How does the doctrine of the Trinity and the fear of God work together? Having coauthored a book on Bunyan on the fear of God, Joel Beeke examines this question and connects this theme of the fear of God with Bunyan’s view of the Trinity. First, he looks at Bunyan’s Trinitarian Gospel of grace, showing how he integrated the doctrine of the Trinity into his basic presentation of the Gospel— even down to a child’s level. Second, he looks at Bunyan’s Trinitarian grace of fear, showing how it produces genuine piety in believers. Finally, he seeks to explain how godly fear moves the believer as he relates to each member of the Trinity— that is, the “fear-filling” grace of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. 

Okay, let's turn to Psalm 130. Psalm 130. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared I Wait for the Lord My soul does wait and in his word do I hope my soul? Waitest for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." I say, more than they that watch for the morning. "...Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all His iniquities." Now I trust you can say with me that this psalm has been precious to you at one or more points in your life.

It's a wonderful vignette of what the Heidelberg catechism says are the three things necessary to know, to live and die happily. First, how great my sins and miseries are. First couple of verses, he's just moaning over his own wickedness and iniquities. He says, Lord, verse 3, thou shalt mark iniquities, who shall stand? It's a rhetorical question.

No one can stand before God. We're all sinners. Then secondly, the catechism says, how great my deliverance is, but there is forgiveness with thee. That's tremendous. That's everything.

And then the catechism says, the third thing you need to know to live and die happily is how to express your gratitude to God for such deliverance. That is sanctification, Fear of God, piety, a lifestyle of thanksgiving. And then look at verse four. But there is forgiveness with thee, not a period there. Now I'm saved, now I can go out and live the way I want.

No, but when you're forgiven, there's this great fruit of fear, of thanksgiving, of gratitude, of sanctification, of piety, of the whole Christian way of life. It's all wrapped up in this one word, fearing the Lord. That thou mayest be feared. This is the whole goal. I redeem you, I forgive you, so that you may fear the Lord.

And then verses five through eight explain what it means to fear the Lord. I wait for the Lord. I wish I could preach on this actually right now. I wait for the Lord and my soul waits more than they that watch for the morning. And I was in the United States Army for a while.

We had a Vietnamization Day in boot camp. They just dropped us off somewhere. We were guards at a certain point. Everyone had to be a guard completely in an area where he's completely alone. Have you ever stood all night long completely alone not knowing where you were in the dark and you had to look for some enemy coming and of course there were no enemies because it was United States it wasn't in Vietnam so I'm no war hero by any means but waiting all night long I could not wait for the morning.

I kept looking to the east. Isn't there going to be some sunlight?" David says, when we live close to God, we Wait for God more than a night watchman waits for the morning." You see, it's that fear of God, that life that relates to God. Everything is related to God. God, God, God. You know, someone once said, what's distinctive about the Reformed faith?

Well, they said, Reformed believers are people who are obsessed with God. They see God everywhere. B.B. Warfield said, we see God's mighty steppings everywhere, in providence, in affliction, in times of joy. I'm waiting for Thee, Lord.

I want to see Thee. I want to know Thee. I want to love Thee. This is gratitude. This is thanksgiving.

You want to know God better. That's what a Christian is like. You see, when you fear God, you just know there's so much more to know about God that you don't know. Luther called Him the knowable, unknowable one. The comprehensible, incomprehensible one.

It's like someone you really love. When you really love them and you really get to know them, you want to know them better. That's how it is with God and the believer. You know, the father of Puritanism, William Perkins, once gave 15 marks of grace, how you can know you're a child of God. And he got done with all 15 of them.

And he said, now perhaps you're still struggling. You still don't know whether you're a child of God. OK, I'm going to give you number 16. But this one, you'll be able to know whether you're a child of God, yes or no. Because it's very simple.

The smallest babe in grace can say it, and the most advanced father in grace can say it. There's not a single child of God that can deny this mark of grace. So are you ready? This is what he said. If you are a believer, you want to know Jesus better.

Unbeliever doesn't want that personal relationship. So what we're going to do in this hour is I'm going to show you from John Bunyan, the Puritan, who wrote a book called The Fear of God, but who also sprinkled and penetrated, marinated all his writings in The Fear of God. So The Fear of God is just cropping up everywhere. I recently wrote a book with my faculty assistant, Paul Smalley, called John Bunyan and the Grace of Fearing God, which just came out from Presbyterian Reform a couple weeks ago. What I'm going to give you now is not in this book at all.

