Articles
Fearing and Loving our Heavenly Father
My wife and I recently got a new chihuahua puppy. Since our new dog is the first puppy I have ever had to train, it has given me a greater understanding of love and to a certain extent parenting. While there is a vast difference between a puppy and a toddler—especially with the care required—a puppy is still a child, just in dog form. Like human children, puppies can be obstinate, impatient, foolishly curious, loud, and tug on your heart strings like none other. Also similar to raising children as an adult, when training puppies, a temptation to teach with force. In our relationship with God, He does not command parental authority with domination, but through love.
1 John 4:13-18 says, “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” In a parent-child relationship, true parental authority comes from a foundation of trust. Trembling from fear can result in unwanted habits from being performed, but it only stems from not wanting to be punished. Instead, habits should be done out of a show of love and desire to please the authority. 1 John 4:19 reads, “We love because he first loved us.”
Parents can help show their children that they can be trusted through sacrifice and provision. Human parents sacrifice their time, money, etc. for their children. God made the ultimate sacrifice for His children when He sent His only son to die for our sake. 1 John 4:9-10 reads, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was also the perfect example of love and trust because He died while we were still enemies of Him (Romans 5:6-8). Parents do their best to provide food, shelter, clothing, and all the necessities that a child needs to live. Being our Heavenly Father, God provides in abundance all that His children need to live both spiritually and physically (Matthew 6:25-34; Romans 6).
Two Greek words are used for fear in the New Testament: deiliaó and phobos. Deiliaó describes the choice to be timid as a response to paralyzing fear. While phobos also means to flee with terror, it can be used to describe the respect a person has for one’s authority. Regarding our relationship with God, we can either choose to withdraw from or embrace Him and His will. Hebrews 4:1 tells us, “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.” Will you choose to withdraw and shy away from God, or are you going to revere Him and enter His eternal rest?
