Because I will be attending the LCMS convention in Houston this next week, we are looking ahead at the readings for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost for July 22, 2007 which are Proverbs 31:10-31 (a virtuous wife); Acts 13:26-31 (God raised Him from the dead) and John 20:1-2, 10-18 (Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ). The text to examine is Acts 13:26 which reads, “Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent.”

In a day and age when all the pundits are calling for a loving and gracious God, what’s this about the need to “fear” God? Not a very user friendly religion, this Christianity, is it? Or are we once more getting mixed up what the world understands by “fearing God” with what the Bible explains by such fear.

Now it is true that one ought to fear what God could do to you if He wanted to obliterate you off the face of the earth. But that is hardly what Jesus said he came to do, as is found, for example, in John 3:17, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Then what is the fear of which Paul is speaking?

First of all let’s understand that the world’s view of fearing God is one in which you better be good or else! The only thing worse than out and out disobedience against the will of God is attempting to give God your good works to offset His anger. It is impossible for good works to offset God’s wrath. Why? Try it with a judge after you have been found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail. Do you really think the judge will listen to you if you offer instead of the ten years to do twenty years of cleaning up the park or feeding the hungry or building homes for the homeless?

Good works never can offset sins because what is always required is punishment. “Do the crime, pay the time.” Moreover, in light of the fact that God already requires absolutely perfect good works, it is impossible to ever do more than a good work to offset some sin you have also committed. The curse of the Law hangs over everyone of us that in the day we sin, we die!

From the context Paul is clearly making a distinction between “sons of the family of Abraham” and those “who fear God.” The latter refers to Gentiles who are not in the lineage of Abraham through flesh. It is not that sons of Abraham do not fear God. Both groups properly do but what is meant by “fear.”

Isaiah had one kind of fear of God in chapter 6 of his book in which he said, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.” There his fear was that of expecting a just God to give him what he deserved. But a few verses later, after the angel cleansed the lips of Isaiah with a coal from the altar, Isaiah was volunteering to go and work for the Lord. We make a mistake to think that he no longer feared the Lord.

His fear had moved from that of confronting a just God in getting what he deserved to that of meeting the merciful and gracious God Who was giving Isaiah what he did not deserve. The fear was still there in the same way that we are nervous and become fearful when we are about to be introduced to the president of the United States. There is an overwhelming awe and respect to be in the presence of such authority.

But God is far greater than any president, king or ruler. He uses His power not to turn us away from Him in deadly fear but as a Savior to bring us to Him in a fear that understands the distance between God and creature and our own inability to meet His demands apart from faith in Jesus Christ and Him alone. For Jesus paid the punishment you and I deserve by taking upon Himself the curse of the Law and being separated from the Father so that He will never forsake you.