It's an offshoot of this book. I want to look with you at the Trinity, Bunyan's understanding of the Trinity, and how each person of that Trinity compels and motivates us to fear the living God. So let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank Thee so much that the whole Christian life is designed to move us to fear the living God. We thank Thee that even the forgiveness of our sins and our deliverance in Christ has this purpose, that thou mayest be feared.

So come and bless us now, Lord, as we consider thy servant, John Bunyan, and what he has done to expound this glorious topic of the Trinity and the fear of God. We pray that we may leave this seminar at the end of this hour with a deeper impression of how we are to commune with each person of the Trinity in the childlike fear of the Most High. We ask all this in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, John Bunyan used the expression that many would call an oxymoron the grace of fear. Said in Isaiah 33.

6, Bunyan said that the fear of the Lord is God's treasure, for it is one of His choicest jewels. Now, Bunyan acknowledged that a slavish fear of God and His wrath may help us in some ways and may actually serve a helpful role for a believer in the beginning of his Christian life but that slavish fear should more and more be taken over by what we've been calling in these days a childlike, reverential, loving fear toward God, the kind of fear that a child should have to his father and mother, and that that fear should characterize the very life of a Christian all lifelong. Hence, Bunyan often calls believers God-fearers. That's who they are, God-fearers. Now Bunyan's teaching on the fear of God is rich and deep.

It's the subject of so much of his writing because it's a whole way of life. It's a whole attitude. It's who a believer is. But a believer is all of these things, of course, not just in relationship to God in general, but in relationship to the Trinity. God after all is Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity, and therefore we relate to every single person of the Trinity.

So my thesis for this little address is that Bunyan believed the gospel reveals the glory of the Trinity so as to produce holy fear for the triune God. And since he believed, the gospel bore fruit and genuine piety, and you can use piety and the fear of God as synonyms, and such piety is reverential, His view of godly fear is both Trinitarian and evangelical. And to demonstrate my thesis, I'm going to just cover two points with you this morning. First, Bunyan's Trinitarian gospel of grace, and then Bunyan's Trinitarian grace of fear. So first, Bunyan's Trinitarian gospel of grace.

Bunyan often affirms in his writings his faith in the Triune God. He says, I believe there's only but one true God. There's none other than He. But in the Godhead there are three persons, there are subsistence. These three are in nature, essence, and eternity equally one.

It goes on to say, this doctrine is not revealed to us by the light of nature. You can never go out in nature, young people or children. You can never go out in nature, can you, and stand before a mountain and say, now I understand the Trinity. You can only get to know the Trinity through God's special revelation, not through his natural revelation, through the Bible, a special revelation, which reveals three persons in one Godhead. Now in Bunyan's exposition of Genesis 1 through 11, he's got a book on the first 11 chapters of the Bible.

He gives his fullest statement on the triunity of God and defending the orthodox position against modalism and against any subordination of essence among the persons of the Godhead. Now Bunyan says, believing in the Trinity is foundational to the Christian faith. He writes, the doctrine of the Trinity, with an exclamation point. That is the substance, that is the ground, that is the fundamental of all. For by this doctrine, and by this only, the man is made a Christian, and he that has not this doctrine, his profession is not worth a button." I don't know what that means.

But it means it's not worth much. For Bunyan, a hearty embrace of the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore entails simultaneously a humble fear of the Lord. He writes, pride leads to rationalism, and rationalism cannot abide the mystery of the Trinity. So Bunyan warns against what he calls the insufferable arrogance of rejecting anything in God's Word that you cannot understand. Why?

Because it's a gross failure on our part, he writes, to acknowledge that God is wiser, or it's a gross failure to acknowledge that God is wiser than men for those who are rationalists. So instead, Bunyan says, you have to approach the Bible always with an attitude of teachability. And that itself is an evidence of the fear of God. Come teachable before the only wise God, Bunyan writes, fear thou him and tremble at his word. So the Christian religion requires belief in Every sentence, he writes, that the Holy Ghost has revealed, and the doctrine of the Scriptures of truth is one God consisting of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Now Bunyan is not interested in philosophical speculation about the Trinity. He wasn't trained that way and he wasn't interested. He only wanted to use the doctrine of the Trinity as gospel doctrine. The doctrine of the Trinity, He writes, you ask me what it is? I answer.

