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The Difference Between Fearing the Lord and Loving Him
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening, Brother Camping. I'd like you to explain something, and I'm going to hang up and listen to you. Would you please explain to us the difference between fear of the Lord and love for the Lord? It's commanded in certain Scriptures to fear the Lord, and it's commanded in other Scriptures to love the Lord. How can we love someone that we fear?
HC: A very good question is raised. What is the difference between our love for the Lord and our fear of the Lord? Let's first of all talk about an unsaved person, and then let's talk about a saved person. In talking about an unsaved person, he ought to have a fantastic fear of the Lord, because he is under the judgment of God because of his sins. He is subject to the wrath of God, and he's going to spend eternity in hell because of his sins. Therefore he ought to really be cringing in abject terror and fear of God. God is the sovereign Creator, who has created him in the image of God to have fellowship with God. And man of his own volition, right down to the last human being, has rebelled against God and deliberately has gone his own way. And so he ought to be in total fear.
Now as a matter of fact, he has no fear. The Bible speaks of this. There is no fear of God. Arrogantly he thinks that he can live any kind of a life that he wants to, and that he doesn't have to fear God. And people say to me, "If there is a God that I have to worry about, let Him strike me dead," or whatever, arrogantly saying, "Look, I'm not a bit afraid of God." Well, the Bible teaches in Revelation 6 that when Christ comes again and they see God as He is, as He comes on the clouds of glory, they're going to be calling to the rocks to crush them, to kill them, and the mountains to fall on them, because they will recognize that they have to do with God. And that fear will become very intense and very real, and rightly so, because it will be the time of judgment.
Also, in the case of the unsaved, there is of course no love of God. The essence of love for God is to be obedient to God. Love for God is not some kind of a namby-pamby kind of a thing that has no real substance or that we can't quite get our hands on; it's here but it's not quite there, kind of ephemeral, we don't know really how to get it down in concrete terms. It isn't anything like that at all. The love of God is to keep His commandments. And the unsaved person has absolutely no desire whatsoever to keep the commandments of God. If he does keep the commandments in any sense, it's because he's trying to design his own salvation program, his own way to get back to God, and he feels that part of that way of getting back to God means that he has to keep certain of God's commandments. But he will pick and choose which ones he wants to keep.
That's the condition of the unsaved person. When we become saved, however, there is a vast change in both of these departments. Whereas before we're saved we should be in abject terror of God, and yet we actually have no fear of any kind of God, now that we are saved we have absolutely no reason to be in abject terror of Him, because the wrath of God will never come against us. But on the other hand, we have a very healthy, a very righteous respect for the holiness of God, for who He is, that He is the eternal majesty who created us and the world, and who upholds the world by His power and who did ransom us from death.
And so the fear that we should have had before, and which we did not have at all before we were saved, now becomes a fear that is one of reverence, of respect, of honor. Now to be very specific, the born again believer who is really conscious of who God is will always be very careful with the Word of God. He's not going to tell jokes utilizing the Word of God. Have you ever heard Christians make jokes quoting from the Bible in order to form the basis for their jokes? Oh, I've been guilty of that in the past. What a terrible thing to do! The Word of God is identified with holy God. And in our fear of Him, not the fear that He's going to strike us down dead or send us to hell, but because we know now that He is sovereign Lord, He is the divine Creator of the world, He is King of kings and Lord of lords, He is our King, He is our Lord, we would never want to, we would never dare make light of the Word of God. Perish the thought that we would use the things of the Bible in order to make flippant remarks or jokes. How many of us have been guilty of that? What an awful thing.
Or when it comes to the Bible and its translation, we would never never take liberties in translating the Bible. We want to be just as careful as possible trying to stay as close as possible to exactly what the Word of God is, because we understand how holy the Word of God is.
Or when we talk about the church or His body, or anything that is holy, anything that is related to holy God, there's going to be a spirit of holy awe, of holy reverence. That is the fear of God that ought to be inspired within our lives. And we must get over this idea that in our joy of being a believer, by all means that joy ought to show, but we ought to get over this idea that in our joy we're going to treat the holy things as if they're just so much "show-biz" or so much comedy. If we want to engage in that kind of activity, we have a world all around us that we can pick and choose from to make the butt of our jokes. We can talk about trees or animals, or whatever, but not holy things in any way.
The same thing when it comes to prayer, the same thing when it comes to witnessing. There's always that environment, that sensitivity to the holiness of God, the wonder of who God is, and that poor wretched sinners such as we are, saved by grace, that we might relate to this holy God. And this is the feat that ought to encompass us.
Now with this there is an ongoing love for God. There is a deep-rooted desire to be obedient to the commandments of God. One of the greatest joys that I experience is talking with individuals from time to time, when they speak to me for counselling, or whatever, and I sense in their question, "Would you please tell me from the Word, what must I do?" And I know from their question that they earnestly want to do what the Word says, even though it may hurt them at the moment. And oh, what a joy this is to meet this kind of a person, because I know there is burning in that heart, in the heart of that person, a deep and reverential fear of God, but also a marvellous love for God, because he wants to keep the commandments of the Lord.
Fear does not have to do with a cudgel, to make us keep His commandments. "I better do this because God is going to do something to me." That is not the fear of the Lord. The fear of God is a holy, reverential respect, awe, sense of honor, for who God is. The love of God has to do with the keeping of the commandments. We do the law of God out of our love for Him. The fear of God has to do with an attitude, the way we approach God, the way we think about His things, the way our posture is toward God. The love of God has to do with our good works, with keeping His commandments, out of a heart of love. Because we love Him we want to do His will.