J
Jeanne1184
Guest
I have never read or heard a more understandable explanation of the ‘fear’ of God than the below short excerpt. Most just say it means ‘reverence’.
Anyway, this is from a book, Signifiant Etymologies or Roots, Stems and Branches of the English Language by James Mitchell, 1908, and perhaps it will be helpful to others. Felt like a strange ‘balm’ to me and I’ll not likely forget it.
Repentance is that sorrow for sin which results in newness of life. It is usual to say that any definiton of true repentance, as in the Shorter Catechism, that there must not only be a true sense of sin but an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.
Now, an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ is a phrase that seems to many self-contradictory–for how, it has been asked, can we have a “fear” of the mercy of God in Christ? The answer has been given that the difficulty is no greater in the Catechism than it is in Psalm 130:4, “But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.”
We could have understood, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be loved; or that Thou mayest be trusted; or that Thou mayest be sought after, but not that Thou mayest be feared.” And yet this is just the feeling which the experience of the divine forgiveness produces.
The sense of God’s goodness, the experience of His forgiveness, the great cost at which forgiveness was purchased, fill us with a holy fear lest we should continue to sin against so much love and so much compasssion – not the fear which hath torment, the fear which is connected with dread and cowering terror – but the fear lest we should have inadvertently grieved the heart of One who has so fully and freely forgiven all our sins.
The solution of the difficulty in the phrase “an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ” is to be sought for in an entirely different direction–viz., in the true meaning of the word apprehension, as here used…
“An apprehension of the mercy of God” is laying hold of the mercy of God in Christ – not merely knowing that there is mercy with God in Christ, but a personal appropriation or laying hold of that mercy for ourselves. The drowing man is not saved merely by knowing that a rope has been thrown from the ship for his rescue, but by his apprehending or laying hold of it for himself; and so it is with the sinner whose repentance is brought about, not by vague notions that God so loved the world, but by his personal appropriation of God’s love for himself: “Christ loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Anyway, this is from a book, Signifiant Etymologies or Roots, Stems and Branches of the English Language by James Mitchell, 1908, and perhaps it will be helpful to others. Felt like a strange ‘balm’ to me and I’ll not likely forget it.
Repentance is that sorrow for sin which results in newness of life. It is usual to say that any definiton of true repentance, as in the Shorter Catechism, that there must not only be a true sense of sin but an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ.
Now, an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ is a phrase that seems to many self-contradictory–for how, it has been asked, can we have a “fear” of the mercy of God in Christ? The answer has been given that the difficulty is no greater in the Catechism than it is in Psalm 130:4, “But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.”
We could have understood, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be loved; or that Thou mayest be trusted; or that Thou mayest be sought after, but not that Thou mayest be feared.” And yet this is just the feeling which the experience of the divine forgiveness produces.
The sense of God’s goodness, the experience of His forgiveness, the great cost at which forgiveness was purchased, fill us with a holy fear lest we should continue to sin against so much love and so much compasssion – not the fear which hath torment, the fear which is connected with dread and cowering terror – but the fear lest we should have inadvertently grieved the heart of One who has so fully and freely forgiven all our sins.
The solution of the difficulty in the phrase “an apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ” is to be sought for in an entirely different direction–viz., in the true meaning of the word apprehension, as here used…
“An apprehension of the mercy of God” is laying hold of the mercy of God in Christ – not merely knowing that there is mercy with God in Christ, but a personal appropriation or laying hold of that mercy for ourselves. The drowing man is not saved merely by knowing that a rope has been thrown from the ship for his rescue, but by his apprehending or laying hold of it for himself; and so it is with the sinner whose repentance is brought about, not by vague notions that God so loved the world, but by his personal appropriation of God’s love for himself: “Christ loved me and gave Himself for me.”