by Edward T. Welch, 1997
Excellent book! I heard about it at Two Rivers Church from a woman who was giving her resurrection story. It sounded like me – care more for what people think than what God thinks. I requested it from the library and they had to get it from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis! And now, I really need to buy it because every page is tagged.
He takes you into the fear of man and how prevalent it is throughout humanity. It leads to all sorts of problems, too. And the cure is to realize how much God loves us, and to seek to bring glory to Him. The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
Instead of going through every page of the book, I’ll list the chapter headings:
- Love tanks with a leak
- “People will see me”
- “People will reject me”
- “People will physically hurt me”
- The world wants me to fear people”
- Know the Fear of the Lord
- Grow in the Fear of the Lord
- Biblically Examine Your Felt Needs
- Know Your Real Needs
- Delight in the God Who Fills Us
- Love Your Enemies and Your Neighbors
- Love Your Brothers and Sisters
- “The Conclusion of the Matter: Fear God and Keep His Commandments”
Chapter 1: It’s “A Universal Problem.” We need to “think less often about ourselves.” “God must be bigger to you than people are. This antidote takes years to grasp…”
Chapter 2: “The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them rather than crushing them.”
Chapter 3: “Has anyone consistently avoided the fear of man in evangelism? Certainly not. There is a “foolishness” inherent in the message of the cross. The clear proclamation of the gospel does not make us look good. It doesn’t make us popular.”
“The sin resident in the human heart (the fear of man) wields awesome power. The praise of others–that wisp of a breeze that lasts for a moment–can seem more glorious to us than the praise of God.”
Here are descriptions of the fear of man from Codependent No More, which he says does a good job of describing the fear of man but an “atrocious” job of solving it:
Think and feel responsible for other people, feel compelled to help people solve their problems, get tired of feeling like they always give to others but no one gives to them; blame, blame, blame; feel unappreciated, fear rejection, feel ashamed of who they are, worry whether other people like them or not, focus all their energy on other people and problems; threaten, bribe, beg; try to say what they think will please, provoke, or get them what they need; manipulate, let other people keep hurting them and never say anything, feel angry, feel like martyrs, be extremely responsible or irresponsible.
Chapter 4: “Step 2: Identify where your fear of man has been intensified by people in your past.” “The Power of Words: … “The Bible never minimizes the effect of sinful words. It exposes them as firebrands that leave wounds that can go to the deepest parts of our being. They stand in stark contrast to the words of compassion and healing that the Lord offers to such victims.”
“I have seen children who have been crushed by the words of another. I have watched as some of them gradually became more reticent and withdrawn. They looked as if they were scared, always defensive and hypervigilant, as if they were in a battle.”
“David was afraid, but he did not fear people over God. He said, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, In God I trust: I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?” (Ps. 56:3-4). God was David’s rock and fortress.”
“Dozens of the same warnings and exhortations followed, all repeating the same theme: you are prone to fearing people who seem to be a threat to you; instead, fear God and God alone. At the end of the book of the covenant, Moses was not tired of repeating the warning. In Deuteronomy 31:6, Moses commanded the people, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you or forsake you.””
In “Two Faith-Filled Leaders,” he talks about Joshua and David. Joshua was a leader who feared God, not man. God told him, “Be strong and courageous.” “Have I not commended you?” “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified: do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go” Joshua 1:9. And “Israel served the LORD throughout the lifetime of Joshua” Joshua 24:31.
David feared God, not man. “When he was afraid, he remembered that people could have real power when compared to himself, but they had no power compared to his God.” Psalms mentioned are 146:10, 146:4, 3:3, 5:12, 7:10, 5:11, 9:9, 118:14, and 18:2.
“Being afraid is not wrong in itself. As creatures living in a sinful world we should be afraid at times. The problem is when fear forgets God.”
“The way to eliminate shame associated with sin is to admit sin, be confident that God forgives sin, and engage in battle against it.”
“In an effort to feel clean or covered, some victims have resorted to punishing themselves as if works of penance would miraculously cleanse and cover. They try to resolve things with God by cutting their bodies, being hopelessly depressed, ruining their marriage so they get what they think they deserve, or practicing some idiosyncratic forms of self-loathing.”
