Emil Brunner and the Fear of the Lord

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” (Ps. 111:10). A familiar verse to those of us who have been in and around the church for some time. In fact, so familiar and seemingly straightforward that we commonly quote it to other Christians, refer to it in conversations, and even send it out as an encouragement or reminder to friends (I am a little surprised that I don’t see it on more t-shirts and coffee-mugs). Still, at least for myself, along with being a familiar verse it has also always been a kind of bewildering verse. Because while the argument is simple enough, that the fear of the Lord precedes wisdom, the question always remains, what is “the fear of the Lord”?

Be honest for a minute, how many arguments have you been in (lets call them robust dialogues) about whether the fear of the Lord is respect or terror; admiration or trepidation? You don’t have to answer that out loud, because I actually can’t see or hear you anyways, but I will assume that at least some who are reading this have had those dialogues. The Lord knows that I have. And to be honest, though I have earnestly argued in those times from one side or the other, for most of my life I have not been exactly sure who is more right. Of course, to the unredeemed the fear of the Lord must be mostly if not entirely terror. How could it be anything else when you are in the cross-hairs of God’s judgment? But is there not that kind of fear also mixed in with the worship and admiration of those who have been rescued out of His judgment?

A Fuller Picture

The fear of the Lord is not the only perplexing phrase found in Scripture. The Bible is full of them. In fact, there are so many words and concepts in the Bible that are difficult to unpack that sometimes I wish God had just included a lexicon in the back. It would have been a huge time saver and cleared up a lot of discussions. But alas, He did not. And so, for our own good (and truly for the delight of our souls) we are left to become students of the Bible; to search the Scriptures in an effort to put together fuller understandings of the biblical language, and also to read and learn from those who have gone before us and done much of that searching and putting together already.

All that to say, one of the most impactful and biblical definition of the fear of the Lord that I have ever come across is from the 20th Century Swiss Theologian, Emil Brunner, in the first volume of his three-volume dogmatics set, The Christian Doctrine of God. In his chapter on the holiness of God, while Brunner is discussing God’s incomparableness and his transcendence over and above his creations, he writes this beautiful and insightful passage,

“Man is not equal to God: he is indeed a creature, not the Creator; he is a dependent, not an independent, personality. Therefore, one cannot stand on a level with God and have fellowship with Him as if He were just one of ourselves. We must bow the knee before him…The creature should bow the knee in reverence before the Holy God. This humble recognition of the infinite distance between God and man is the “fear of the Lord”: that fear of the Lord which is the “beginning of all wisdom” (Prov. 1.7). This is the expression of the feeling that we are wholly dependent upon God, and that He is in no way dependent upon us.”[1]

Isn’t that wonderfully said? When I read that some months ago, I remember feeling like for the first time I had a picture of the fear of the Lord that was beyond the age old of debate of either respect or terror. Brunner makes the picture so much fuller than that, and he does so by putting together a couple of important biblical concepts.

Consider this passage for a moment and at least two of the components that Brunner sees as essential to a biblical fear of the Lord.

STARTING WITH HUMILITY

The first component is humility. Fear of the Lord is made up of the kind of humility that comes from seeing God as completely transcendent and wholly separate from mankind in His holiness: “The King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6.15-16). It is made of the kind of the kind of humility that comes from seeing the absolute incomparable nature of God, and the creatureliness of man; from seeing God as Creator and people as His created beings: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? (Ps. 8.3-4). It comes from the kind of humility that sees Isaiah, a prophet of the Lord upon encountering the Lord, proclaiming judgment upon himself because of his absolute unworthiness: “Woe is me! yFor I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Is. 6.5).

If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then the humble admission and recognition that we are in no way equal to God is the beginning of that fear. Or to say it another way, the first essential part of the fear of the Lord is knowing that He is the Lord and that we are not.

