Dr Paul Allen

We need to make some important distinctions about the biblical meaning of "fearing" God . These distinctions can be helpful, but they can also be a little dangerous. When Luther struggled with that, he made this distinction, which has since become somewhat famous: He distinguished between what he called a  servile  fear and a  filial   fear. The servile fear is a kind of fear that a prisoner in a torture chamber has for his tormentor, the jailer, or the executioner. It's that kind of dreadful anxiety in which someone is frightened by the clear and present danger that is represented by another person. Or it's the kind of fear that a slave would have at the hands of a malicious master who would come with the whip and torment the slave.  Servile refers to a posture of servitude toward a malevolent owner. Luther distinguished between that and what he called filial fear , drawing from the Latin concept from which we get the idea of family. It refers t...

We need to make some important distinctions about the biblical meaning of "fearing" God. These distinctions can be helpful, but they can also be a little dangerous. When Luther struggled with that, he made this distinction, which has since become somewhat famous: He distinguished between what he called a servile fear and a filial fear. The servile fear is a kind of fear that a prisoner in a torture chamber has for his tormentor, the jailer, or the executioner. It's that kind of dreadful anxiety in which someone is frightened by the clear and present danger that is represented by another person. Or it's the kind of fear that a slave would have at the hands of a malicious master who would come with the whip and torment the slave. Servile refers to a posture of servitude toward a malevolent owner. Luther distinguished between that and what he called filial fear, drawing from the Latin concept from which we get the idea of family. It refers to the fear that a child has...

We tend to define fear exclusively in terms of that feeling produced by adrenaline hitting our nervous systems when we feel threatened or endangered. We think of fear as a reflexive emotion that we cannot control, a weakness in the knees, or the rapid thumping of a heart that we cannot quell. This aspect of fear is real and the Scriptures record occasions when God’s enemies and His people were so stricken. One has only to consider Belshazzar witnessing the hand writing on the wall, Israel at Mt. Sinai, or Isaiah in the presence of God’s holiness to understand fear in this sense. Christians who are wholly committed to the goodness of God generally tend to view these events as anomalies, exceptions to the rule of God’s grace. Perhaps they are right. After all, I haven’t seen any detached hands, smoking mountains, or pillars rattling down around my feet lately. These events, however, are recorded in part to serve as signposts to God’s nature. They set the stage for the deeper treatme...