Written by Edward T. Welch |
Monday, March 20, 2023
Genuine fear of the Lord is reserved for those who know Jesus. This fear of the Lord means reverent submission that leads to obedience, and it is interchangeable with worship of God, reliance on him, trust in him, and hope in him. You will find it when you can come to the Lord and are a humble listener to his words. This fear includes a knowledge of our sinfulness and God’s moral purity, and it includes a clear- eyed knowledge of God’s justice and his anger against sin. But it places its confidence in God’s great forgiveness, mercy, and love.

All experiences of the fear of man share at least one common feature: people are big. They have grown to idolatrous proportions in our lives. They control us. Since there is no room in our hearts to worship both God and people, whenever people are big, God is not. 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.
This clicked for me one Sunday while I was sitting in church. It was family month. Each Sunday for the month of February, a different family would speak to the church about their family devotions. All the families were very edifying and, of course, horribly convicting, but the one father gave me a revelation. When asked what he did for family devotions, he said, “Talk about God.”
That was it. That was my revelation.
Let me explain. As a counselor, I live in a “how to” world. A depressed person talks with me because he or she wants to know how to get rid of depression. Couples don’t feel any romance in their relationship; they want to know how to have that spark again. Sometimes, I confess, I speak more about the “how to” than about God.
I have two children who used to bring home great Sunday school materials. Typically, I read these papers on Sunday afternoon. They were always very helpful, full of biblical principles and their application. Lots of good “how-tos.” There were edifying stories of children who felt rejected by their friends and learned how Jesus could help them to love those who were mean. I remember one on cheating that was especially good. But they rarely talked about God.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the application of Scripture to the details of our lives is so important. My observation, however, is that these principles are not always embedded in our primary mission and treasure of knowing God. “He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure” (Isa. 33:6 NIV). When this treasure is not in view, the result is that our goal can be self- improvement rather than the glory of the Holy God.
What Is the Fear of the Lord?
Please don’t think only of terror when you think of the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord, like the fear of people, includes a spectrum of attitudes. On one side, the fear of the Lord does indeed mean a terror of God. We are unclean people, and we appear before the Almighty God who is morally pure. We are rightly ashamed before him, and punishment would be completely just.
Terror is our natural response to God. Such fear shrinks back from him. It wants to avoid him as much as possible. Not that we are always aware of these stirrings in our hearts. A fear of the Lord that loses sight of Jesus might appear as “free-floating anxiety,” low self-esteem, and a host of other modern maladies that we do not attribute to our ever-present connection to God, though it is indeed a consequence of living before him. This fear is afraid of God, but it is not the fear of the Lord.

Genuine fear of the Lord is reserved for those who know Jesus. This fear of the Lord means reverent submission that leads to obedience, and it is interchangeable with worship of God, reliance on him, trust in him, and hope in him. You will find it when you can come to the Lord and are a humble listener to his words. This fear includes a knowledge of our sinfulness and God’s moral purity, and it includes a clear- eyed knowledge of God’s justice and his anger against sin. But it places its confidence in God’s great forgiveness, mercy, and love. It knows that because of God’s eternal plan, Jesus humbled himself by dying on a cross to redeem his enemies from slavery and death. It knows that God always says “I love you” first. This knowledge draws us closer to God rather than causing us to flee. In this fear, we walk humbly with him and delight in obedience. It is the pinnacle of our response to God.
Knowing the difference between these two fears clarifies why Scripture can say “there is no fear in love” (1 John 4:18) while simultaneously demanding the fear of the Lord. The Bible teaches that God’s people are no longer driven by terror—fear that has to do with punishment. Instead, we are blessed with reverential awe motivated by the love and the honor that is due him. The biblical context always clarifies which kind of fear it is referring to.
Why does the Bible use the same word for both responses? Because both fears have something very important in common. They are both responses to the fact that the Holy One of Israel reigns over all the earth. This is the message of the Bible, and it is the essence of the fear of the Lord.
To appreciate the magnitude of this message, you should understand the biblical meaning of the word holy. Holy can be defined as “separate,” “set apart,” “distinct,” or “uncontaminated.” In reference to God, holy means that he is different from us. None of his attributes can be understood by comparison to his creatures. His love and justice are above us; they are holy. His power is that of the Almighty; it can be compared to no one else’s. His moral character is peerless; he alone is righteous.
Holiness is not one of many attributes of God. It is his essential nature and is seen in all his qualities. His wisdom is a holy wisdom. His beauty is a holy beauty. His majesty is a holy majesty. His holiness “adds glory, luster and harmony to all his other perfections.”1
Some have called this “otherness,” this holiness, of God his transcendence. God is exalted above his people. He lives in a high and lofty place (Isa. 57:15). His judgment and mercy are above us; they are ultimately incomprehensible. As a result, we don’t use a reigning king or queen as our template for God. To say that the Holy God reigns makes it impossible for us to use earthly kings as the model. The Holy God is unique—he is greater and of a different kind than earthly kings. The Holy God is the original; the most glorious of earthly kings are only a dim reflection. Our God is great.
To make the holiness of God even more awesome, the transcendent God has come close to us. He is great, and he is love. It would be one thing to know that God was gloriously transcendent and entirely separate from his creation. In such a situation, we could become accustomed to his lack of intervention in human affairs, and for practical purposes we could become our own gods.
But our God is also the Immanent One who has revealed himself and become like us. He said, “I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Lev. 26:12). He is near us. He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). He is so close that he calls us “friends” (John 15:14). He is so close that Scripture talks about “Christ in you” (Col. 1:27). Given his nature, this is virtually impossible for us to grasp. But, by God’s grace, we can grow in knowing his holiness, and this knowledge will both expel the people-idols from our lives and leave us less prone to being consumed with ourselves.
Excerpt taken from Chapter 5: “Know the Fear of the Lord”, When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man by Edward T. Welch. Used with permission.

