Lent provides us an opportunity to re-center our lives…to do some careful examination of what we’re doing in life. Look carefully at our work, our ways of living, our worship, and ask the questions we need to ask – “Am I purposefully, intentionally living, doing the things I know would please my God, or am I being moved along in life by a spirit of my self-love?” Self-love occurs when we prioritize our will as the central decision-making of living. We live in a culture of self-love, and it is easy to get caught up in the wind of what everyone else is also doing.
Lent means I get to step back and make
some adjustments to push self-love behind God’s will in life. Is it easy?
No, by no means, in fact, it’s downright difficult. The Apostle Paul knew that and wrote to the
Romans to explain what this looked like:
“For I do not understand my own
actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So
now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that
nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do
what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I
do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within
me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies
close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my
members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive
to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks
be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God
with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin“ (Romans 7:15-25).
Seriously, Paul introduces us to
new language – the flesh – to describe this self-love. My flesh is nothing more than my self-love
choices that are made despite God’s will.
The flesh will always prefer a self-oriented decision-making model. Paul reminds us that God gave his Law as a
check to our self-love. Over against the Law stands our self-love choices and
with that a realization – “O wretched man that I am”. The modernist in us resists this language as
hyperbole – too over the top, guilt-driven.
Yet, Paul has hit the nail on the head.
Then he reminds us that the only solution to this self-love choosing
lies in God’s gift of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord! Paul is reminding us of
the much-needed thinking that must occur in our hearts and minds if we hope to
re-center – the Fear of the Lord.
What do we mean by the Fear of the
Lord? I will turn you over to Saint
Hilary, a doctor of the Church who – in the 4th century – lived a
life of faith, rising to become a Bishop of the church, fighting against the
heresy of Arianism to preserve the orthodox doctrine of the human and divine
nature of Jesus. In this particular treatise,
written about one of the Psalms, Hilary wrote about the Fear of the Lord.
The meaning of “the fear of the Lord”
“Blessed are
those who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways. Notice that when Scripture
speaks of the fear of the Lord it does not leave the phrase in isolation, as if
it were a complete summary of faith. No, many things are added to it or are
presupposed by it. From these, we may learn its meaning and excellence. In the
book of Proverbs Solomon tells us: If you cry out for wisdom and raise
your voice for understanding, if you look for it as for silver and search for
it as for treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord. We see
here the difficult journey we must undertake before we can arrive at the fear
of the Lord.
We must begin
by crying out for wisdom. We must hand over to our intellect the duty of making
every decision. We must look for wisdom and search for it. Then we must
understand the fear of the Lord.
“Fear” is not
to be taken in the sense that common usage gives it. Fear in this ordinary
sense is the trepidation our weak humanity feels when it is afraid of suffering
something it does not want to happen. We are afraid, or made afraid, because of
a guilty conscience, the rights of someone more powerful, an attack from one
who is stronger, sickness, encountering a wild beast, suffering evil in any
form. This kind of fear is not taught: it happens because we are weak. We do
not have to learn what we should fear: objects of fear bring their own terror
with them.
But of the
fear of the Lord, this is what is written: Come, my children, listen to
me, I shall teach you the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord has then
to be learned because it can be taught. It does not lie in terror, but in
something that can be taught. It does not arise from the fearfulness of our
nature; it has to be acquired by obedience to the commandments, by holiness of
life, and by knowledge of the truth.
For us, the
fear of God consists wholly in love, and perfect love of God brings our fear of
him to its perfection. Our love for God is entrusted with its own
responsibility: to observe his counsels, to obey his laws, and to trust his
promises. Let us hear what Scripture says: And now, Israel, what does the
Lord your God ask of you except to fear the Lord your God and walk in his ways
and love him and keep his commandments with your whole heart and your whole
soul, so that it may be well for you?
The ways of
the Lord are many, though he is himself the way. When he speaks of himself he
calls himself the way and shows us the reason why he called himself the
way: No one can come to the Father except through me.
We must ask
for these many ways, we must travel along these many ways, to find the one that
is good. That is, we shall find the one way of eternal life through the
guidance of many teachers. These ways are found in the law, in the prophets, in
the gospels, in the writings of the apostles, and in the different good works
by which we fulfill the commandments. Blessed are those who walk these ways in
the fear of the Lord.
Peace
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