The Fear and the Confidence

“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." Luke 12.4-7*

He calls them His friends, the 12 and the others who followed.

He tells them to fear not the sufferings of this life, nor those of death.

But, He says, fear Him who can separate them from true life in God eternally- that is, to fear Himself.

Immediately He launches into a vivid depiction of the presence and care of God for the details of life.

And then He says 'Fear not', for you are worth more than the birds.

This paragraph offers an incredible tension. Fear, and do not fear. Fear, for God's holiness and power. Do not fear, for His love. Fear, the danger of eternal separation from God. Do not fear, for He calls you friend. Do not fear the loss of things in this life- even the loss of life itself, because it is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things. But nevertheless, the Lord cares for your life. For the little things.

They seem contradictory- perhaps in one sense they are. Yet in another they draw us to worship, to bow lower and lower while delighting in God more and more. How beautiful, a truly holy God who loves His people. How beautiful, a fearful God who calls us friend. A God of justice and a God of mercy. A God of fair and appropriate wrath, and a God of boundless, unmerited grace. Worship comes not in our circumscription of God, nor in our comprehension of Him, but in our meeting with God as He reveals Himself to us- a cube revealing itself to a square, a line to a point. This obliteration of our capacity, and our wondering at glory- this is the essence of worship.

Fear God, and do not be afraid. We exist in a beautiful tension, do we not?

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*Over the weekend I quoted to my friend the passage that says 'you are worth many sparrows', which my friend had been trying to remember independently of our conversation. In the Bible reading plan that City Church is doing, it came up on Tuesday, which I read Tuesday night in bed. Encouraged by the repeated scripture reference and deciding to use it for staff devotion in the morning, I turned off the light only to receive a text from my dad to the family in which he quoted the same verse as a reminder that we can pray expectantly. Reading it's paragraph in staff devotions this morning, a colleague mentioned the juxtaposition of 'fear' and 'fear not'. It is to dive deeper in this immediately present text that I wrote.