FROM HUMILITY TO REVERENCE

The second component is reverence. Now a person might say that reverence is humility, but I would argue that they are not quite the same. People standing in the presence of God might be humbled; they might finally recognize their level of importance in comparison to Him; they may even bow their knees to Him as Paul says will be the case (Rom. 14.11). But in that moment, those knee bowers may still fail to stand in awe of Him and show Him the kind of deep honour and respect that is caught up in the term reverence. Without a doubt, reverence and humility are deeply connected. Reverence requires humility and it comes out of humility. Still, it is not the case that wherever you find humility before God, that reverence can just be assumed. And so, Brunner identifies reverence as another essential piece, “The creature should bow the knee in reverence before the Holy God.”[2]

The fear of Lord is not only recognizing the infinite chasm between us and God, it is following that recognition to a place of worship. It is recognizing not only His otherliness but also His worthiness. It is prostrating our lives before Him because we have seen not only his separateness but also His goodness. It is saying with Psalmist, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (Ps. 95.6)

HUMBLE REVERENCE

All that to say, if Brunner is right (and I believe He is), for the believer the fear of the Lord is not simply respect, and it is not just plain fear. It is more then both of those. It is recognizing how transcendent and wholly other God is, not sharing His glory with any, and so recognizing how worthy He is of all of our praise. It is in Brunner’s own words, humble reverence. Or in the words of the elders in the throne scene of Revelation 4, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4.11).

To finish where we began, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” (Ps. 111:10).

[1] Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God (Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1946), 162-163.

[2] Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, 163.

 

Easy Christianity

It is truly wild how seemingly easy we have made Christianity in the West. We have crafted this version of Christianity (which is really no Christianity at all) that requires so little effort. You don’t have to get your knees scraped or your hands dirty; you barely need to break a sweat. You almost don’t even need the power of the Holy Spirit. You just accept Jesus into your heart, then proceed to do your private devotions each day, sit in a church once a week like you’re at the movie theatre, try not to curse in public and maybe send some money out to a few different charities. I mean there is probably a little more to it then that in most people’s minds, but at the same time, maybe not.

I remember N.T. Wright wrote in a commentary on Mark some years ago, “Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk. Or did we suppose that the Kingdom of God would mean merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives?” I think that is exactly what many of us think Jesus is leading us on these days, a pleasant afternoon hike that means little more than a few minor adjustments to our otherwise ordinary lives. Again, I say it is wild because just like N.T. Wright is highlighting, nothing could be more contrary to what Jesus is actually calling His disciples to then that.

Take one verse. It is a short and simple verse and its one that caught my attention this morning and reminded me once again how uncomfortable and dangerous the Christian life is and also how impossible it is without the Spirit’s power. It is 1 Corinthians 10.24. Paul is addressing the Corinthian Church on eating food in the marketplace, i.e., is food sacrificed to idols, and he sums up his instructions to them with this command: “No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.”

Did you hear that? Well maybe read it again to make sure you are picking up what Paul is putting down. Do not seek your own good, but the good of others. That is a crazy command! How is that even possible to do consistently? How do you do that without adjusting your whole life? Now just in case your knee jerk reaction is to say that that statement pertains only to the situation Paul is addressing in 1 Corinthians, take note of two other places that such a command comes up: Romans 15.1-2, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbour for his good, to build him up,” and Philippians 2.4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

The interesting thing about all of these references is that they are all rooted in the person of Jesus. In every one of these references Paul gives the command, then points to Jesus as the example of one who truly walked out this command, and then he tells the crowd that he is writing to, “Now imitate Christ.” Well to be completely accurate, in 1 Corinthians specifically he follows up the command by saying, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ,” but you get the point. This command comes from the example of the person of whom Christians are disciples of. In other words, there is no getting around it. The command to put others needs before our own is a universal command for disciples of Jesus everywhere. This is a slice of what it means to follow Him.

When I really think about it, I am not sure that I could find a more difficult ethic to walk out then this one. I mean come on, no one naturally seeks the good of their neighbour before the good of themselves, or at least not all the time. Its impossible. But I think that is kind of the point. As Jesus once told His disciples while speaking of another impossible part of the Christian life, “With man this is impossible, with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19.26).

If you have found some version of Christianity that doesn’t make you frequently think, “How can I even do that?!” then I would guess you have found something that is not Christianity at all. The reality found in the pages of Scripture is that Jesus is not calling us to an afternoon hike, but instead is calling us into danger and risk. He is calling us into an innumerable amount of uncomfortable adjustments to our otherwise ordinary lives. Jesus never calls His disciples into an easy Christianity, instead He calls them into the kind of lives that can only be lived through the power of his Holy Spirit; the kind of lives that make little of themselves and instead make much of the needs of others so that in turn they make much of Jesus Christ.

