What about fear?

A Christian friend shared that when someone dies, she is emotionally upset. My oldest son often says he has no fear of death. Even though I know the people of God are with Jesus, I miss them and feel sorrow. 

A quick search shows that death is a primal fear but not always confessed, Some list public speaking, heights, going to the dentist, snakes, flying, spiders and other insects, enclosed spaces, and mice.

Other surveys boil it down to extinction, mutilation, loss of autonomy, separation, and ego death. Many of the responses are things in this life only. While the fear of death is deep in the heart, it is often ignored or pushed away until life is threatened in some way.

Like most people, the older I get the more I think about dying. While no one can know when, where, or how, it is a reality that we are all terminal, whether we want to talk about it or not. Whatever else a person might believe, what God has done through Jesus Christ gives Christians the greatest hope. This is a positive view for death and for thinking about it while alive. The Bible says it many ways:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Hebrews 2:14–15)

God is totally righteous Spirit with every right to punish sin. However, as John 3:16 says, He loves us and sent His Son to pay that penalty for us. His sinless Son alone qualified to do this for a sinful person could not pay the penalty for other sinful people, only his own. That means Jesus had to come to earth, take on human flesh and do the unthinkable. A sinless fully God, fully man, died so we could live.

Christians are accused of a ‘pie in the sky’ faith that is only about our destiny, but the above verses offer a greater view of what faith in Christ does for us; it changes life here by delivering us from the bondage of fearing death.

Oh, some of us fear the other things on that basic list, like mutilation in the process of dying, or we can fight that loss of autonomy as Jesus works in us to die to our old nature and submit to His lordship, or separation from friends and family. I’ve had a problem with fearing abandonment and sometimes fear as if my life does not matter, yet Jesus takes care of that too. After all, the God of glory died for me…

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)

With promises and statements like these from the One who died for me, what is there left to fear? Perhaps silly things like mice or spiders, or more serious such as falling off a building, or losing my mind to dementia, or being rejected by everyone. God cares for me. He says, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7) Why fear anything?

PRAY: You know that sometimes I do fear losing my hubby, or health, or memory, but when You speak to me as friend to friend, then I remember that You are not the author of fear but the One who delivers me from all fear, settling my heart and reminding me of Your salvation gift of Jesus, for both this life and the next. May I live today without concerns because I know that Your will for me is based on Your love, the love that sent Jesus to die and set me free from all fear.