A Homily on the Fear of God and the Love of God (Part 1)

The service of a human being to God, as established by God, is clear and simple. But we have become so complex and crafty, so estranged from spiritual understanding, that we need the most careful guidance and instruction for right and pleasing service to God. Very often we approach the service of God by a manner that is contrary to God’s establishment, forbidden by God, which brings harm to our souls rather than benefit. Thus some, having read in Holy Scripture that love is the highest of the virtues (1 Cor. 13:13) and that it is God (1 Jn. 4:8), immediately begin and strive to develop in their heart the feeling of love, to suffuse their prayers with it, their God-contemplation, all their deeds.

God turns away from this unclean sacrifice. He requires from man love, but true love, spiritual, holy love, not fanciful, fleshly love defiled by pride and lust. God cannot be loved except with a heart purified and sanctified by divine Grace. And love for God is God’s gift: it is poured into the souls of true servants of God by the action of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). By contrast, that love which belongs to our natural properties is found in sinful corruption encompassing all humanity, the whole being of each human, all properties of each human. Vainly shall we strive toward service to God, toward union with God by means of this love! He is holy, and He rests only in the holy. He is independent: fruitless are human efforts to receive God into themselves when there is not yet God’s good pleasure to dwell in the human, even though the human is God’s created temple, fashioned for the purpose that God should dwell within it (1 Cor. 3:16). This temple is in sorrowful desolation: before sanctification it needs renewal.

Premature striving to develop in oneself the feeling of love for God is already self-deception. It immediately turns one away from right service to God, immediately leads into various delusion, and ends in corruption and ruin of the soul. We shall prove this by Holy Scripture and the writings of the holy Fathers; we shall speak of how the journey to Christ begins and is accomplished under the guidance of the fear of God; finally, we shall show that the love of God is that blessed repose in God into which those enter who have completed the invisible path to God.

The Old Testament—in which truth is depicted in shadows, and events with the external man serve as an image of what is accomplished in the New Testament in the inner man—recounts a terrible punishment inflicted upon Nadab and Abihu, two sons of Aaron, priests of the people of Israel. “Each of them,” it is said in the book of Leviticus, “took ‘his censer’, put incense in it, and offered ‘before the Lord fire’ that was ‘foreign, which’ ‘the Lord had not commanded’.” Only the consecrated fire kept in the Tabernacle of the Testimony could be used in the sacred service of the Israelites. “And ‘fire came forth from the Lord’ and consumed them, ‘and they died before’ the Lord” (Lev. 10:1-2). Foreign fire in the censer of the Israelite priest depicts the love of fallen nature, which has separated itself from God in all its properties. The punishment of the rash priest depicts the death of the soul that foolishly and sinfully offers to God as sacrifice the unclean lust. Such a soul is struck by death, perishes in its self-deception, in the flame of its passions. By contrast, the sacred fire, which alone was used in sacred rites, signifies graceful love. The fire for divine worship is not taken from fallen nature—but from God’s Tabernacle. “Fire descending into the heart,” says the holy John of the Ladder, “restores prayer. And when prayer arises and ascends to heaven, then the descent of fire is accomplished into the chamber of the soul.” “‘Behold, all of you’” says the Prophet, “‘who walk,’” that is, are guided in your life by “‘the light of your own fire and the flame’” of fallen nature, “‘which you have kindled’” instead of extinguishing—all of you will perish in hellish fire and flame. By wrong and sinful action within yourselves “‘you kindle fire and strengthen’” for yourselves “‘the flame’” of hell (Is. 50:11).[1][2]

The New Testament teaches the same thing through the parable of one who entered a wedding feast in garments not befitting a wedding, though he who entered was among those called. The king said to his servants, pointing to the unworthy one: “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness” (Mt. 22:13). The binding of hands and feet signifies the removal of all possibility for spiritual progress. Indeed: one comes into this state who has taken a false direction, rushed forth straight from the state of sinfulness, and in this very state, toward love, which accomplishes the union of the human with God, but a human already made pure by repentance. Being cast into outer darkness signifies the fall of the mind and heart into delusion and self-deception. In delusion and self-deception each thought, each feeling is utterly dark, utterly hostile to God. The servants, to whose power the wretched one is delivered—these are demons: although they are infected with insane hatred of God, they nonetheless remain His servants according to His unlimited omnipotence and wisdom; they gain power only over those humans who, through their voluntary conduct, are delivered into the power of demons. One is delivered to this power who takes a direction forbidden by God, as one carried away by self-conceit, as one who has voluntarily rejected obedience to God.

