Fear of God vs Fear of Man


Devotion 20 - Fear of God vs. Fear of Man

 

Isa.51:7, 12 - “Listen to Me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is My law: Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults… “I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die, and of the son of a man who will be made like grass?  And you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth; you have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he has prepared to destroy…”

We will serve whom we fear.  When we fear man, we forgot the Lord is our maker, our provider, our protector, and His love and sovereignty. Man’s adoration, affirmation and acceptance become more important to us than the approval from God.

The fear of man ensnares and hinders us from living in the freedom that Christ has called us to, and restrains us from living for the pleasure of God. It causes us to be cowards and it immobilizes us as we fear rejection and seek to avoid confrontation instead. We are entrapped to always seek acceptance, thus always safeguarding ourselves, which will render us ineffective in our full obedience and service to God.

Pro.29:25 – “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.”

 

Fear of man is a snare. A snare is a trap, to trap us from the empowering grace of God and suppress our gifts. One of the ways the fear of man entraps us is by stopping us from doing something we know we should do, or something that would be good for us to do, or something that would move us out of our comfort zone and stretch us without regard for the fear of appearing foolish.

Gal.1:10 – “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”

 

Paul’s not saying we shouldn’t ever try to please people or that it’s always wrong to want people to approve of us. He’s talking about what drives us, what motivates us, what controls us. Do we constantly want people to be happy with us and can’t bear to think of people being unhappy with us? If our goal is to please people rather than please God, our service for Christ will be seriously hindered.

How do we overcome the fear of man in our life? We overcome it with a greater fear: the fear of the Lord.

Matt.10:28 - “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Ultimately the fear of man isn’t between us and other people, it’s between us and God. The fear of man is a theological issue – it reveals a lot about how we view God.  If people are big in our eyes, then God will become small. We need to grow in the fear of the Lord for Him to become big in our lives.

The fear of the Lord is a good fear. Like the good cholesterol that keeps the bad cholesterol from building up in the arteries, the fear of the Lord is good for the heart and helps keep the fear of man from building up in our lives. 

Ps.19:9 – “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.


The fear of the Lord is clean – it cleanses and purifies our hearts from the fear of man. The fear of the Lord puts life in proper perspective – God is big, and man is small.

We need to learn to trust God’s promises more than our perceptions till we reach the place where we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’” (Heb.13:6)   

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