If the one whom you call 'Daddy' is the impartial Judge of everyone's actions, your life in this distant place should be lived with fear and the knowledge that your freedom from all the emptiness that you inherited at birth has been bought, and know that it cost the treasured life-blood of the perfect Christ, not some fleeting fortune which would have vanished anyways.
Generally, our culture has said that no one should ever have any reason to fear and that fear is bad. In a perfect world, yes; but in a broken world, all must know fear, and fear can actually be good. In 1 Peter 1:17-19, the believer is called to live with fear and knowledge of freedom. That sounds strange. The gospel says that there is a proper fear that remains with the Christian while they are 'in exile' in this land which is never fully home, but with that fear there is the knowledge that we have been ransomed from the futility of the temporary by the most precious of treasures. For those who call God 'Father', there will be a day when our exile is complete, when we are free from the emptiness from which we have been ransomed, and then we will no longer need to fear, for we will be like Him. For those who do not know God as Father, they ought to be terrified lest the impartial Judge speak of their works immediately. And even in this world, there are people who should rightly terrify the doers of evil.
There is more on this topic of Christian fear to consider... 2 Cor 5:11; Jude 23; Heb 12:18-29
No comments:
Post a Comment