Forgiveness and Fear

Psalm 130:1-4

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

[T]he connection between forgiveness and fear is striking: “But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared” (130:4). . . . [T]he “fear of the Lord” is portrayed as not only the outcome of forgiveness, but one of its goals. It confirms that “fear of the Lord” has lees to do with slavish, servile terror (which surely would be decreased by forgiveness, not increased) that with holy reverence. Even so, this reverence has a component of honest fear. When sinners begin to see the magnitude of their sin, and experience the joy of forgiveness, at their best they glimpse what might have been the case had they not been forgiven. Forgiveness engenders relief; ironically, it also engenders sober reflection that settles into reverence and godly fear, for sin can never be taken lightly again, and forgiveness never lightly received (July 2).

Aaron Orendorff,

Fear is a very trick thing. Nothing can both debilitate and drive us quite like fear. “Fear,” one author writes, “is an evil, corroding thread; the fabric of our lives is shot through with it.” More important, however, than the bare reality of fear is the question of its source: What do you fear? Often our nightmares reveal more about us than our dreams. We fear for essentially two reasons: either we’re afraid we might lose something we need or we’re afraid we might not get something we want.

Here, however, the Psalmist’s “fear” is motivated not because he’s lost something or because something is being withheld. Rather, his fear arises out of what he’s gained. Even more surprising is the fact that what he’s gained (we assume) ought to alleviate his fear and not to inspire it: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”

The lesson seems to be this: the gospel, while reliving our consciences and confirming us in love, never moves us beyond the reach of fear. But gospel-fear is an altogether different sort of fear than we have ever experienced before. The fear in this case is good, healthy fear. Fear of what is great, massive, amazing, gracious, merciful. Fear, as Carson says, of what might have been but for the grace of God. Fear that drives us with wonderful and abandon away from other fears—petty, banal fears, fears centered on people, places and things—and towards the expansive and freeing “fear of the Lord.”