If we fear God our Father we will tremble with delight at his incomprehensible love. We will stagger at the thought that we are his adopted children. We will long to share in his holiness by embracing his loving yet painful discipline that trains us.

“I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother [or sister] too.” This is my favourite sentence in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. Packer persuasively argues that being adopted as a child of God is the highest blessing that God gives us, higher even than justification. When we are justified, we know God as our Judge, but when we are adopted, we know God as our Father. To be declared right with the Judge is incredible. When Martin Luther finally understood justification, he thought he had entered “paradise itself through open gates!” But to know God as our Father is to be loved by the one who gives us paradise!
John writes in his first letter: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn 3:1). This should stagger us, both intellectually and emotionally. And it should stir us to holiness.
Fearful Holiness
Augustine draws a helpful distinction between two types of fear:
He who has a filial fear of the Lord, tries to do his Will. Different is the fear of servants; servants fear for the penalty, children fear for love of the father. We are children of God; let us fear Him from the sweetness of charity, not from the bitterness of dread.
Christians do not need to fear the condemnation of God: he has poured out his wrath on his Son in our place on the Cross. But we can still grieve the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to disappoint him. Rather, we want to become like our Father—holy. Peter writes:
As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. (1 Pet 1:14–17)
Like a fire, the fear of the Lord consumes evil desires and fuels holiness.[1]
Such fear changes the way that we pray.
Filial Fear and Prayer
Filial fear does not produce an outward hypocritical show of reverential religion like the Pharisees Jesus condemns.
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It is a joyful fear that drives us to please him, and not the paralysing fear of punishment. It is a fear that fuels our courage to persuade others at the risk offending them when we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. When we rightly fear God as our loving Judge, we will have no fear of condemnation. Rather we will long for his commendation: “well done good and faithful servant” (Matt 25:21, 23).

Believers should fear God our Creator in joyful awe, as I explored in my first article. But does fearing God as Judge feature in Christian experience? The answer is no and yes. We no longer fear the condemnation of God. But we feel a joyful godly fear because of our knowledge of God’s authoritative judgment; our confidence in his declaration of our acceptance in Christ; and our eagerness to receive his commendation for our lives of faith, obedience and mission.
Perfect Love Drives out Fear of Judgment
Fearing God as our Judge, seems at odds with the gospel. Surely it is the person who has no hope in Christ who should fear the judgment of God. This brings to mind the fear that drove Martin Luther away from God:
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.
By contrast, believers need no longer fear condemnation. When Luther grasped from Romans 1:17 the gospel truth of the gracious gift of God’s righteousness, he writes:
I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. … And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.
John writes in his first letter:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
Perfect love refers to the love of God in sending Jesus to turn aside God’s condemning wrath. It is this love that drives out any fear of punishment. It is this love that assures us of our salvation. God’s grace in Christ is the refuge from God’s wrath outside Christ.
There is a trembling of punishment outside of Christ. But there is a different kind of trembling for those in Christ. As I argued in my first article, both fears involve ‘trembling’. But gospel fear will drive you toward Christ; unbelieving fear will drive you away from Christ.
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