It is that doctrine that shows us the love of God the Father and the giving of his Son, the love of God the Son and the giving of himself, and the love of the Lord the Spirit in his work of regenerating of us that we may be made able to lay hold of the love of the Father by His Son and so enjoy eternal life by grace alone." It reminds you, doesn't it, of Samuel Rutherford's famous statement, I know not which divine person I love the most, but this I know. I love each of them, and I need them all." The Trinity is precious to the believer, Bunyan is saying. He says of the Trinitarian gospel, this doctrine is sufficient for any people because it teaches faith and it produces the fear of God. So in this way, Bunyan integrates the doctrine of the Trinity into his very basic presentation of the gospel. It's interesting in the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan has a certain section in Christiana.

You probably don't know that part quite as well as you know the Christian part. But he has a certain section in which he portrays the catechizing of Christiana's children. It's part of the allegory, but it's also a realistic way in which he's saying this is how you ought to catechize your children. And it's interesting that in that section as he catechizes the children, guess what he catechizes them about? The Trinity.

You think that's one of the hardest doctrines And it is. And why would you talk to children about the Trinity? Well, because the Trinity is foundational to the gospel. So listen to the dialogue. This is taken from Christiana's section.

Question, Can you tell who made you? And Christiana's children respond, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. And can you tell who saves you? See, that's exactly where Bunyan's mind goes, right away. The children answer, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

And then he asks, what is meant and what is supposed by being saved by the Trinity? And the children answer, that sin is so great and such a mighty tyrant that none can pull us out of his clutches but a triune God. And that God is good and loving to man so as to pull him indeed out of his miserable state." Wouldn't you like it if your children would answer that way? And the question, but how does God the Father save you? The children answer, by His grace.

How does God the Son save you? The children answer, by His righteousness, death and blood and life. And how does the Holy Ghost save you? The children answer, by His illumination, by his renovation and by his preservation. Why would you go to heaven?

And the children answer, that I may see God and serve him without weariness, that I may see Christ and love him everlastingly, and that I may have the fullness of the Holy Spirit in me, that I can by no means hear, enjoy so fully. Do you understand how Trinitarian all of this is? And this is for children, Bunyan is saying. So clearly, classic Trinitarian orthodoxy forms the backbone of Bunyan's gospel. And in a polemical defense of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, Bunyan writes this.

That which is the righteousness of God is that which is wrought in and by the second person in the Trinity, as God and man in one person. And that resides only in that person of the Son. I speak now of the righteousness by which we stand just before God from the curse of the law." So what Bunyan is saying is, you cannot begin to grasp the gospel without understanding the Trinity, every person of the Trinity, and be deeply embedded to each one. In fact, even the free offer of the Gospel has a Trinitarian foundation. He writes, by the consent of the three persons in the Trinity, the Gospel should thus in every way go forth to call men, for the Father, Son, and Spirit are willing to receive and embrace the sinner.

Then he goes on and says basically this, that every person of the Trinity is equally willing to save sinners. See, that's one of the problems with the Arminian system. Jesus is the willing one. He's standing waiting for you to accept Him, but the Holy Spirit isn't going to work in everyone. It's only certain people accept Him.

So the reason why some do and some don't ends up in you, and when the reason ends up in you, that makes you just a little better than someone who didn't accept Him. You see, you get into all kinds of problems because You get a Savior that seems more willing than the Spirit and more willing than the Father. But in Bunyan's theology, as in all Reformed theology, all the Reformers, all the Puritans, all three persons of the Trinity are equally willing to save poor, hell-worthy sinners. That's why Bunyan writes his book, Jerusalem Sinner Saved. Jerusalem sinner is someone who nailed Christ to the cross.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, Jesus said. First word on the cross. He's saying, oh Jerusalem sinner, No matter how big of a sinner you are, you can be saved by this glorious triune God. He writes, come then from whence you will the Father is willing to give you the Son and so is the Son willing to give you himself And so is the Holy Spirit willing to give you his help against whatsoever may labor to hinder you While you're here on this earth from coming to God So consequently The point I want you not to forget is that Bunyan is weaving the doctrine of the Trinity into the very warp and wolf of the Gospel itself. He says, the Father and the Son, though they with the Holy Ghost are one and the eternal same God, yet as to their personality, they are distinct, but all of them are equally involved in our salvation.

