Fear Won’t Teach Us How To Walk
In Finding the Father, Herb Montgomery comments of fear, unconditional love, and learning to walk:
“God loves you whether you sin or not. And this kind of love, this kind of understanding, although it could be taken for granted and abused, has the greatest potential to awaken the desire in us to live for this being who loves us so unconditionally. Remember, he wants to change our focus from being self-centered to other-centered, and this can be awakened only by love and understanding.
“Too often we have engaged in certain religious behaviors because we were afraid of what God would do to us if we didn’t. But this is not at all what God wants. Remember, God is not the cause of our fear—sin is! It is our own self-centeredness that will hurt us. God loves us and is trying to awaken in as a conversion from being so focused on ourselves.
“If your motive for serving God is fear of his punishment if you don’t, it makes perfect sense to be concerned about such statements as ‘God loves you no matter how you live.’ It may appear that you are opening the door to live however you choose.
“Yes, God loves you unconditionally. But that doesn’t change the inherent destructiveness of sin. God may love you, but sin doesn’t. Our motives for refraining from sin should not be fear of what God will do to us, but rather love for God and a healthy fear of how sin will hurt us if we partake of it. There is not the slightest danger in saying that God’s love is unconditional. He wasn’t the enemy in the first place. Jesus came to save us from our sin and it’s destructive results. God’s unconditional love is the only type of love that is powerful enough to win us at a heart level and inspire us to want to live differently!
‘“Love God and do as you please,’ Augustine said. But notice the first condition. ‘Love God!’ If this condition is met, then you can do as you please, because your love for God has changed what you would be pleased to do.
“Yes, he is able to keep us from falling, but in order for a child to ever learn to walk, run, and then sprint, the child must have an assurance that a fall will not jeopardize the love in his or her parents’ hearts. Only when we feel that in God’s heart it’s okay when we fall will we have the assurance to risk the fall in order to learn how to walk.”
