Study of Peter: fear of God

We’ve heard how Judas embodied many outwardly Christian characteristics. But like all the other lukewarmers in the modern church today, he never knew or loved God. Both Judas and Peter sinned, they both betrayed God.

Now we turn our attention to Peter, to study his betrayal of Jesus and what that revealed about the state of his heart. The two were similar in a lot of ways, but differed in these five areas. The first one we’ll go through is the basis of their fear, namely the fear of God.

In Matthew 14, we hear the story of Jesus asking Peter to walk on water in an act of faith. The night was long, and the disciples had been rowing in vain for hours. The strength of the roaring waves was persistent, while their arms were growing weaker by the second. When our fears are staring us in the eye, we can succumb to the waves or look to the One who controls the waves.

We see this happen in real-time when Peter shifts his fear from the crashing waves to a different type of fear, a fear of God, a fear that was full of awe and not terror. Fear and faith always comes with an action. 

Jesus called Peter to demonstrate his faith right then. He wanted Peter to walk out on the water, to show that God’s power and love know no limits. No human or nature act can get in His way. 

Out of fear of God, Peter responded in obedience. It’s when we can trust that God not only holds all power and control but that He loves us and knows what we need the very most that we are able to delight in Him. 

But let’s dig into living out this kind of fear a little deeper. 

Living out the fear of God

Michael Reeves speaks to the concept of the fear of God as a “theological guard dog stopping us thinking we are made for passionaless performance or a vague preference for God. Or detached knowledge of abstract truths.” 

Knowing God is fearing Him, it is the expression of the greatest magnitude of love. Reeves likens it to the way he’s weak in the knees when a groom first sees his bride. But with God, this is magnified to a degree we can’t even fully experience here on earth. We can only get glimpses. 

I’ve heard it said before that in conversation, the person your hips are faced towards is the person you are prioritizing in conversation. Who knows if this is true. But it’s not dissimilar to our Christian life. Who we are running towards is who we love and fear the most. When we fear God, He’s the object of our affection. 

We don’t begrudgingly fear God out of obligation. It’s not something which can be fabricated, it’s an organic response out of a love for our Father. How can one delight in the fear of God if He’s merely a “detached knowledge of abstract truths” to us? 

Loving someone isn’t something you can manufacture, you either love them or not. You either love them above everything else in your life at all. 

When it gets hard

There’s a line in the song Amazing Grace, by John Newton that beautifully describes the life-changing change in our hearts when we fear God.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

  And grace my fears relieved;

Only grace can teach our heart’s to love God the most, to fear His words above all else and let Him be what we ultimately treasure. And it’s when God is centered in our life that all other fears (dreams, ambitions, anxieties, etc.) pale in comparison. Not that they go away, but when you trust that God has your ultimate good, the details of life won’t determine your joy. 

Let’s be honest, as Christians, we don’t always fear God above all else. When we let another fear take over our heart, it will fail us time and time again. Because what we fear controls us. 

Since God created us for communion with Him, only He will satisfy us. When our other fears control us, it continuously leads to frustrating dead-ends. Dragged along the hoops of disappointments, we’ll keep searching for more while riddled with anxiety and eventually anger. 

Those fears are relieved when God’s grace weave’s us back in, fearing the only power in this world, the only immovable, unchangeable God. The God who doesn’t exist in part for our own existence, He just exists.

Because we are created for more. But only with the One who made our hearts beat to His. 

And when you fear and trust in a God who is immovable, you become immovable. You’ve attached yourself to a God worth trusting, a God you can have ultimate confidence in and not be shaken by the world.

Luke 6:47-49 says, “Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” 

When you trust in both God’s power and His goodness you know that whatever befalls you, your foundation in your relationship with God will always withstand and is assured. Even though the storms of life overtake you, and even take your earthly body.

But what if we don’t trust in His goodness? We may have questions or doubts in the pureness of His character. If our dependence on His love is dependent on our understanding of it, then it’s conditional. We’re trusting Him as long as we understand everything He’s doing.

When this happens, we’re fearing something else above God. We’re essentially saying that only we can determine what is good and evil whereas He doesn’t always get it right. That our moral understanding outweighs His.

Trusting in His goodness even when we don’t understand it takes faith only derived from a great grace. 

Fear exposes our heart’s true desire by revealing what we are the most afraid of losing or not having. If it’s ever dangled out of reach or feels precariously situated, we are in distress. It’s what we think about, it’s what drives us. It’s the motivation of what we do and why we do it.

If you fear what God thinks of you, all the other things pale in comparison. If you fear God you trust in who He is, that He is good and that He is just, He is right, He is sovereign, He makes no mistakes, He only gives you good things.