Fear & Love

How can you believe in a God who is full of wrath? How can you believe in a God that would send people to hell? How can you believe in a God that allows bad things to happen (especially to "good" people)?

The answer: I don't have a choice.

God is God. Being God, He does not need to defend himself. By definition, God is Perfect: He established perfection. God is Truth: He established truth. Although He wants us to know him, whether we do or do not know him does not change who He is-- our relationship to Him does not change truth.

I, and so many others, have cherry-picked the Bible to define our God. Because we can point to Scripture to back our assertions, we believe we are worshiping Yahweh. The modern western church has also succumbed to making God in the church's image instead of the other way around. Individually and corporately, we like to pull out the "nice-ities" of God and gloss over the wrath-- the fire and brimstone of old.

So, I have started over. I have been reading the Bible, Old and New Testaments, and trying to understand God on His terms. And God is getter bigger and bigger for me and I know I am barely grasping His coattails. Ironically, the more I am understanding God's justice and righteousness and what the fear of God means for me personally (and, oh, do I fear Him and His wrath), the more I understand that God is love. the more I understand the cross.

Without Christ's blood shed for me and my acceptance of His atoning work of the cross, I am an enemy of God. God, being perfectly just and righteous, has no choice but to deal with me justly or He is no longer God. A just sentence is physical death and an eternity of separation in the fires of hell. "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7). Fearing and knowing the curse I am under in my natural, sinful self is horrifying. "It is a fearful thing to fall in to the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). "BUT God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died FOR us" (Romans 5:8; capitalization added). I cannot fathom the Love that took on God's wrath for me.

Surely  [Jesus] has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...he was wounded for OUR transgressions; he was crushed for OUR iniquities...all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one-- to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all...it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief...  Isaiah 53: 4, 5, 6, 10.

I have seen God accused of awful things regarding the death of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ. But it was the God of Love and God the Justifier-- Father, Son and Spirit-- that justified even me. There is no greater love: it is simply incomparable.

The fear of the Lord that comes from knowing Him on His terms brings wisdom. The wisdom to know and to understand "how great is the love the Father has lavished on us; that we should be called children of God. For, indeed, that is what we are" (1 John 3:1). The fear of God is something different now that I confess Christ, but the healthy fear makes me love my Savior even more.