In the Bible, examples of victimization-shame are “Dinah (Gen.34:5), examples from Levitical laws (e.g., Lev 11:24), and the defilement of the temple because of the presence of unclean men (Ps. 79). The clearest example is Jesus himself. He was sentenced to death in the most shameful manner possible–naked and on a cross. He felt shame, but he was innocent. … he understands their shame…he is doing something about it. We may not see the wheels of heaven turning…but we know by faith that God does not abandon those who have been victimized (cf. Ps. 22)…. Jesus both experienced shame and took our shame on himself, so shame no longer defines us…Then, in an act that seems inconceivable, God goes a step further: he marries and exalts those who once were shamed….She [a woman he counseled named Janet who was abused as a child] must believe in the words of Christ more than she believes in anything else. … For every one look at myself I must take ten looks at Jesus. She must meditate on these loving promises from the mouth of God.”
“Chances are that she believes that God reigns over all things, but that his love toward her is small. She has succumbed to Satan’s suggestions that God is not really for his people. Only persistent meditation on the cross of Chris is sufficient to allay this fear.”
“Jeremiah 17 is the classic biblical text on the fear of man.” Jeremiah 17:5-8: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
“The Old Testament indicates that we stand at the crossroads between fear of others and fear of God. The road leading to the fear of man may be expressed in terms of favoritism, wanting others to think well of you, fearing exposure by them, or being overwhelmed by their perceived physical power. When these fears are not combated with the fear of the Lord, the consequences can be devastating. But when God is given his rightful place in our lives old bonds can be shattered.”
Chapter 5: The world we live in encourages the fear of man. “It is always the other person’s fault. You are responsible for my actions. We even blame other people for our culture of victimization: the lawyers did it. They victimized us into the culture of victimization.”
“The emphasis on self-esteem also contributes to the fear of man. For example, even though most self-esteem books indicate that it is something you can develop by yourself, almost all the books also say that one of the best ways to raise your self-esteem is to achieve some successes (which are then compared to what others do) or to surround yourself with people who affirm you (which leaves you dependent on their opinion). If you have money, your self-esteem can be inflated by a warm, empathic therapist.”
“…our culture has taught us to think individually rather than corporately…Our interpretation of “do not give the devil a foothold” (Eph. 6:27) is a classic illustration. This passage is consistently applied to the individual. That is, if you are sinfully angry, Satan will have some sort of control in your life. Although this may be true, the passage is speaking in the context of the church. Ephesians is about unity in the church. The foothold refers to Satan’s divisive influence in the body of Christ rather than Satan possessing an individual. The treatment is to hotly pursue unity in the church.”
“The quiet revolution has been committed to exalting ourselves and rendering God as less than holy and sovereign.”
“Too many Christians never see that self-love comes out of a culture that prizes the individual over the community and then reads that basic principle into the pages of Scripture. The Bible, however, rightly understood, asks the question, “Why are you so concerned about yourself?” Furthermore, it indicates that our culture’s proposed cure–increased self-love — is actually the disease. If we fail to recognize the reality and depth of our sin problem, God will become less important, and people will become more important.”
“When God and spirituality are reduced to our standards or our feelings, God will never be to us the awesome Holy One of Israel. With God reduced in our eyes, a fear of people will thrive.”
“Need theories can thrive only in a context where the emphasis is on the individual rather than the community and where consumption is a way of life. If you ask most Asians or Africans about their psychological needs, they will not even understand the question!”
Part 2, Overcoming Fear of Others:
“Step 4: Understand and grow in the fear of the Lord. The person who fears God will fear nothing else.”
“Step 7: Need other people less, love other people more. Out of obedience to Christ, and as a response to his love toward you, pursue others in love.”
Chapter 6 – “Therefore, the first task in escaping the snare of the fear of man is to know that God is awesome and glorious, not other people.”
“No one is excluded from this fear [of the Lord], Christians or non-Christians. For Christians whose eyes have been opened to God’s great love, this fear is fading. For non-Christians such fear is ever-present. The reason you don’t hear people talking about it is that it tends to come out in “free-floating anxiety,” low self-esteem, and a host of other modern maladies that have lost sight of their God-ward roots. But this fear will not be camouflaged forever. The day is coming when everyone will bow before God in the fear of the Lord.”
“The world, our own flesh, and the Devil conspire to elevate other people (or what we can get from them) over God.”
“The Devil stands against anything that can exalt the true God. Whenever we fear anything–a god, a person, or anything in the subhuman creation–other than God, Satan is basking in the darkness we have created. By lies and other deceptions, he minimizes our sin, he suggests that God is distant and that God’s Word cannot really be trusted. In fact, he suggests that God is holding out on us, keeping us from good things.”
“We must hate the evil and ungodly assumptions of the world, we must hate our own sinful nature, and we must hate Satan. To accomplish these tasks demands the most powerful resources we have: the Word, the Spirit, and the body of Christ.”
