And it's there at the cross you feel the depths of your sin, you feel the magnificence of his compassion and grace and forgiveness.

It's there, particularly at the cross, you see the deepest heart of God.

There you'll grow in the fear of God. There you'll see how he cares, how he loves, how

he adopts to himself, failures, who he will then care for with a paternal, loving, ongoing

security.

Welcome to the Crossway podcast, a show where we sit down with authors each week for thoughtful interviews about the Bible, theology, church history, and the Christian life.

I'm Matt Tully, and today I'm talking with Michael Reeves. Michael

serves as president and professor of theology at Union School Theology in Oxford, England.

He's also a local church minister, director of the European Theologians Network, and the author

of a number of books, including What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord from Crossway?

Today, Michael and I discuss what the Bible is actually getting at when it commands us to fear the Lord.

He makes the case for the difference between rightly fearing God and sinfully being afraid of him.

He explains why the fear of the Lord is so often paired with

examples of God's gracious blessing and commands to love him in Scripture and offers encouragement

for the Christian wrestling with consistent guilt, shame, and even fear on account of their sin.

Let's get started.

Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining me again on the Crossplay podcast.

Hey, loved you, woozy. Matt, thanks for having me.

So I think it's fair to say that the idea of fearing God is something that can be pretty perplexing to many Christians, not least of all,

because the Bible itself seems to say that we should both fear God and also not fear God.

And I just want to list a couple examples here. First John 418, we read that there is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear.

Fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

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