We are saved by grace. The grace of the Father, he writes, the grace of the Son, and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Now Having established all this in many of his writings, Bunyan then moves from there to the fear of God, which is my second thought, is Trinitarian grace of fear. But he, see, the gospel is Trinitarian, so the fear of God, which is the fruit of the gospel, must also be Trinitarian. And that produces this whole lifestyle of piety or the fear of God, sometimes called by Bunyan reverence towards God.

So for Bunyan, the loving, reverential, filial, that is childlike, fear of the triune God is essential. You can't have piety without it. So you have this fearful glory, first of all, in Bunyan, of the one true God. God's a God of infinite majesty, he says. And he says one of God's titles is fear with a capital F.

He's the fear of his people. Remember in Genesis 31, he revealed himself to Isaac as the fear, the fear of Isaac, because of the dread and terrible majesty that is in him, Bunyan writes, Deuteronomy, quoting Deuteronomy 721. Now, Bunyan uses the word dread here, not in the sense of appalling evil, but in the sense of something truly worthy to be feared. Much in the same way that the King James Version uses the word terrible of God. It's an old-fashioned use of the word, which means just astonishingly reverent, terrible.

You can't stand in His sight apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Or as Bunyan says, God is inescapably awe-inspiring. For he is the true and the living God, Bunyan writes, maker of the worlds, upholder of all things by the word of his power. He's the incomprehensible majesty in comparison of whom all nations are less than one drop in a bucket and the smallest dust upon the balance. This is he that fills heaven and earth, is everywhere present with the children of men, beholding the evil and the good, for he sets his eyes upon all their ways." Since you came to this conference a couple days ago, would you like to have put on the walls of this sanctuary every single thought you've thought And everyone can read it publicly, every word you've spoken, and you'd be embarrassed.

But you see, Bunyan says, we stand in awe of God Because he sets his eyes on all our ways, our thoughts. He knows them all. He's holy. How can you stand before him if he marks iniquities? This is an awesome God.

We need to stand before Him in fear. That's what the Old Testament commands us to do. We saw that from Ecclesiastes 12, 13. That's what the New Testament commands us to do. 1 Peter 1, 17.

You see, for Bunyan, the divine nature was holiness in its essence, and this perception is in large measure responsible for generating in man a fear of God. What happens when people saw God in various forms, in the form of an angel, in the form of a man, various theophanies? What happened? Every single time in the Bible, They just fell down as if they were dead, didn't they, or they were just astonished. They respond, says Bunyan, with dread and fear of God's astonishing majesty.

Now, Bunyan says, if all three persons of the Trinity are equally God, you see, every person of the Trinity fills us with this holy, reverential fear. So those are my three sub-points I want to cover with you right now. The fear-filling grace, he calls it a grace because it's in a believer. It's for your good. The fear-filling grace of the Father, the fear-filling grace of the Son, and the fear-filling grace of the Holy Spirit.

Let's look at those briefly. Bunyan believes with Paul that among fallen human beings there is none righteous, no not one. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Romans 2 10 and 18. Godly fear therefore can only come from God decreed by the Father.

It flows from the distinguishing love of God to His elect, Bunyan says, that those that are wrapped up in the eternal or everlasting covenant of God might fear him and he quotes Jeremiah 32 40 I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good But I will put fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me so Bunyan says eternal covenant which God chooses works out a way to actually affirm and implement his choosing of his people from eternity. That eternal covenant of grace as an eternal pact among the persons of the Trinity that in time as the believer becomes a believer, the sinner becomes a believer, enters into the covenant, That will put fear into their souls. So the Father's goodness, says Bunyan, now get this, the Father's goodness is both the source of godly fear and the object of Godly fear. So God promises good to those who fear Him. Psalm 103, 17, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting, eternity past, to everlasting, eternity future.

Upon them, what? Who fear Him. So Bunyan assures the child of God, this is a long-lived mercy. It will live longer than your sin. It will live longer than your temptation.

It will live longer than your sorrows. It will live longer than your persecutors. God's love is an infinite promise. Bunyan urged his readers to hang upon God's love and fear Him like a chain of gold about their neck." You see, God extends the infinite affections as a father, the infinite affections of his heart toward his children and sympathizes tenderly with them and their afflictions and temptations. And Bunyan has here six scriptural proofs.

He's your father, he says. He can't forget his dear children. He can't fail to be compassionate to you. He takes pleasure in those who fear Him. He delights in His Son and in the works of His Son, and He delights in those who fear Him through His Son.