“A growing knowledge of God displaces the fear of people, and it casts out our tendency to be casual with our secret sins.”
“The law is wonderful in that it reveals the holy character of God. The Ten Commandments and their many applications teach about the Lawgiver. They reveal that God’s ways are profoundly higher than the ways of the surrounding nations. What may seem like nit-picking to us was actually a beautiful revelation of the God who protected the oppressed and poor, hated injustice, loved mercy, offered forgiveness and cleansing, and was morally pure. In the law, God set a new standard for holiness that the world had not known.”
Chapter 7: “The problem is clear: People are too big in our lives and God is too small. The answer is straightforward: We must learn to know that our God is more loving and more powerful than we ever imagined. Yet this task is not easy. Even if we worked at the most spectacular of national parks, or the bush in our backyard started burning without being consumed, or Jesus appeared and wrestled a few rounds with us, we would not be guaranteed a persistent reverence of God. Too often our mountain-top experiences are quickly overtaken by the clamor of the world, and God once again is diminished in our minds. The goal is to establish a daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God.”
Grow in the fear of the Lord – It’s beauty – study Proverbs. “What does the fear of the Lord look like? It looks like loving good and hating evil. “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil” (8:13). It looks like trusting God (reverence) and obeying him.”
“What about when someone sins against us? We would no longer have to murder the person in our own heart. Instead, we could cover the sin in humility and love, or we could confront the other person in the same spirit.”
In Chapter 7, Grow In the Fear of the Lord, he delves into the story of Isaiah. God gave Isaiah a unique and powerful vision of His holiness because Isaiah was going to need it – he was going to be the most despised person in all of Israel. “There were going to be daily opportunities for him to fear man rather than God. As a result, it was essential for him to have the fear of the Lord absolutely branded into his heart, because the person who fears God fears nothing else.”
“Isaiah saw the Lord, seated on the throne, wearing priestly robes. His holy presence dominated the temple. It was so dominating that the seraphs had to hover above the throne. There was no room around it.
“These seraphs are mentioned only in Isaiah and nowhere else in the Bible…“
“The thrice-holy magnifies the holiness of God. Each “holy” intensifies the one before it.”
“This was a school in the fear of the Lord, and the pinnacle of the teaching consists of the mingling of power and judgment with gentleness and loving forgiveness. Therefore, in an act that points to Jesus as clearly as anything in the Bible, the seraph took the initiative toward a man who was as good as dead. The seraph purified Isaiah by taking hot coals from the altar where sacrifices were offered to God, and touching him (1 John 1:9).”
“This is one of the great blessings of the fear of the Lord. We think less often about ourselves.”
“If you have been in the presence of the almighty God, everything that once controlled you suddenly has less power.”
“The knowledge of God was the first step in his liberation from the fear of people.”
“But God’s goodness to us is always close, and we need to practice seeing it.”
Regarding Isaiah 53:12, “For he bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors,” he writes, “This is the Old Testament zenith of the holiness of God. If your jaw doesn’t drop when you read it, then read it again. Read and be in awe.
“Such awe attracts you to God; it does not repel or leave you feeling shame. It makes you want to come to him and know him. When the fear of the lord matures in you, Christ becomes irresistible.
“Do you find yourself on the “hiding from God” end of the continuum? Or do you still find yourself not on the continuum at all? If so, Jesus says, “Come…come…come” (Isa. 55:1). He invites you to come close. He invites you to know him as the Glorious One he is. If that invitation doesn’t stir you, remember that he does not say, “Come,” just once; he repeats it to you. He could not have expressed his invitation more lovingly.”
Regarding God’s wrath: “We are good at avoiding the holiness of God. In the same way, there are powerful spiritual forces that lead us to minimize the terror of hell.
“Jesus, the one who rescues us from hell, is also the one who speaks the most about it.” (Matthew 5:22, 7:19, Mark 9:43-44, John 3:18, Matthew 25:41)
“All these biblical examples point to the same conclusions: The triune God delights in showing us his grandeur and holiness, and we should never be satisfied with our present knowledge of hi. So aspire to the fear of the Lord. Such a desire will certainly be satisfied as we pray,
Lord, teach your church to fear you. Your grace is not always amazing to us. We are slow to hate our sin. We are more concerned with what someone thinks about our appearance than we are about reverential obedience before you. We want to delight in fear. We want to treasure it and give it to the next generation. Amen”
At the end of Chapter 7, in the “For Further Thought:”
“The key to learning the fear of the Lord is to stay in Scripture. When you are in the Scripture, pray that God would teach you that he is the Holy One.