Holy love is exalted and glorified in Holy Scripture. The Apostle Paul, having enumerated in his first letter to the Corinthians the gifts of the Holy Spirit, having mentioned the gifts of miracle-working, prophecy, discernment of spirits, knowledge of various languages, said: “‘Earnestly desire the greater gifts: and yet I show you a most excellent way’” (1 Cor. 12:31). What could be greater than a prophet, a worker of miracles, one speaking in foreign languages by the gift of the Holy Spirit and not by ordinary human learning? “‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,’” replies the great Paul, “‘but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears’” (1 Cor. 13:1-3, 8-10). What is this completeness? “‘Love is the bond of perfectness’” (Col. 3:14). One must attain perfection in all virtues in order to enter into the perfection of all perfections, into their union, into love. “‘Everyone born of God loves’” (1 Jn. 4:7). “‘God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him’” (1 Jn. 4:16). “‘This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit’” (1 Jn. 4:13). The one true sign of attaining love, given to us by the Holy Spirit Himself, is the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit within us. He who has not become the temple of the Holy Spirit, let him not flatter himself, let him not deceive himself: he cannot be the dwelling of love, he is estranged from it. Love is poured out into our hearts together with the Holy Spirit. It is His property.[3] Whoever the Holy Spirit descends upon, in him there appears His property—love (Rom. 5:5). “‘Whoever acquires love is clothed in God Himself,’” said the holy Isaac the Syrian.

Someone may object to this: “We are Christians; we have been renewed by holy baptism,” through which all infirmities of fallen nature are healed, the image and likeness of God are restored in their original beauty, the Holy Spirit is implanted in man, the corruption of properties is destroyed, and therefore so is the loss of love. True! But the graceful state of renewal and restoration given to us by holy baptism needs to be maintained by living according to evangelical commandments. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Abide in me, and I in you. For as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. Whoever does not abide in me is cast out like a branch and withers; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (Jn. 15:10, 4, 6). He who does not maintain by living according to the commandments the acquirements granted by holy baptism loses what has been acquired. “The unspeakable and awesome glory granted by baptism remains in us for one or two days,” says the holy John Chrysostom; “then we extinguish it, stirring up upon it a tempest of worldly cares and obscuring its rays with thick clouds.” Having been made alive into restoration by baptism, we again kill ourselves by living according to the flesh, by living for sin, for earthly pleasures and acquisitions.[4] The holy Apostle Paul said: “We do not owe a debt to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. For to set the mind on the flesh is death” (Rom. 8:12, 8, 6). The grace of baptism remains inactive, like bright sun hidden by clouds, like a precious talent buried in the ground. Sin begins to act in us with full force, or even stronger than before we received baptism, according to the degree to which we give ourselves over to sinfulness. But the spiritual treasure given to us is not taken from us finally until death itself, and we can reveal it again in all its power and glory through repentance. Repentance for a sinful life, sorrow over sins voluntary and involuntary, struggle against sinful habits, effort to overcome them and sorrow over their violent triumph, compelling ourselves to fulfill all evangelical commandments—this is our portion.[5] We are called to beg forgiveness from God, to be reconciled with Him, to make good our disloyalty through faithfulness to Him, to replace friendship with sin by hatred of sin. To those reconciled belongs holy love. Not so much do we seek it as God seeks that we become capable of receiving it, and do receive it. Having convicted of delusion one who was satisfied with himself through his self-conceit and blindness, and having called him to zealous repentance, the Lord pronounced the following comfort and promise: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne” (Rev. 3:20-21). This is spoken by all-holy Love itself. The feeling of love which the sinner, who continues to wallow in sin, ascribes to himself, which he ascribes to himself unnaturally and proudly, is nothing other than a deceptive, forced play of feelings, an unconscious creation of fancy and self-conceit. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning” (1 Jn. 3:6)—God, who is “Love.”

Let us turn to the dwellers of the wilderness, caverns, and chasms of the earth, to those of mankind “of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb. 11:38), to the venerable monks who labored in the highest of sciences, the science brought down by the Lord from heaven. This science is the knowledge of God and, through means of true, experiential knowledge of God, the knowledge of man. Unsuccessfully did the philosophers of this world labor and do labor to acquire this knowledge in the light of their own reason, darkened by the fall. Here we need the light of Christ! Only in the radiance of this light can a human being see God and see himself. Illuminated by the light of Christ, the venerable wilderness dwellers labored in the field of their heart and found upon it the precious pearl—love for God. In their divinely inspired writings they warn us against those calamities which ordinarily follow from seeking love prematurely. The holy Isaac the Syrian treats this subject with particular clarity. From his works we draw forth several testimonies and most beneficial teachings.