His delights are the river of joy from which they ever drink in His presence. His pleasure in them makes them beautiful. That's why God says in Zephaniah, because he delights in his son and he delights in those who delight in his son, that he sings over you with rejoicing. Isn't it amazing? You fear God and you stand before him and you say, I'm a hell worthy sinner.

I don't deserve the least notice or attention from you, Lord. And Bunyan says, the Father comes. The Father who works that fear of God in you. And he sings over you. He's so happy with you.

He breaks out into singing because you're in Christ and you're showing the fruits of being in Christ by fearing him. His pleasure in you makes you beautiful. Psalm 149 verse four Bunyan says, he teaches you how to please him in all your ways. He's ravished with you. He quotes Solomon here.

He bears patiently with your faults. He takes great delight in the smallest acts of obedience and worship that you render to him. He's a tender-hearted father. Fear him. But he's also a tough father, Bunyan says.

I was just with a couple families yesterday and we were talking about effective parenting And one of the things I mentioned was I have a brother with 13 children, and my sister-in-law is just really incredible woman in handling these 13 children. I mean, a lot of families have a lot more trouble with one child than they have with 13, I assure you. And I've watched her so often in my life. I've been in their home. I've lived with them days at a time.

What is the secret? And I was mentioning to them yesterday that she's incredibly loving, I mean incredibly loving, affectionate, but she's also incredibly tough. You don't mess with her. She's disciplinarian. I mean you don't cross mama's path.

You just don't do it in that family. You know you're in trouble. You see, in a way, that's how God parents us. He's incredibly loving, affectionate, sympathetic, tender. He's our father.

But He's a tough Father because He does not like sin. And He cares so much about us that He's determined to make us holy. You know what Stephen Sharnock said? God the Father loves you so much, speaking to believers now, that He'd rather rub a hole in your garments to make you clean than to allow a spot to remain. That's how much he loves you.

He's tough, so he'll discipline you. He won't just look the other way. He doesn't wink at sin or look at sin, says Habakkuk, I think, through the fingers. It'll make you honest with yourself. Honest with Him.

Bunyan says in Eccles' Pilgrims Progress, God can lay you in the dungeon in chains. And he sometimes so afflicts a believer that it seems like he runs upon him like a giant, quoting Job 16, 14. Christians should fear to sin against their loving father, for his fatherly touch is full of power over life and over death. And yet, and this is so typical Puritan, so typical of our Reformed forefathers, Bunyan was deeply concerned that the children of God would fear with the fear of children and not as slaves fear a tyrant. He said if you have only slavish fear, it will give you no strength against sin.

You're just afraid to sin because of its results, and if that's the case, you're going to sin in your heart if you don't sin in your actions. So that's not the solution. Slavish fear is not the ultimate solution. It can help a little bit in some ways. But looking to God as one's father in Christ promises a sun-like bowing under the rod, Bunyan writes.

And when you have a sun-like bowing under the rod, that is spiritual submission, and by the way, in Puritan thinking, spiritual submission involves four steps. I give them to you quickly. First of all, whatever happens to you, you acknowledge it's the Lord. You say, it's the Lord. Secondly, you justify the Lord, that goes deeper.

You say, it's right, I deserve even worse. Third, you approve of the Lord. You don't only say, it's right, you say, it's well, my Father knows best. And fourth, you cleave to the Lord as your best friend when He seems to come against you as your worst enemy. So this is the kind of sun-like bowing that Bunyan's referring to here.

So Bunyan said, the Christian is not a child of God today and a child of hell tomorrow, but the spirit of adoption assures him that he's included in the covenant of grace and God is his Father through Christ, so he knows God will always do the best for him the way a father will always do the best for his child, so he bows under the rod trusting his Father. And so says Bunyan, every child of God learns to primarily, not exclusively, primarily fear God with a filial childlike fear, for That is God's will for us because we are adopted into his family and he is our Father. So those are his thoughts on the fear-filling grace of the Father. Let me be more brief now on the fear-filling grace of the Son. Jesus Christ opens the door for believers to approach God boldly, says Bunyan, for Christ died for our sins.