“1. Review the creations psalms: Psalms 8; 19; 29; 65; 104.
“2. Meditate on the enthronement psalms: e.g., Psalm 95-97; 99.
“3. Memorize Psalm 139. It states that God’s providence is so extensive it goes into all the details of our lives.”
Also, highlight hymns that express God’s holiness and majesty. Read Habakkuk. Read The Holiness of God, by R. C. Sproul. Review New Testament passages on hell: 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; 2 Peter 2:6, and Revelation 14:9-11. Begin a “fear of the Lord” or “knowing God” prayer group. Confess your lack of fear of the Lord and your fear of people over the Lord.
Chapter 8 – “examine where your desires have been too big.” “…be careful who fills these needs. Either we can look to people, or we can look to Christ.” “According to Scripture, Jesus meets all our needs for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).” “The good news of Jesus is not intended to make us feel good about ourselves. Instead, the good news humbles us.” “Is it possible, however, that we are called to love not because other people are empty and need love (to feel better about themselves) but because love is the way in which we imitate Christ and bring glory to God?” “Is it possible that psychological yearnings come when we refuse to love God and receive his love?”
” This explains why Christ is sometimes not enough for us. If I stand before him as a cup waiting to be filled with psychological satisfaction, I will never feel quite full. Why? First, because my lusts are boundless; by their very nature, they can’t be filled. Second, because Jesus does not intend to satisfy my selfish desires. Instead, he intends to break the cup of psychological need (lusts), not fill it.”
“To look to Christ to meet our perceived psychological needs is to Christianize our lusts. We are asking God to give us what we want, so we can feel better about ourselves, or so we can have more happiness, not holiness, in our lives.” “Of course, those who have called Jesus “Lord” are justified, meaning that they are no longer guilty. Also, they have been given the Spirit, which makes them slaves to Christ rather than to sin. But we all are still sinners. Perfection awaits eternity.” “The main reason why there is an epidemic of emptiness is that we have created and multiplied our needs, not God.”
In the footnote of Chapter 7: “Lusts are not the only reason for emptiness. Another explanation for emptiness arises out of the fact that we are living in a sinful world where we are sinned against, and we are living in a world that is under the curse. For example, if your wife died, you would feel empty. You should feel empty. Something beautiful has been removed from life. There is a great sense of loss. This emptiness, however, is the result of the curse and death etching themselves on our psyche, and not the result of being created with psychological longings.”
Chapter 9 – Know Your Real Needs
“What are the triune God’s needs? He has no needs. He is completely fulfilled. The Father loves the Son. The Son is ecstatic about the Father and wants nothing but the Father’s will. God’s greatest pleasure is himself.” He references John Piper’s, The Pleasures of God.
“From the Bible’s perspective, God deserves praise simply because he is God.” “Glory, honor, radiance, beauty, splendor, majesty–all these are interchangeable terms for God’s greatness “Holiness” is the word that wraps them together.” “Anything in the created world that bears a resemblance to these descriptions of God [servant, husband, father, brother, friend] is simply God’s glory spilling into creation and into creatures. Whenever you see these albeit distorted images in other people, they are a faint reflection of the original. I am a father because God is a father. I am a worker because God is the original worker.”
“The deepest desire on Jesus’ heart was the glory of his Holy Father, and this desire was expressed in Jesus’ love and justice. This is the One to fix your eyes on as you seek to be an image-bearer of the most high God.” “People are most similar to God when he is the object of their affection. People should delight in God, as he does in himself.” “Today, the way God’s people come into his presence is by faith. By faith, we have the indwelling glory of the Spirit. As a result instead of the glory eventually fading, we can grow to be even more radiant. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).” “Imaging God is loving him and loving your neighbor.”
Ideas for us to be image-bearers of God: meeting with God’s people, for His glory; pray for each other and the world; listen to a spouse rather then get defensive; got to work; enjoy sex in marriage; parent for God’s glory.
In talking about us being priests, he expands on the priestly garments: God covered their shame and nakedness; the ephod bore the names of the 12 tribes signifying “we do not stand alone before the Lord, but we are in solidarity with other Christians;” the breastpiece reminds us all decisions are made with God – by consulting God’s Word; and a turban that said “Holy to the LORD.”
“Through Christ, these garments are now available to all. They are given freely but must be worn. They are essential for giving glory to God.”
“The fact that God created Adam and Eve indicates that the image of God in man could not be complete in any one nondivine person. Imaging God could not be done alone; it is done in partnership. His glory is too immense to be clearly reflected in any one creature.”