“The wise Lord,” says the great Teacher of monasticism, “wills that we eat the spiritual bread in the sweat of our face. He established this not from malice, but so that indigestion would not occur and we would not die. Each virtue is the mother of the virtue that follows it. If you abandon the mother that gives birth to virtues and rush to seek the daughters before acquiring the mother, then these virtues become vipers for the soul. If you do not cast them off—you will soon die.[6] Spiritual understanding naturally follows the practice of virtues. Fear and love precede both of these. Again, fear precedes love. Whosoever without shame asserts that one can acquire what follows without first practicing what precedes is certainly laying the first foundation of destruction for his soul. The Lord has established such a path that the latter is born from the former.”[7]

In the 55th Discourse, which serves as a reply to a letter from Venerable Symeon the Wonderworker, Saint Isaac says: “You wrote in your letter that your soul has loved to love God, but that you have not attained to loving, though you have a great desire to love. You add to this that solitude in the wilderness is desired by you, that purity of heart has begun in you, and that the remembrance of God is greatly kindled in your heart, sets it on fire. If this is true, then it is great. But I would not wish that you had written it: because there is no order here. And if you have told it for the purpose of questioning, then the order of the question is different. How does he who says that his soul does not yet have boldness in prayer because it has not overcome the passions dare to say that his soul has loved to love God? There is no way for divine love to arise in the soul, which you are mysteriously following in solitude, if the soul has not overcome the passions. Yet you said that your soul has not overcome the passions, and has loved to love God: in this there is no order. He who says that he has not overcome the passions yet loves to love God does not know what he is saying. You will answer: I did not say “I love,” but “I love to love.” And this has no place if the soul has not attained to purity. And if you wish to speak an ordinary word, then not you alone speak it, but everyone speaks that they desire to love God; and this is spoken not only by Christians but also by those who worship God falsely. Every person speaks this word ordinarily. But with such words only the tongue moves, while the soul does not feel what is being spoken. Many sick people do not even know that they are sick. Malice is the sickness of the soul, and delusion is the loss of truth. Very many, infected with these infirmities, proclaim their health, and by many are praised. If the soul is not cured of malice and does not acquire the natural health in which it was created, if it is not born again into health by the Spirit, then it is impossible for a person to desire something supernatural, proper to the Spirit, because a soul, as long as it is in sickness due to passions, is incapable of sensing the spiritual with its sensation and does not know how to desire it, but desires only from hearing and reading the Scriptures.”

“The work of the cross is twofold, according to the composition of nature, divided into two parts. One consists in enduring sorrows with the body, is accomplished by the action of the soul’s power of zeal and is properly called work. The other is acquired by the subtle work of the mind, constant meditation upon God and abiding in prayer, which is accomplished by the power of desire, and is called contemplation. The first, that is, work, purifies the passionate part of the soul by the power of zeal; the second purifies the mental part of the soul by the action of spiritual love or spiritual desire. Each one who, before complete training in the first part, proceeds to the second, carried away by its sweetness—to say nothing of laziness—subjects himself to God’s wrath because, before he has mortified his ‘members which are on the earth’ (Col. 3:5), that is, before he has healed the infirmity of thoughts through patient endurance in practicing cross-bearing, he dares to dream in his mind of the glory of the cross. This is what the ancient Saints meant when they said: ‘If the mind wishes to ascend the cross before the senses are healed of infirmity, then God’s wrath overtakes him. Ascent to the cross brings wrath when it is accomplished not by the first part—by patience in suffering or mortification of the flesh—but by striving toward contemplation, the second part, which has its place after the healing of the soul. Such a one’s mind is defiled by shameful passions and strives toward phantasms and thoughts of self-conceit. The path is blocked for him by a prohibition: because he did not first purify his mind through sorrows, did not subdue fleshly lusts, but from hearing and the letter rushed straight ahead into a path full of darkness, being himself blind. And those whose sight is sound, who are full of light and have acquired teachers filled with grace, even they suffer day and night; their eyes are full of tears; in prayer and weeping they labor day and night because of the dangers of the journey, because of the steep places, more terrible than others, that meet them, because of the images of truth that appear mixed with its deceptive phantasms. The things of God, say the Fathers, come of themselves when you do not expect them. True! But if the place is pure and not defiled.’[8]

He who wishes to approach God for the purpose of serving Him must give himself to the guidance of the fear of God.