John M’Clintock and James Strong, “Holiness,” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York: Harper, 1872), 4:298.

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If our desire in mission is to bring glory to God, what we do and how we do it must be God-glorifying. Mission as listening has lots of useful things to teach us–but God is not glorified if we only listen and never proclaim the gospel. Similarly, mission as growth has lots of useful things to teach us–but God is not glorified if we make growth an ultimate thing, or if we pursue growth in ungodly ways. People who are engaging in mission in a way that glorifies God will be growing in godliness. Let me be clear what I mean by this. I’m saying that the way we proclaim the gospel should simultaneously grow us more like Christ. The way we do mission should grow our characters in godliness.

My wife Rachel and I recently visited some CMS missionaries in South-East Asia. We met the pastor of their church–a wonderful, godly man who had just returned from a mission trip himself. He had been working in western Kenya, helping equip churches to address some very practical issues.
So, we were visiting Australian missionaries in South-East Asia–who go to a church where their pastor is involved in mission in sub-Saharan Africa. That kind of thing is entirely normal in 21st century mission and shouldn’t surprise us at all. Mission has been ‘from everywhere to everywhere’ for at least half a century.
As we talked with the CMS missionaries we were visiting, we found that they loved their church and their pastor. We also discovered that some other missionaries in the area tended to avoid local churches. They preferred to operate separately because they felt local churches slowed them down. Their goal was rapid gospel growth.
This experience in South-East Asia illustrates two significant themes of 21st century mission: listening to the voice of churches in places like South-East Asia or Kenya; and the desire to see rapid growth.
Mission as Listening
‘World Christianity’ is the in vogue term for the majority of the world’s Christians – that is, those in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It’s a movement seeking to give voice to theologians and missiologists in non-Western, or at least non-Anglo, contexts.
Consider the frustration of Chilean theologian Gonzalo Arroyo who, when commenting on American theology professors, asked: “Why is it that when you speak of my theology you call it ‘Latin American Theology’, but when you speak of your theology you call it ‘theology’”? A significant proponent of world Christianity was Andrew Walls, a British missiologist who undertook an important re-examination of mission history. His research enables us to tell a more complete, more accurate story of 19th and 20th century Protestant mission. Walls shows that the massive growth of Christianity in the past 200 years has typically followed a pattern: Western missionaries arrived and their ministry usually resulted in a very small number of local people becoming Christians. The explosive growth of a church typically came through the ministries of those local Christians, not the missionaries.
It was the evangelism of people like Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Nigerian Anglican bishop, that led to great gospel growth. And yet, in 19th and early 20th century writings, the focus tended to be only on white missionaries. History ignored the contribution of world Christians.
All this has led to great interest in recovering a more accurate sense of our history. We are wonderfully recovering the stories of great saints like Apolo Kivebulaya, Angelina Noble, Samuel Crowther, Betsey Stockton and Pandita Ramabai, and learning from the missiologists and theologians of world Christianity.
In the 21st century, we have the joy of worshipping the Lord Jesus alongside brothers and sisters from many cultures and countries. We have the rich privilege of reading the Bible with different cultural perspectives. There are many wonderful things about world Christianity.
But there are also areas for concern. While it is wonderful to record history accurately, it doesn’t help if we simply repeat past mistakes. Just as it wasn’t wise to airbrush out non-Anglo people, it is not wise today to airbrush out Anglo mission work and give the impression that growth has come entirely from the national church.
A great theme within world Christianity has been the appeal to listen. To listen to the theologies and missiologies being written in the Global South. We absolutely need to do that. But in the hands of some this has been taken a step further, saying that Anglo Western churches should listen and also stop speaking. Some missiologists urge the West to take the road of humility and silence. Humility–yes, absolutely. Silence–surely not. To say that Western mission should be silent is clearly not a road we want to travel.
In a similar vein, the world Christianity narrative sometimes argues that mission is not about sending. We’re told that sending is a neo-colonial narrative. But mission in the New Testament cannot be separated from the concept of sending.
Mission as Growth
Of course, if we are gospel people, we long to see others come to know the Lord Jesus. The vision of CMS is a world that knows Jesus. That vision has an expectation of growth and transformation built into it. We want to reach gospel-poor peoples for Christ. Again, that imagines growth.
But there is a bigger story here. In contemporary missiology, we can trace ‘mission as growth’ back to American missionary and missiologist, Donald McGavran. He argued that while many things were included under the umbrella of mission, one thing was more fundamental and important than everything else: the growth of the church. He developed a whole set of strategies based on sociological argument and observation.
For example, McGavran argued that mission should focus on people or people groups who are responsive to the gospel, and not focus on those who are not. We can trace a clear line of thought from the Church Growth Movement in the 1970s and ’80s, to church-planting movements in the ’90s and 2000s, to disciple-making movements today.
A definition of the latter says, ‘Disciple making movements spread the gospel by making disciples who learn to obey the word of God and quickly make other disciples, who then repeat the process’.
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We must view this vow of Jephthah as an incredibly sinful response to the Lord’s gracious working in Him and through Him. It tapped into his pride, and it was whilst drunk on success and his own pride and ego – as opposed to being filled with the Spirit – that Jephthah made the rash vow that led to the sacrifice of his daughter; a vow which completely contravened the law of God.