Scripture shows we are needy people. We have biological needs that must be met by God and through other people. We have spiritual needs that only Christ can meet because we are sinners and he forgives us. The third need is other people because “All the gifts of God are not contained in any one person. Therefore, we need other people in order to accomplish God’s purposes and most accurately reflect his unlimited glory.” The Lord’s Prayer encompasses these 3 needs. “The greatest need of all humanity is that God be acknowledged and worshipped as the Holy One of Israel.”
Jesus had needs: “(1) that God be glorified, and (2) that God’s people would row in obedience. These were Jesus’ two basic needs. They are ours as well.” (from John 17:1, 15, 17)
“We mirror Christ most clearly when there is unity among God’s people (Eph. 2:19-22).” “It takes the entire church to provide a vague imitation of the glory of God.” “We need to need other people less and love other people more.”
The image of God in us: “This indicates that God has given us gifts to serve rather than needs to be served. Any other perspective is less than biblical and will ultimately lead us toward misery rather than joy.”
For further thought – write 30 applications of hallowed by your name, read the prayers in Scripture thinking this is what I need, think how knowledge of God and myself can “encourage me to take small steps of obedience in your work and relationships.”
Chapter 10 – Delight in the God Who Fills Us
“Don’t think that God’s forgiveness is a begrudging forgiveness and with that thought deny some of God’s glorious love.”
“Step 6 Rejoice that God has covered your shame, protected you from danger, and accepted you. He has filled you with his love.”
“Hosea and Gomer point us to God’s comfort and pursuing love for the shamed, threatened, and rejected.” “Short of the gospel of Christ, this is the greatest love story ever told. … This is a holy love. Gomer was committed to her own desires. She looked everywhere to be filled. Hosea was committed to being a reflection of the Divine Husband. He knew it was impossible to satisfy his wife’s lusts, but he kept wooing her, imploring her to turn away from her own desires and find satisfaction in marital love. Finally, he redeemed her. He bought her back.”
Hosea 11:8-9, How can I give you up, Ephraim?…My heart is changed within me…I will not carry out my fierce anger…For I am God, and not man-the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.
We are Ephraim. The word “changed:” “It is the word God uses to describe his own heart, “My heart is changed within me.” This word is rarely used in the Bible as a description of someone’s emotional experience. Instead it is often used to describe the overthrow and destruction of a city. As such, when used to describe emotional experiences, it connotes something gut-wrenching. God is saying that his insides are in turmoil on behalf of his people. This is not so much God’s talking about the pain of betrayal as it is God’s revealing his intense compassion for his people. It reveals the depth of his desire to bring his people back to himself.”
“From this you can understand how misguided it is to judge God from the perspective of what we would do in a situation. The temporal and sinful is never the standard for the holy. If we judge by our own experience, we will assume that God will eventually get fed up with us and leave us naked in the slave market. But God says, “I am God, and not man–the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.””
“What restrained his wrath, especially considering that God is Holy Love and Holy Justice? The reason he did not come in wrath was that his holy justice was anticipating the time when Jesus would become the slave for us. He would take the shame and rejection that was rightfully our own. In its place, he would completely forgive and justify us. Even more, he would glorify us (Rom. 8:30). He would exalt us.”
“God looks at his creation from the perspective of the consummation. From that vantage point he sees what his Gomer will be. She will be a radiant bride, honored and glorified.”
In For Further Thought, “Many people ask, “How can I really know God’s love? I want to know it, but it seems so distant.” The answer is to repent of seeking God so that you can feel better about yourself. Then think about Jesus through the story of Hosea. Ask God to teach you about this love, so you can both know it and give it. Ask other people to pray for you as you read. God promises that he will teach you.”
Chapter 11: Love Your Enemies and Your Neighbors
He quotes Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled:
“I do not want to live. I cannot live without my husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.” And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend].” “What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].” I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love.”
“The Bible summarizes these various shapes this way: People are our cherished idols. We worship them, hoping they will take care of us, hoping they will give us what we feel we need. What we really need are biblical shapes and identities for other people. Then, instead of needing people to fill our desires, we can love people for the sake of God’s glory and fulfill the purpose for which we were created.”
“Step 7 – Need other people less, love other people more. Out of obedience to Christ, and as a response to his love toward you, pursue others in love.”
“A biblical example of a rue enemy is found in the book of Esther. If there was ever a biblical Hitler, it was Haman, egomaniacal and with an insane determination to extinguish all the Hebrew people (Est. 3-5). At first, Haman’s jealous rage was directed toward the Jew, Mordecai. Soon, he generalized his hatred to all Israel.”
