure place and to die there in poverty— total failures in the eyes of the world and even of the church—so be it Lord.” Could you say that? If not, my dear parent, you are not walking in the fear of God; you are not loving Him supremely and trusting Him completely.
Some young people may have a deep and intimate relationship with their parents. The time may come when the voice of God says to them, “This is where you must go, and this is what you must do.” The young man or young woman may be tempted to say, “But, Lord, if I do that, Mom and Dad won’t understand. Mom and Dad may turn against me.” If God puts you in such a spot, what are you going to do? At that point you need to say, “Oh God, by Your Spirit, so flood my heart with Your fear that I will be constrained by the consciousness that my essential and primary and supreme obligation is to You, and to You alone.” There may be times when the only way you can walk down the pathway of the will of God is to step on your own father and mother’s heart. You may have to do it with tears. You may have to do it with the sense of inner grief. But do it you must, if you are to walk down the path of the revealed will of God.
Christ’s Example of Obedience in Godly Fear
But then there is perhaps the most beautiful example to be found in the life of our blessed Lord Himself. And Scripture says of our Lord in Isaiah 11:2, that “the Spirit of Jehovah 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 Jehovah.” The Lord Jesus walked in the fear of God; not the fear of dread and of terror. But He walked in that sense of reverential awe. Just how did the fear of God operate in our Lord? We can observe in Him the same three things we saw in Abraham. First, we especially see that He loved the Father supremely when we come to that inner sanctuary of Gethsemane and Calvary. As the Son of the Father’s bosom He loved and delighted in His conscious communion with the Father. He could say, “Father, . . . I knew that thou hearest me always” (John 11:42). But now the Father’s plan for the Son demands that he walk down a path in which He will be stripped of the sensible comfort of the support of God. He will have to give up life itself. Yet the Lord Jesus so walked in the spirit of the fear of God that His supreme love to the Father caused Him to say, “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). There is the second essential element of our obligation to God: implicit obedience to Him. Though everything in Him recoils, Scripture says that Jesus became “obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). “Though he was a Son, yet [he] learned obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8).
And in the midst of that supreme love to the Father and that implicit obedience, our Lord’s trust in the Father was put to its deepest test. Someone has said that our Lord’s last words upon the cross, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46), were perhaps the greatest act of faith ever exercised upon God’s earth. Here, with no sensible delight of the Father’s countenance, the heavens shrouded in blackness, the Son of God feeling within Himself the Father’s wrath and displeasure against the sins of His people, in that dark situation, Jesus Christ displayed complete trust in God. Isaiah 50:10 prophesies, “Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that obeyeth the voice of his servant? he that walketh in darkness, and hath no light, let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and rely upon his God.” As the Lord Jesus spoke His last words, this prophecy was perhaps more fully realized than at any other point in history. Here was the Servant of God, who obeyed the voice of God, walking in darkness. Yet He so stays Himself upon His Father and upon the certainty of the Father’s promise that He says, “Into thy hands I commend my Spirit.”
The Christian’s Obligations and the Fear of God
We should not be surprised to find the fear of God often joined immediately to obedience. See how the Lord joins fear, obedience and love in Deuteronomy 10:12-13:
And now, Israel, what doth Jehovah thy God require of thee, but to fear Jehovah thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of Jehovah, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? (cf. also Deuteronomy 6:24)
Similarly, in Philippians 2:12 we are told, “As ye have always obeyed, . . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Child of God, would you grow more in the fear of God and walk in that fear? Then you and I must constantly remind ourselves of this fact. At this moment and in my present circumstances—and, in fact, at any given moment and in whatever circumstances—the most important thing is my relationship to God and what He requires of me in this circumstance. This God, glorious in Himself; this God who made me; this God who redeemed me; this God is the One to whom I owe allegiance.
Therefore, when the price of keeping the smile of my boss is that I must pare off a little corner of truth, I cannot do it. Why not? Because of my obligation to the God who has commanded me to speak only the truth. Do you see the ethical implications? A young man may be facing a great temptation to fulfill his lustful desires. Though everything in him may cry out for the gratification of his physical appetite in that circumstance with that young woman; and his passions cry out, “Gratify me!” and his flesh cries out, “Indulge me!” In that situation, his God says, “Flee youthful lusts” (II Timothy 2:22). It is the constraining sense of the supremacy of his obligation to God that will enable him to resist and to do the will of his Lord.
We must constantly remind ourselves of the fact that in whatever relationship and whatever circumstances we find ourselves, our obligations to God are supreme. We must constantly remind ourselves what obedience to God involves. We must constantly seek to enlarge the scope of our understanding of what He requires by meditating upon and searching out His precepts in His word. And we must constantly pray for grace to forget all else that would blind us to this.
If you are not a Christian, here is the explanation for why you live the way you do. Romans 3:18 says of unconverted people, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Why do you live the way you live? Because you have no profound sense of the greatness of God’s person, no pervasive sense of His presence and no constraining awareness of your obligations to Him. That is why you find it so easy to cheat at school or in the workplace. That is why you can lie to your parents. That is why you can open your mouth and curse. That is why you can give your body to sensual indulgence. Why? Because you have no profound sense of the majesty of God’s person, no pervasive sense of His presence and no constraining awareness of your obligations to Him.
My friend, you will go on that way until God is pleased to give you a new heart. Jeremiah 32:39-40 says that in the New Covenant, God’s distinct work is to put His fear within our hearts that we may not depart from Him. The Holy Spirit never comes into the heart of a man or woman, boy or girl but as the Spirit of the fear of the Lord. If you have no fear of the Lord it is because you are devoid of the Spirit. And if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, Scripture says, “He is none of his” (Romans 8:9). This is something you can’t conjure up. You can’t just crank it out. For the God of grace and mercy who has treasured up in His Son all that is necessary for the salvation of men bids you look to Him through His Son. And he bids you cry to Him that in grace He would be pleased to grant you a new heart and to grant you the Spirit who is the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.
May God grant that this constraining awareness of our obligation to Him shall so grip us and be our portion that every other relationship will fade into the background. May we in every circumstance of life be constantly reminded of this principle, so that we shall be “in the fear of the Lord,” as Scripture commands us, “all the day long” (Proverbs 23:17).
This is only a small part of a series of sermons on the fear of God, preached by Pastor Albert N. Martin. The sermons were transcribed, and will soon be available online in this form.