Sigmund Freud believed that people invent religion out of a fear of nature (earthquakes, volcanoes, disease, etc.) so that they can have a god who is powerful enough to help them with the scary things in nature. In other words, we create a supernature to take away the fear of nature.
But there’s a big problem with Freud’s reasoning, as R. C. Sproul exposes in Chapter 4 of The Holiness of God. Dr. Sproul highlights two miracles of Christ in which he exercised supernatural power over nature and the end result was more fear in His disciples!
Miracle 1: Calming of the storm. And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!” (Mark 4:41).
Miracle 2: Massive catch of fish. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:8)
The disciples feared Jesus more after nature was conquered than before when they were defeated by nature.
A Good Question
Dr. Sproul asks, “Why would the disciples invent a God whose holiness was more terrifying than the forces of nature that provoked them to invent a god in the first place?”
But these miracles raise a further question: Should our reverence for Jesus Christ increase, the more we get to know Him?
I hear many answering “No, of course not…Jesus is the friend of sinners…He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh…He’s one of us, one with us, one like us…He is tender, kind, loving, etc…”
All that is true and must be held on to tenaciously. The humanity of Christ is the greatest comfort of my Christian life and a constant theme of my ministry.
But He’s not only like us. He’s also unlike us. And today this is often forgotten.
Look at the question the disciples asked after the sea was calmed: “What manner (or ‘kind’) of man is this?” Before, they thought He was just like them, and He was; but now they realize that He’s also unlike them. Dr. Sproul comments:
“He was beyond typecasting, sui generis – in a class by himself. The disciples had never met a man like this. He was one of a kind, a complete foreigner…Jesus was different. He possessed an awesome otherness. He was the supreme mysterious stranger. He made people uncomfortable.”
Lord, Increase Our Fear
Don’t we need more of this today, in our preaching, in our churches, and in our personal lives?
No, we must not in any way reduce our emphasis on the welcoming humanity of Christ; this is what draws us to Him with such deep love.
But we must also add a far greater emphasis on the awesome deity of Christ; this is what cautions us to approach Him with such deep reverence.
The more we know Him, the more we both love Him and revere Him, trust Him and tremble before Him.
If we don’t, at least from from time to time, know something of the fear of Christ that the disciples and Peter experienced on the Galilean lakes, we might want to question if we’ve invented a Christ of our own imagination or if we really are worshipping the God-man of the Bible.
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