Believers must have different motives, a different drive, a different goal. In this passage Paul is driven by two motives, a motive of holy fear and a motive of all controlling love. These are the motives, these are the passions that drove Paul and should drive every believer. This compels him to do this: "aim to please him" (v. 9) and "those who live might …live …for him" (v. 15)! The Context I am going to focus on vv. 11-15 today. Verse 11 connects it to the immediate preceding verse: "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." (v. 10) Everyone of us will give an account of how we lived our lives. No one escapes it. Holy Fear •A proper and necessary response is holy fear, that reverence, that awe, that captivating and gripping cognizance that you will stand before the Lord. All Controlling Love •That fear was not the only "emotion" and motive gripping Paul. If that is the only thing he had and the only thing you and I have, then we will give up – we will break, like a string too tight and it breaks. •Paul expands his motives — he is explaining what drives him to serve God and man so resolutely and completely. It is "the love of Christ" — not Paul's love to Christ (objective genitive) but Christ's love for Paul (subjective genitive) — we know that because of what he explains in vv. 14, 15. Holy Fear and All Controlling Love must serve as your motivations. They are not contradictory but complementary — they complement each other. Holy fear steels our nerves and the all controlling love warms our souls. Both are needed so that we would live for Him.
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Dr. Mark Herzer has been the pastor of Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church (P.C.A.) in Warminster, PA since 1997. Before this, he was ordained to labor as an Assistant Pastor of Korean United Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia (1992-1995). He received his M.A.R. and Ph. D....