“Most of us have never had an enemy like Haman. Our perceived enemies are people who may have slighted us or sinned against us a time or two. To have someone dedicated to our annihilation is indeed rare. Yet there are Hamans in the world. What do we do with them?
“First, we should know that God hears the voice of the oppressed. He has compassion on them, and the oppressor arouses his anger. Second, God blesses victims with the knowledge that he is bigger than our enemies. As the book of Proverbs teaches, God will never allow enemies ultimately to triumph.”
“God says that some people are best defined as enemies. When we encounter them, our proper response is first to trust God rather than fear man. We trust that God, not the enemy is the Almighty. Enemies, after all, will not last.”
“This does not mean that we can smugly think, “you’ll get yours.” Not at all. The Scripture makes it clear that we should never gloat when our enemy falls (Prov. 24:17). It simply means that enemies will die. They are flesh that will fade away. In other words, they are like us! But that is not all. The biblical teaching about enemies also indicates that their legacy of evil will end. The kingdom of heaven will overpower it. It will not last.”
“Such a promise might not mean exactly what we think, however. If we interpret it through the lens of our personal desires, it means that we personally will be vindicated. We would actually witness the overthrow of our enemy. But the promise doesn’t mean that. Some enemies have been knows to last for generations. What it means is that enemies will not restrain the growth of God’s kingdom, the church.”
Read the Psalms to know how to respond when confronted with enemies – don’t take matters into your own hands – instead, trust God. “Instead of extinguishing hope, the Psalms teach us to trust God and, as a result, be filled with jubilant expectations for the coming of the kingdom.”
“The Psalms were worthy of inclusion into Scripture because David was a representative of the Divine King. He asked for judgment against his enemies because they were enemies of the true God. It was the glory of God that was David’s mission, not his own vindication.”
“To be more specific, King David spoke on behalf of the greater king, King Jesus. The enemies of which he spoke are those of Jesus; the sufferings of which he spoke are those of the Messiah. This means that we should read each psalm at least twice. The first time we can allow it to speak for us. The second time we listen to it as the voice of Jesus. Once again, this will encourage us in the fear of the Lord. We will find that Jesus’ pain was greater than our own. As P.J. Forsyth rightly said, “What happens to the sinful creatures of God, however tragic, is less monstrous than what happened to the Son of God.””
“This doesn’t minimize the pain of persecution and threats…Even in the midst of Haman-like threats, the Psalms teach us to pray that the name of Jesus would be exalted. We will pray that God’s kingdom would advance and overwhelm all enemies of the light, especially Satan himself.”
“Our duty is to consider how to serve them in such a way that they would be pointed to Jesus and repent fro their sins.”
“Do we realize that we were Christ’s enemies? If we do, then we have no choice but to treat enemies the way God has treated us.”
“What about the phrase, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (Rom. 12:20)? This hint of revenge might make the task of loving enemies a little easier. But be careful on this one. There is no biblical command that is ever tainted by thoughts of revenge…The purpose of the burning coals is to bring the offender to repentance and faith.”
“When we know that God’s power is greater than that of our enemies, when we know that he is just, and when we know that he loved us while we were his enemies, then we are free to be simple servants who imitate and obey the Father.”
Regarding love based on kinship: “Aliens were not to be mistreated (Ex. 22:21) or deprived justice (Mal. 3:5); instead, they were to be given land (Ezek. 47:22) and loved (Deut 10:19). The book of Ruth is about an alien–a Moabitess–who was included in the royal line of David and Jesus.”
“As aliens who were blessed by God, they were to treat other people the way God had treated them.”
He talked about how his children were loud at home but quiet in the presence of others. “”Shy,” they said. “Rude,” we’d retort.”
“It may be true that some children are naturally more timid around people, but a great deal of shyness is the child’s version of the fear of other people. They are being controlled by others.”
“The best treatment was for Sheri and me to discuss with our children some applications of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor. We talked about how Jesus has welcomed us, then we considered how to “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12). We joked with them about the sudden affliction they developed around new people, and we would role-play some alternatives with them. We suggested to them that one word answers, or grunts, were illegal.
“Progress was slow. Our children are just like us: they learn through incessant repetition, practice, and prayer. Sanctification is like a clumsy, slow walk rather than a light switch that we turn from off to on. But by God’s grace we grow.”