The feeling of sacred fear, the feeling of the deepest reverence for God, is shown to us on one hand by the boundless magnitude of God’s Being, and on the other by our extreme limitations, our weakness, our state of sinfulness and fall. Fear is prescribed to us by Holy Scripture, which has begun to replace for us the voice of conscience and the natural law, when they became darkened and began to emit unclear, for the most part false sounds, and which replaced them entirely when the Gospel appeared. “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him with trembling” (Ps. 2:11), the Holy Spirit teaches us; to those submissive to His command He says: “Come, children, listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Ps. 33:12); He proclaims the promise to grant the fear of God to those who truly resolve to assimilate themselves to God: “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me” (Jer. 32:40). The beginning of the great science—the practical knowledge of God—is the fear of God. This science is called wisdom in Holy Scripture. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding” (Ps. 110:10; Prov. 1:7). “The crown of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, bringing forth peace and good health for healing. The fear of the Lord is glory and boasting, and gladness and a crown of joy. The fear of the Lord is a gift from the Lord and sets one on the paths of love” (Sir. 1:18, 11, 13). By the fear of the Lord we are taught to turn away from sins: “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death. The fear of the Lord hates evil: pride, and arrogance, and the way of the wicked. Be afraid of the Lord all day long” (Prov. 14:27, 8:13, 23:17). By the fear of the Lord we are instructed in the path of God’s commandments: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands; his children will be mighty in the land” (Ps. 111:1, 2). “Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him” (Ps. 127:1). “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing” (Ps. 33:8, 10).

In vain do those full of self-conceit and self-deception disdain the fear of God as the mark of contemptible slaves, when God Himself calls us to fear, proclaims that He Himself will be our teacher of fear, that He will bestow upon us the spiritual gift of the fear of God. It is not degrading for a human, a wretched creature, fallen, rejected, lost, who has made himself an enemy of God, to pass from the state of enmity and destruction into the state of servitude and salvation. Already this servitude is a great acquisition! Already this servitude is great freedom! Fear is prescribed to us as a means essentially necessary, indispensable for us. Fear purifies man and prepares him for love: we are servants so that we may lawfully become children. According to the measure of our purification by repentance, we begin to sense the presence of God; from the sensing of God’s presence arises the holy sensation of fear. Experience reveals the height of this feeling. High and longed-for is the sensation of the fear of God! When it acts, often the mind dulls its eyes, ceases to utter words, to produce thoughts: with reverent silence, transcending words, it expresses consciousness of its own nothingness and the ineffable prayer born from this consciousness. The holy Isaac the Syrian describes such a state magnificently: “When the humble-minded approaches prayer or is deemed worthy of it, he does not dare to pray to God or ask anything of Him. He does not know what to pray for; he is silent with all his thoughts, awaiting only mercy and the will that shall be spoken of him from that Majesty whom he worships. His face is bowed to the earth, while the inner vision of his heart is lifted to the exalted gates of the Holy of Holies. There dwells He, Whose dwelling is the darkness that dulls the eyes of the Seraphim, Whose goodness moves legions to stand in their ranks, imposing silence on all their orders. His boldness extends only to the following words, only this does he dare to pray: “Lord, let it be to me according to Your will.” The fear of God is a gift from God.[9] As a gift, it is requested in prayer. The holy prophet David desired to receive this gift and therefore implored God: ‘Set your word before your servant in reverence, bind your fear into my flesh’ (Ps. 118:38, 120), that is, my fleshly desires. The fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which the holy prophet Isaiah enumerates thus: ‘The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord’ (Is. 11:2).

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who by His coming to earth brought peace from God and God’s good pleasure to men, who became the Father of the age to come and the Originator of the holy race of the saved, who calls His children to love and union with Himself, offers, nevertheless as medicine for our corrupted nature, among other remedies, fear. To those who give way to outbursts of anger and hatred He threatens the fiery gehenna; to those who trample on conscience He threatens prison; to those swept away by unclean lusts He threatens eternal torment (Mt. 5:22, 25, 26, 29). To those who do not forgive their neighbors from the sincere heart, He proclaims that neither shall their sins be forgiven (Mt. 6:15). To the lovers of money and pleasure He brings to remembrance death, which may seize them at a time when they do not expect it (Lk. 12:16-20). The feat of martyrdom is exalted: it is inspired and nourished by love. But the Saviour of the world, in the instruction He gave to the martyrs, encourages them to courage and assists them in the feat through fear. “Do not be afraid,” He says, “of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt. 10:28). “Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Lk. 12:5). To all His followers in general the Lord commanded the saving fear of God, expressed in constant watchfulness and vigilance over oneself. “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning,” He said, “like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching” (Lk. 12:35-37). “Therefore keep watch,” He said to all, “because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Mk. 13:37).””