There is no boldness, godly boldness, so great as boldness by blood, " he writes. It's the blood, the power of the blood by faith upon the conscience that drives away guilt and so slavish fear. And consequently, it begets boldness, the boldness of childlike fear. And thus though God's attributes of justice and holiness are by nature set against sin and against sinners, God's justice is turned to love those that are found in his son, for as much as there is nothing fault worthy in his son's righteousness, which is put upon us." So Jesus is the complete savior. When he pays for our sin, He pays for it all, and we trust in Him alone for salvation.

And we have then no fault. It says, if we had never sinned when God looks upon us. You remember David. He had a covenant with Jonathan. And Mephibosheth, who was from the line of Saul, and kings in those days when they got on the throne, they killed the line.

If it was another family line, they killed the whole family. And so Mephibosheth was taken far away into Lodobar, into no man's land, to get away from David. And David calls him and brings him into the court palace. And Mephibosheth falls on his face and says, Behold, here am I. He's expecting to die.

And David looks at him trembling. And David leans over his throne and says fear not Bephibosheth. I'll treat you as a son. You'll eat bread at my table. Why?

For my covenant sake with Jonathan. And you see, that's exactly what happens in the gospel. God the Father looks down from his holy, majestic, sovereign throne, and when he sees you, dear believer, He sees his son between him and you. The son with whom he's made a covenant. His greater Jonathan.

And he says, For my greater Jonathan's sake, I will not be angry with you, nor wrath, but you'll eat bread at my table, and I'll adopt you into my family, because I want to bestow an evidence of the love of my son that I have for my son. It's all about Jesus, you see. That's why the Heidelberg Catechism says that when we're wrapped up in the righteousness of Christ and God looks on us in the righteousness of Christ, it's as if we had never sinned. What a glorious thing the Gospel is. So, this mediator is the Lord our righteousness.

He's our covenant grace. And in Christ we are not shaken, we are not made broken, we are not made invalid, says Bunyan, even by all our weaknesses and infirmities. However, here it comes Again, the glorious person of the mediator also inspires fear. Now I don't know how well you know holy war. I hope you've read that as well.

Everyone reads Pilgrim's Progress, which is great. Holy war is even deeper. It's the battle over the inner soul, over man's soul. And in the allegory of holy war, the town of Mansoul, so think your soul, sent a man named Mr. Desiresawake to ask for mercy from Prince Emmanuel, which is Jesus.

And the messenger returned and said, the prince to whom you sent me is such a one for beauty and glory that whosoever sees him must both love him and fear him at the same time. So Christ's majesty, Bunyan is saying in this allegory, makes even His best servants fall down before him as dead. And therefore, when the church gathers for worship, Bunyan writes elsewhere, Christ's majestic presence must put dread and fear as well as love into his service. The grace of Jesus Christ produces fear, for it is glorious in scope and glorious in quality. It is so infinite, says Bunyan, that it inspires a holy fear and reverence.

He writes, there is nothing in heaven or earth that can sow all the heart as the grace of God. Tis that which makes a man fear, tis that which makes a man tremble with wonder and amazement, tis that which makes a man bow and bend and break to pieces and weep at the goodness of God. Nothing has that majesty in commanding greatness in and upon the hearts of the sons of men as has the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. And then finally, the fear filling grace of the Holy Spirit. I bet you never thought about that.

The fear filling grace of the Holy Spirit. Bunyan says that spirit also is awe-inspiring in his person and in his work. And so Bunyan rebukes those who mock the Spirit's supernatural operation in believers. Do you who mock at the Spirit of Christ "'think to escape unpunished?' he asked." And he makes reference to, this is a sin against the Holy Ghost if you keep persevering in rebuking and despising the Holy Spirit. Did you never read what God did to Ananias and Sapphira for telling but one lie against the Holy Spirit?

Tis a fearful thing to do despite to the spirit of grace. But then Bunyan goes on to say that more often than not, The Spirit moving us to fear God is more commonly written about in the Bible than is our fearing of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is always working, always working to move us to fear God. He first works fear in unbelievers when he convinces them of their sin and their state of condemnation under God's law. Bunyan taught that before the Spirit comes as a spirit of adoption, He works in us a spirit of bondage, Romans 8.15, because he shows us that we indeed are in the bondage of to the law, to the devil, to death, to damnation, to our own wickedness.

Now Bunyan never tells us how deep this preparatory work to salvation of being convicted of sin has to go before we get liberty to really believe savingly. John Olin said, we just need to be convicted of sin deep enough to know that we need Jesus. I think Bunyan would have said the same thing. But here's something very interesting. When Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress, you know Pilgrim's Progress is his own autobiography, right?

