Why We Fear Our Holy, Holy, Holy God

Trinity Sunday

May 31, 2015

Isaiah 6:5

Why We Fear Our Holy, Holy, Holy God

In the name of the Father and of † the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah was a faithful believer. He was sent by the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—to preach doom and hope to the people of Israel. And Isaiah was afraid in the presence of the holy, holy, holy God.

Woe is me for I am ruined

because I am a man of unclean lips

and live among a people of unclean lips,

and because my eyes have seen the King,

the Lord of Hosts. (Isaiah 6:5)

Ruin and woe because he was unclean and was surrounded by filth. No more than a snowman can exist on the surface of the sun can any sinful dirty man exist before the good and holy God.

As you thoughtfully repeat your Catechism every day (and if you don't, start tomorrow), you say, "We should fear and love God." We're big on love. But we don't know what to say about fearing God. What does it mean to fear God?

We're big on showing the happy face of God to our children: a happy Jesus letting the kids come to Him according to the Scriptures. But would a painting of a terrified Isaiah in the presence of God make it into our teaching material for kids? I don't know. It's in the Scriptures. Why do we hide Isaiah's fear of God? Some might say we must think of the children. We don't want to scare them. Perhaps. But perhaps we must consider that it's us, the adults, who are most afraid of being confronted with our holy and fearful God, who melts snowmen and men.

Our flesh refuses to think about God's anger at sinners. Not our sins, but us, as individual sinners who prove it with sin after sin after sin. Who wants to think about that? No one, of course!

We don't want to let God be God. In order to avoid the fear of God we "try to excuse God from everything that might cause us to fear Him" (Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, Eerdmans, page 40). And so the cute little baby Jesus is everyone's favorite Jesus. The resurrected Jesus is second. But no one wants to see Jesus hanging, beaten, and bloody from a cross. Look at what our holy God did to Jesus; look at God on the cross who suffered for your sin.

But in this cross—Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection—is grace. Grace for you. And in His gracious cross, you don't have to worry about having the right kind of fear or enough fear of God.

Unbelievers are afraid of many things, but never of the true triune God. On the other hand, like Isaiah, believers fear God's wrath and they stand comforted by God's act of mercy, which is why we love Him. And in His gracious cross, you don't have to worry about having the right kind of love or enough love of God.

Why do we fear our holy God? Because He is fearsome!

Why do we love our holy God? Because He loved us first, and died for us first, and rose for us first.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. Alleluia! Amen!