The fear of evangelism is to seek and grow in the fear of the Lord. “It is much easier to talk about Jesus when his life consistently leaves us in awe. Then we repent of our fear of other people’s rejection. Isn’t that a prominent reason for our timidity? We worship the acceptance and favor of all people. When we sense the least bit of rejection, we crumble. Finally, we remember what God says about other people: we are to need them less and love them more.”
For Further Thought is to pray for one enemy and one neighbor, and to look for ways to surprise someone outside of Christ’s body with love.
Chapter 12: Love Your Brothers and Sisters
“Everyone, Jesus indicated, is our neighbor, and we are to show grace and mercy to everyone because God has been gracious and merciful to us. Yet those within the body of Christ are our family in a unique way. They are the ones with whom we will spend eternity, and they are the ones whose partnership we need in order to represent Christ.”
Beware, though, the world, the flesh, and the Devil oppose the unity of the Church. Satan uses all his power to fracture and divide. The world tries to “institutionalize these tendencies.”
Our culture emphasizes individual over community. “Self-reliance” is a term hard to translate in other cultures. We always talk about finding God’s will for our personal lives, but not God’s will for the church or our family.
“Notice the results if we neglect to see the importance of biblical community. If we privatize Scripture, turning “we” into “I,” we have the following dilemmas: I have to go into all the world and make disciples, I have to pray without ceasing, I have to give proper recognition to the widows who are in need; I have to teach the older men, younger men, and younger women.
“And somehow, in the gaps of my day, I have to work and make enough money for my family.
“Fortunately, these commands are given to the church…Round-the-clock praying can only be done by the worldwide church.”
“To remotely imitate such immense glory certainly demands a large group of people, because creatures are limited while God’s glory is unlimited.”
“But our God is one, and his people imitate him and bring him glory when they are one.”
Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9:4-8: “We have sinned and done wrong…We have been wicked…we have turned away…we have sinned against you.”
“Have you tried to pray “bigger”? It is an excellent remedy for the fear of man. Try to pray backwards from the outer circle to the inner, by praying for the world and the church at large before getting closer to home. Pray prayers from the Bible. Pray the Psalms.”
“Psalm 133 is an example of an explicitly corporate psalm. It is a picture of blessings that cannot be contained–descending, descending, and descending. Such a picture is reserved for one of the greatest blessing that God can give his people–the blessing of unity.”
“In other words, to glorify God we need people. We need to be taught and pastored, and we need to teach and pastor. We need daily counsel from our brothers and sisters, and they need counsel from us. We need people to ask us the tough questions, even though there are times when we wish they would let us alone. Even the apostle Paul needed these things…(Rom. 1:11-12).”
Regarding spiritual gifts and “finding” your spiritual gifts: “To paraphrase Augustine, if you want to know your God-given gifts, first know that the purpose of spiritual gifts is to bring unity to the church. Then “love God and do what you feel like doing.””
To examine yourself before taking communion: “This means that we should remember that it is through Christ’s death that we are reconciled to God and each other. He has made us one, and we set our hearts on pursuing unity in love. The Lord’s Super is a great time to pray and plan for oneness with our brothers and sisters. It is a time to explore new ways to be kind, compassionate, and forgiving.”
“The apostle’s exhortation also means that we should repent of sins that have divided God’s people. Have we gossiped against or slandered anyone? Have we avoided people? Have we been sinfully angry with anyone?”
“Only a church that is united in love can truly display God’s glory to both spiritual powers and the world, and only a church united can stand against Satan’s efforts to divide.”
And here’s what unity and love means:
- confess our sins to each other
- share with brothers and sisters in need
- be vulnerable with others
- associate with people of low position
- creatively consider ways to honor others
- discern when to confront sin and when to overlook it (Matt 18:15, Prov. 17:9, 19:11)
- be patient with everyone
- willing to sacrifice
- practice church discipline
The Spirit of God in you is you, plural, meaning: “Now shift to the New Testament. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit lives in you”? (1 Cor. 3:16). The apostle Paul is saying that we are the tabernacle of God. The church is the tabernacle.”
We are to love our enemies, neighbors and the Body of Christ:
“We love enemies by surprising them with our service toward them. We love neighbors by treating them like our family. And we love the body of Christ–our true brothers and sisters–in such a way that the world and spiritual powers are stunned by our oneness.”
Romans 13:8-9, Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another…
“Will this love set us up to be hurt? Without question. C.S. Lewis indicated that if he wanted something easy and pain-free, he would have chosen a bottle of wine over Jesus. There is no question that biblical love leaves us more vulnerable. But this will not be the devastating vulnerability that comes with psychologically needing people. Christians need less and love more.”
