Psalm: Psalms 85: 9 - 14
9 Surely
his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land. 10 Steadfast
love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness
will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
12 Yea,
the LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. 13 Righteousness
will go before him, and make his footsteps a way.
I used to wonder
how can I fear God and at the same time love Him. As much as I try to rationalize
this I cannot find how fear and love can go together. How can I love someone
with all my heart when I fear that same person with all my heart?
To me, fear of
God is to fear the Righteous Authority who has all the power to strike me dead
anytime for all my unrighteousness; the Holy Bible
states that the consequence of sin is death. When God handwrote the Ten Commandments,
He was basically saying that if I (and you) cannot follow commandment number 1
or 2 or 3, etc., I will surely die! Not only that. He was also basically saying
that I have to obey all the laws. How on earth can I (or you) do all of that? Having
sinned much because I am a sinner, I am in constant condemnation and fear of
God.
But then I
remember Jesus and what he has done on the cross; he willingly received the
death penalty that is rightfully my birthright for being a son of a sinner, and
for being a sinner myself. How can the righteous and blameless son of God do
such an unthinkable thing? When I reflected on his agony in the garden, just
prior to his death, when he cried to the Father to take away the cup of
suffering from him I am awed by the fact that he foresaw the unimaginable physical
and spiritual torment that he was about to endure. Yet he willing went
through with it. Why?
The Triune God
loves me (and you) more than I (or you) love Him. There are only two plausible
explanations I can think of as to why God allowed the death of Jesus on the
cross – either God has lost His mind or God loves me (and you) so much. The
answer to me is very obvious; God loves me (and you) so much that He took the
trouble to device and to execute the Plan of Salvation for me (and you) from the
death penalty of our sins. Because I know that God loves me perfectly first
then I can love Him back with whatever imperfect love I have within me. (As a human
being I find it utterly difficult, if possible at all, to love with all my heart,
mind and soul someone who doesn’t love me in return.)
Having a said
all of these my conclusion is that I cannot love God and fear Him at the same
time. To me that is not humanly possible.
I feared God
when I believed that I was still under the law for my righteousness, my ticket
to salvation, was obtained by my perfect obedience to the Ten Commandments, and
I can’t do that. But I have loved God when I realized that He shredded that old
covenant He established with Israel -- God did not erase the Ten Commandments, only the covenant that had the Ten Commandments as stipulation -- and replaced it with a new covenant He established with Jesus. Under
the new covenant, the Covenant of Grace, my righteousness is now obtained not
by my own good works, but by my faith in Jesus and his work of salvation in the
cross.