Recently, on a Facebook Christian theology group I am a member of, the following request for help was asked by one the other members. I thought it would be a good idea to turn the answer into a blog post with a bit of extra detail to my original answer as I had found that there was not a great deal of help to be found, either by commentaries or from internet articles. Here is the question:
“In the final section of Judges 11 Jephthah makes a rash vow that he will give whatever comes through his front door up for a burnt offering if he beats the ammonites. low and behold his daughter walks through and so he offers his daughter. So I’m trying to understand it said in a couple verses before he gave the vow that he was in the Spirit of The Lord but God ultimately knew that his daughter would be the one to come through the door.
I know God is good and isn’t the author of sin obviously so I’m just trying to understand this passage in light of this truth and need some help.”
This really is such a good question, due in part to the fact that I was unable to find the explanation that touched upon all the subject’s related aspects in one place! Here is my own humble attempt to do so:
In Judges 11, we find Jephthah, who was an Israelite from the region of Gilead. He had been exiled from his home by his own brothers for being an illegitimate child, the son of a prostitute. Presumably, Jephthah was deemed to be a source of familial shame by his pure-blooded siblings, who decided one day to drive him out of their midst.
During Jephthah’s time in exile, he became renowned as a skilled and courageous leader, leading a group of fellow outlaws who had joined together with him as a means of survival. The people of Ammon started to wage a war against Israel at some point during this time. As Israel set about assembling its strongest possible army, the elders of Gilead naturally turned to the Gileadean who had now established himself as a skilful and courageous leader, Jephthah, asking him to be a commander in the Israelite army.
Quite understandably, Jephthah was a little nonplussed by this sudden turnaround in treatment that he was receiving from his native people, and so bargained for the leadership of his hometown should he take up this role as commander in the army and successfully help the Israelites to victory. The elders of Gilead, out of desperation, agreed to the request.
(There are a couple of certain points that will prove helpful to note at this point as we consider the controversial vow of Jephthah. Jephthah, as a child, and despite his father’s indiscretion, would have certainly been taught about the Israelite religion, their laws and of Yahweh, their God. Perhaps even during that same time, but certainly after his ejection from Gilead, Jephthah would have also learnt about local pagan religions, some of which would have included human sacrifices.)
Jephthah became a key commander in the Israelite army and helped them bargain for an end to the conflict with the king of Ammon, albeit unsuccessfully. It is at this point we come to the part of the story that is of the most interest regarding our question:
v.29 “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and passed through Mizpah of Gilead; and from Mizpah of Gilead he advanced toward the people of Ammon.
v.30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If You will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands,
v.31 then it will be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.’”
As we can see, in v.29, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. He then undertook a journey that led him right to the battlefront, and at this point Jephthah made what is often described as his rash vow. 
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