 

Before the Foundation of the World

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Ephesians 1.3-4).

Lately I have been reading Ephesians chapter one over and over and I just cannot shake the wonder that comes over me every time I read verse 4 in particular, that God chose to save us, to make us blameless in Him before the foundation of the world. I think it hits especially hard because I can actually go and read about the foundation of the world. Just turn to Genesis 1 and you get the account of God laying out the earth’s foundations. He speaks everything into existence. He creates night and day. He separates the water from the heavens. He makes the mountains rise up out of the sea. He shapes the first man and woman out of the dust. He creates the entire universe and before all of that takes place Paul is telling me that God was thinking about me and my salvation. Before all of that happened, however many thousands of years ago, He knew me and knew that I would one day be found in Him.

What an insane concept, that God’s knowledge of us, His love for us and His concern for us began before the world began! If we ever think that God doesn’t care about us, Ephesians 1.4 should blow those thoughts out of the water. We have been on his mind since before there was an earth to stand on. And if we ever think that we are not worthy of His love or that somehow we need to earn His love, again this verse should lay those thoughts in their grave. He foreknew our redemption before we took our first breath, which means His love could not have been based on anything we did or didn’t do, but solely based upon His sovereign and ageless love.

Before the foundations of the world. Think about that.

 

Books and Death

Brevard Childs, the late Old Testament professor, wrote in the intro to his Biblical Theology

“From my library shelves the great volumes of the Fathers, school-men and reformers look down invitingly. I have also acquired over the years many of the great classics of the Reformed and Lutheran post reformation tradition. However, life is too short for a biblical specialist to do more than read selectively and dabble here and there.”

You really don’t even need to know the context to grasp the quote. Simply put, Childs just understood that he couldn’t read everything. He didn’t have enough time.

In my own life books have taken on a powerful role in reminding me daily that my days are limited. Maybe it is just because I am a slow reader, but I can’t even glance at the unread books which sit there haunting me from their designated shelf space without realizing that there are a limited number of books I have time left on this earth to read. This reality is accentuated by the fact that I have a list of books in my head of which I want to read and which are not even on the shelf yet and yet which I know, again, amount to more reading time than I have left.

It is strange the things the Lord can use to remind us of and reinforce biblical truths. Who would ever think that books could have such a morbid and prophetic type voice, but they do, at least for me. They speak before I even crack the cover, saying in what I imagine to be an old scratchy, oxfordish, baritone sounding voice, something like, “You’re running out of time, choose wisely.” They help me, at least for a moment, to recover a right sense of my own finitude, and to be honest that is worth more than all the words that fill their pages.

A Limited amount of life

As far as I have experienced, it is really only when a person grasps the limits of their own life that they begin to use their life wisely. Think about money as the analogy: When you assume your supply of dollars is endless you don’t get wise with your spending, you get frivolous; you waste it because there is (allegedly) an abundance of it. But when you realize that you only have so much money and on top of that that you only have so much time in your life to make money, you start to account for every dollar and maybe even every penny; you begin to think about where every penny and dollar go.

I don’t think that time works much differently than money. When you start to take account of your time, that is when you start to think about how every hour and day are spent; you go from spending your time frivolously to spending it intentionally. And when do you start to take account of your time? You start to take account of it when you realize that it is limited, and that unlike money there will be no chance to make more.

Making the Best Use of Your Time

Again, for me it is books that remind me often of my finite life. Of course, those books aren’t saying anything new, they are just pointing me back to the Scriptures and reawakening the many verses living in the back of my mind that speak this very truth.

Job 14.1-2 “Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.”

Psalm 39.5 “Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!”

Psalm 89.47 “Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man!”

Psalm 103.15 “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.”

1 Peter 1.24-25 “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

If there are only so many books you have time to read, choose wisely. If there is only so much money you have to spend, spend wisely. If there are only so many days and hours you have to live, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time…” (Ephesians 5.15-16)