If we fear God our Father we will tremble with delight at his incomprehensible love. We will stagger at the thought that we are his adopted children. We will long to share in his holiness by embracing his loving yet painful discipline that trains us.

“I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother [or sister] too.” This is my favourite sentence in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. Packer persuasively argues that being adopted as a child of God is the highest blessing that God gives us, higher even than justification. When we are justified, we know God as our Judge, but when we are adopted, we know God as our Father. To be declared right with the Judge is incredible. When Martin Luther finally understood justification, he thought he had entered “paradise itself through open gates!” But to know God as our Father is to be loved by the one who gives us paradise!

John writes in his first letter: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn 3:1). This should stagger us, both intellectually and emotionally. And it should stir us to holiness.

Fearful Holiness

Augustine draws a helpful distinction between two types of fear:

He who has a filial fear of the Lord, tries to do his Will. Different is the fear of servants; servants fear for the penalty, children fear for love of the father. We are children of God; let us fear Him from the sweetness of charity, not from the bitterness of dread.

Christians do not need to fear the condemnation of God: he has poured out his wrath on his Son in our place on the Cross. But we can still grieve the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to disappoint him. Rather, we want to become like our Father—holy. Peter writes:

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. (1 Pet 1:14–17)

Like a fire, the fear of the Lord consumes evil desires and fuels holiness.[1]

Such fear changes the way that we pray.

Filial Fear and Prayer

Filial fear does not produce an outward hypocritical show of reverential religion like the Pharisees Jesus condemns.

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