The Two Sides of Fear

 

Good day! I’m Duane Matz and this is Today’s Living Word

 

Ac 10:1 There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian Regiment, 2 a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always.

 

Cornelius… a godly man who was a Gentile  who believed in the existence of a higher power. This “higher power” was to be feared. The word in the Greek is phobeo, from which we get the English word “Phobia.”

 

His idea of God was not a reverence for God but an alarming sense of fear!  When he thought of God, he was fearful of what God could  do to him and so he sought to please Him with good moral conduct that included generous almsgiving. Certainly  that would appease this phobia producing God!

 

God noted the misguided faith of Cornelius and determined that Cornelius had to be straightened out. He needed to see the “grace” side of God But there was more straightening out to do with the misguided notions of Peter concerning the Gentiles.

 

So, as the old saying goes,  God kills two birds with one stone as He sends Peter to Cornelius (the Gentile) to share the gospel and overcome Cornelius’s one sided fear filled view of God and Peter’s one-sided misguided view of the Gentiles!

 

When all was said and done, Cornelius and all the others gathered in his house are baptized by Peter, Their sins washed away in the waters of baptism, their phobia regarding God as a shaking in your boots kind of God, now come alongside the tempering grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness  of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

 

The Psalmist tells us of this “right” fear of God in Ps 130:4 But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared. (revered, worshiped)

 

The holiness of God is never to be discarded, but because of Jesus we (Gentile and Jew alike) are allowed to approach God without terror through the blood of Jesus.

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word