Here in one beautiful paragraph is the point of the whole book When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable, but then how wrong that book was is shown by the next two paragraphs, because that book was all about learning to say no – “self-preservation:”
“People-pleasers can mistake “niceness” for love. When they do, they will be prone to being manipulated by others, and burn-out is sure to follow. People-pleasers can also mistake “yes” for love. But “yes” might be very unwise. It might not be the best way to repay our debt of love. Saying “yes” to one task might keep us from another that is more important. It might mean that we will do something that someone else could have done better. It might mean that we will entrench the sin patterns of other people. It might mean that we interpret the church egocentrically rather than as a body, thinking, “If I don’t do it, nobody will.
“Therefore, “yes,” “being nice,” and “self-sacrifice” are not necessarily the same as love. They can be ways that we establish our own personal meaning and identity more than creative expressions of loving others. With these cautions about imitators of love in mind, I want to put in a good word for self-sacrifice and fatigue. For every one book or article I read about our debt of love, I encounter ten others on self-preservation. Burn-out seems to be one of our greatest fears. In my own life I find that sometimes my goal is to protect myself from “stress” more than it is to love others. Granted, we all should have some physical disciplines in our lives to care for our bodies, and we must have some wise, biblically structured priorities in our lives. but we can fall off the cliff of self-preservation as easily as we can the cliff of niceness and people-pleasing.
“We we live in the fear of the Lord, there is an intensity to our lives. We are zealous to obey, we are no longer indifferent to others, and we have a desire for the church to be brilliant and outstanding. Such desires may mean some late nights and some tasks we would rather not do. Love is certainly not the easy way out.”
In the For Further Thought: “This chapter reviews an essential part of the treatment for the fear of man: we are to love people more and need people (to satisfy our psychological cravings) less. In the same way that love for God expels the terror of God, love for people expels our fear that they might shame, physically hurt, or reject us.”
“The problem is that unless there is a radical change in the way we see God, ourselves, and others, community will become just another strategy for us to feel better about ourselves. It will relieve the loneliness, and we will feel more “connected,” but if we pursue community for self-fulfillment rather than God’s glory, the community movement will simply be a passing fad.”
Chapter 13: a complete history of Martin Luther. When Luther meditates for a long, long time on Romans: “Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”
In Nancy’s story, he writes about dealing with the pain of others: “One reason Christians respond positively to a need psychology is that it takes people’s pain seriously. However, this perspective can actually make pain worse. It compounds pain by suggesting that not only did the sins of others hurt deeply, but they also deprived you of something–a right, something you were owed–that is necessary for life. Being deeply hurt by others is hard enough, but when we believe that their sin was a near-lethal blow that damaged the core of our being, the hurt is intensified…Therefore, one task in counseling is to begin to separate the real hurt from the pain that is amplified by our own lusts and longings. The result will be simple, godly grief.”
He asked Nancy, “What do you need?” She answered, “I need my husband to listen to me and meet my emotional needs.” He answered, “You are controlled by the things you need.” Then, he asked Nancy, “What or who controls you?” Pay attention to what depresses you or makes you angry. She came back with a long list- husband, children, mother, father, church. Then he asked, “Where do you put your trust?”
“Nancy immediately saw that the three questions were identical. What she needed controlled her; what controlled her was the object of her trust or fear…”
“Nancy began to pinpoint her problem as a fear of man and a lack of fear of God. Like so many Christians, people had become the controlling point of Nancy’s life. She held others in awe. She put her hope in them. … She relied on others because she believed they had the power to give her what she wanted.”
Her questions became: “Why am I so concerned about myself?” “How can I see Christ as so glorious that I forget about my perceived needs?” “She found Jeremiah 17:5-10 especially helpful.” “She also began to pray for the fear of the Lord. She knew that confession would not, in itself, make God bigger than people in her life.” She searched the Scriptures for pictures of our awesome God: Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, and the book of Revelation. “She began to look for glory around her during her day. She even read C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia as a way to think about her mighty God.”
“No longer did she talk as if other people owed her. Instead, she began to think about creative ways to love.”
“When we recognize that people come to God in the shape of desperately needy sinners in need of grace, all counselors should seek to deluge the counselee with the love of Christ. … pour and pour God’s love over those who are spiritually parched.”
In his personal life, he realized he was looking for his own glory as a seminary teacher. He now prays every day, “May your name be glorified and may students grow in the knowledge of yourself and obedience to you.”
He ends the book with Numbers 6:24-26: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.
Excellent, wonderful, true book.