Dr Paul Allen

April 16, 1521, Martin Luther arrived in the city of Worms to appear before the imperial court of the Holy Roman Empire. The previous year, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull against the German monk for his writings.  Now Luther was summoned before Emperor Charles V and the electors, princes, and nobility of the empire to renounce his views. The following day, in the presence of the whole court, he was asked two simple questions:  “Do you, Martin Luther, recognize the books published under your name as your own? Are you prepared to recant what you have written in these books?”1  To the first question, Luther answered yes.   To the second, though, he wavered. Offering an answer to this question was more than he could handle at that moment. He realized that if he did not recant, there was a very good possibility that he would be condemned as a heretic, taken to Rome, and burned at the stake. Feeling in over his head, he asked for some time to think about how he should answ...

As we work our way through the Scriptures, we are repeatedly met with the importance of the fear of the Lord and learn that it “is wisdom” (Job 28:28); “the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7); “hatred of evil” (8:13); “a fountain of life” (14:27); and “the whole duty of man” (Eccl. 12:13). Isaiah called it the church’s “treasure” (Isa. 33:6). Without dispute, it is one of the most important teachings of Scripture. Yet for all that, it is one of the least understood. We do not come to an experiential realization of the fear of God until we first see our predisposition to what the Bible calls the fear of man. The Scriptures distil the totality of our spiritual experience into a series of easily grasped contrasts: light and darkness, wisdom and foolishness, old and new, life and death, faith and unbelief, and so on. Not least among these is the contrast between the fear of the Lord and the fear of man. Our Lord Jesus highlighted this contrast when He said, “Do not fear those...