It's a story of his own life. I think you probably know that. Anyway, but when Bunyan falls into, he's Christian you see, when he falls into the slough of the spawn he can't get out. He's experiencing his misery. This is the preparatory work of the Holy Spirit showing you what a rotten miserable sinner you are.

And a man named Help comes along and pulls him out, and help is Jesus, Bunyan writes in the margin. And it was a pretty deep experience of conviction of sin that Bunyan had, you see. It was really, he wallowed in that slew of despond for a while. But later on, after Pilgrim's Progress was the number one best seller, I mean today it would be by far for years and years it would be number one on the New York Times best seller list in all the world. No book was sold so much as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress other than the Bible.

It was number two in the history of the world. And his wife came to him, Christiana, And she was led more gently. I mean, she experienced some sin, enough to know she needed a savior. But she didn't wallow in the slew of despond for any length of time. And she said, Bunyan, honey, you can just picture this conversation.

You know, Pim's Progress is really doing well and it's really impacting a lot of people, but I can't identify with everything you wrote in that book because I wasn't led that deeply, and neither were our precious children. And your conversion is not typical in the church, maybe you should write another part, part two, about how God normally converts people. And Bunyan goes, okay, I'll write Christiana. And so Christiana is about Christiana and the children, talking about how children normally get saved as well. It's interesting when they come to the slough of despawn, Bunyan says, they got their feet wet and their ankles, but they passed through without falling into the slough.

But they had enough preparatory work to need a savior. But they didn't wallow in it for a long time. They were led more by love than by law. So Bunyan recognizes this, you see, that the Holy Spirit works in different ways and different degrees to bring people to Jesus, but he brings them all to Jesus, and that's the point. Without a profound sense of one's need for Christ, whether it's through a very deep way or a less deep way, and one's lost condition without him, Bunyan says, you won't come to Christ.

If you don't realize you're a sinner, if you're not emptied of your own righteousness, you'll never come to Christ. You'll just go on with your own righteousness, your own religiosity, your own spirituality, your own prayers, your own tears, your own Bible, whatever, and you'll be saved, you think, by your own efforts. Bunyan says that will never work. Slavish fear will bring you the common workings of the Holy Spirit, but it's the childlike fear that is the saving work of the Holy Spirit, and that is what you need. And the Spirit will work that in you when he leads you to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So how does the Holy Spirit work godly fear then in a repentant believer? He reveals Christ to the soul through the Gospel. And this is the cause of a truly broken evangelical heart, even a sight of divine excellencies through Jesus Christ. Childlike fear arises from a vision of both divine righteousness and divine grace at the same time." And it's here, Rebanian quotes Psalm 130 to illustrate this paradoxical effect, "'If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand but this forgiveness with thee, that thou mayst be feared. So he says, you think you feared God in your slavish fear, but that was nothing compared to how you fear God now, because now you're forgiven.

Now you fear Him with your whole heart. You fear Him with your whole love, your whole life, your whole trajectory of the way you live. You fear God with obedience. You fear God with love. You fear God with piety.

Nothing moves the heart more powerfully to fear the Lord than hoping in his mercy and then seeing yourself in his Son." And then Bunyan, this is my last thought, he concludes by saying, the fear of the Lord is a powerful means by which the Holy Spirit progressively sanctifies believers. Progressively. You get more holy when you fear the Lord in truth. He quotes 2 Corinthians 7, 1, having therefore these promises dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." And he comments, "...where the fear of God in the heart of any is not growing, there no grace thrives, nor duty is done as it should be done. If then you would be perfect in holiness, if you would have every grace that God has put into your souls, grow and flourish in degrees of perfection, lay them as I may say, yea, soak them in this grace of fear and do all in the exercise of it." Boggs is saying if you want to grow in any area of your life, Marinate that area of your life in the tender, childlike fear of God.

Soak it in the fear of God and you will grow. And so, fear-filling grace is something that relates to every person of the Trinity. It relates to our whole relationship of God. There is nothing in the Christian life that is not connected with the fear of God. Do you want heartfelt worship?

Do you want to give glory to the Father who loves you, to the Son who redeems you, to the Spirit who makes you anew. Fear God with a childlike fear and serve Him through His Word, through His Son, All your days. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank you so much for the gospel. Please fill us with the fear-filling grace of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit For Jesus' sake, amen.

For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org. You