Putting Fear Into Perspective To Better Understand Love

If your parents / guardians raised you properly, you likely don' have to read any rule book.
If your conscience was set on what is Right, you know to do to others as you would have them to do you.
Laws and rules are for those not raised in the Way, or those rejected because they reject Him.

This is part of the Gospel message that has enlivened so many people from all walks of life:

Then Peter began to speak: 

I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 

but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right. 

- Acts 10: 34-35

In that passage from Acts, a man who believed in God was told, in a few sentences, the testimony regarding Christ.

When that man believed the testimony, he was forever sealed by Salvation.

His prior religion (manner of worship and ideas about God), or the religion of his parents, or the manner of dress, or his occupation, or anything else had any bearing besides a previous acknowledge in the God of Abraham.

After his faith in God / Christ / the Gospel message was made clearly evident, the next thing to 'do' was baptize the believer in water.

Men complicate what is very simple.

Convolute what God has summarized.

And where fear previously reigned in men's hearts, God has proclaimed love to reign in place of fear's foothold.

In human relationships, if we truly love someone, we won't purposely hurt them or dishonor them.

Between humans, we may fear another person going away from us or forever removing themselves from our lives.

We may have done this, or been tempted to do so, but notice how we not only hurt the other person, but also ourselves.

As children (or young disciples) we may consider fear as a motivator to avoid punishment or death.

I've come to realize that punishment is typically the consequences of trespass (ours personally and humanity's collectively).

The concept of God's Law is all encompassing.

Man has aimed to explain, according to observation and measurement, some laws of physics (things material or the material world reacting to fixed 'laws').

The very earthly and material-based understandings of man's laws can somehow help us realize how God's Law is the foundation and the primary constant.

When we sin and we do not experience consequences, that is God's grace over our lives.

When we sin and we suffer consequences, that is God's Law being experienced by us.

It could be said that God's Law is often experienced through the laws of physics (or things materially bound).

Suffering, then, should come as no surprise to anyone.

It is no surprise when someone gets burned when placing their hands onto a flame.

What is difficult to believe is those times men have been put into flames, and their fleshed did not burn.

By His Word, invoking out of nothing all things created and made, we are encompassed by God's Law of physics.

We may not clearly 'see' all the spiritual realities and realms, by we can see some of those dynamics in things material... even the thoughts we contemplate.

Christ warned about sin and its consequences.

Sin's consequence is absolute when considering how hopeless fear without God is.

Fear without the knowledge of God's love and gift of salvation through Christ... is a road map to condemnation.

Where religions attempt to approach the fear without knowledge of God (Christ), they are unaware that, by His grace, we escape condemnation.

This escape is not by our effort, but His promise... His work.

When Cornelius was baptized, it was because of what God had provided, accomplished, brought to completion in Christ.

We have our part (like Cornelius in submitting to being baptized), while God has His part (everything else).

Too many people in the world fear God while not understanding why they do so (conscience).

What is it that men fear?

The resolve of sin's final outcome - eternal death.

This dynamic reveals that God has rejected some.

Besides His election of us, those rejected are revealed to also have rejected Him.

Some saints suffer with such a thought; rejection by God.

Since we are called to love and pray for even our enemies (or those who make themselves out to be our enemies), God asks us to place ourselves not only in Christ's walk while on earth, but also on the cross.

From the Cross Christ prayed that His enemies be forgiven... because they knew not what they do.

The saints of God do not have enemies besides the rebellious one.

The rebellious one is that fallen angel who, by his own volition, decided to become an enemy of God when he rebelled and caused an eternal cataclysm of immeasurable proportions.

Knowing God loves us despite our humanity, is a kiss of grace. 

Understanding grace is key. 

The Law was given through Moses.

The Law describes and prescribes laws, and their consequences.

Grace and Truth came through Yeshua Christ.

Christ proclaimed a life, a freedom, and a peace that is built upon the Law yet lived out by faith (faith in what Cornelius was blessed to believe).

For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, 

and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. 

- Luke 8: 17

God continuously clarifies the consciences of His children.

If we are His children, the reflection of our consciences is inescapable because God made it that way... for our own good, and so we may be eternally guided by His Spirit.

There was a time I tried drowning my conscience.

Through abusing drugs and alcohol (self destruction), promiscuity (sleeping with demons), pursuing wealth only (idolatry), hanging out with rebellious people (factions), and so much more.

Yet my conscience never left me.

Later I realized God had not left me either.

Only my mind had pondered, in fear and doubt, the consequences of the Law.

I had been ignoring the promises that He had already fulfilled in me.

My conscience went silent for a time, only for God to confront me through it in more powerful ways.

Powerful in the manner of love.

When I desired to keep trying to escape His grasp, guilt was my tormenting solace.

When I would surrender, grace was the still unknown reality He had placed me into.

Grace is a lesson continually learned.

He taught me how I've been hurting myself the entire time, because I would persistently doubt His love for me.

Because of my sin, I considered I was unstable, unworthy for such a sacrifice as His, and that only those pure were worthy of Him.

I had forgotten it was He who made me pure, not me nor my efforts.

Knowing that God sees our thoughts and the condition of our hearts is acknowledging what He planted in us - a conscience to be directed by His Spirit.

This is why the information Cornelius received was likely the beginning of knowledge for him.

A knowledge that leads to wisdom and humbly accepting God's instruction. 

We are enabled to understand that nothing is hidden before God. 

Thus a motive exists to behave, since no man "gets away" with anything. 

The fear of the Lord is compatible with love for God. 

We come to understand at some point that fearing God has nothing to do with avoiding punishment or death.

The initial fear was how we were trained to know right from wrong.

Once coming to know what is truly right and good, we realize how God loves us despite our humanity. 

The understanding of grace, so misunderstood and not fully taught.

Grace cannot be taught through a 'gospel' of fear (often found in overly developed religions of men).

Grace came through Yeshua Christ, the Lord thy God... and the Gospel is largely about the kingdom of God, how to prepare for such a place (now and forever), and the Way to enter into it (through Christ).

Fear has its place and its function, but fear eventually ceases to be a motivator for the saints.

Love is before, behind, and beyond the religions and manners of men.

When I taste a tinge of fear, that emotion assists me in repentance.

I am motivated to quickly seek forgiveness and make amends for whatever wrong I've thought, said, and did.

I don't fear God punishing me in an eternal sense, since He promised me that I am sealed and heaven-bound.

Whatever I may interpret as 'punishment' or 'consequences' while still in the flesh is understood to be one of several tools God utilizes to fashion me more into the likeness of His Son.

This is wherever men do not have Christ, but only shadows of God concepts, they have no model of Truth... no model of living... no Perfect Man to reflect into themselves.

And if men place other men (or some other man) where God's Perfect Example (Christ) should be, notice how they surely follow the manners, words, and activities of such men (or man).

No fault can be found in Christ; neither His Word, Example, or Life.

But in men, all are sinners and have fallen short of the Perfect Model (Christ).

For those believing God's promise in Christ, they fear not any eternal outcome to their flesh's failure.

Instead, they embrace God's eternal embrace of love.. a love He's had for them since the beginning.