There are no end to motivational speakers who will tell you that fear is a killer. It will make you unwilling to take necessary risks, paralyze your decision making, etc… This is often true. However, as I discussed in a previous post, fear of God has the exact opposite affect. It can motivate the best kind of living and cast out fear of anything else in all of creation.
In another post, I went over how uncomfortable it can be to live according to God’s principles but also discussed how the reward for us in heaven is eternal. This is the most significant reason for a Christian.
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:19-21
However, that isn’t to say that there is no temporal benefits in this world if God’s people diligently seek to live according to his commands.
Live the Good Life
If you’ve ever read through Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in order it can seem crazy how many rules God gives the people whom he has promised a nation and innumerable descendants. However, after instructing Israel to ensure they pass these commands on to their children, they are told the reason they have been given.
And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day.
Deuteronomy 6:24
These commands were for their good! It was for the preservation of their existence as a people that God had informed them how they ought to live. These weren’t some list of capricious demands from an unreasonable god who rewards those who perform. They were instructions from an all knowing creator of the universe as to how a nation should ensure its survival in a world tainted by sin and, therefore, extremely dangerous.
This isn’t the only place this reason is given either. Phrases such as “that it may go well with you” and “that you may live long” can be found in a number of places following instances where God gives instruction to his people.
On such example is just a few chapters later.
“You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Deuteronomy 11:8-9
Even in the New Testament, children are pointed to “the first commandment with a promise” in Ephesians 6:1-3. This is a reference to the ten commandments.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12
What Can We Learn?
For most of my early life, people learned how to live primarily from pastors, parents, and friends (the last often being a dangerous influence for teenagers!). However, more recently it seems like everyone’s looking to teachers, life coaches, counselors, psychologists, etc… to explain the way they ought to live.
With that has come no end to contradictory ideas about how to determine how individuals and nations should live in order to maximize happiness and human flourishing. However, for a Christian, there should be no question that we should first and foremost believe that what is best is for everyone to obey God at his commands.
He’s not a god who lists arbitrary demands just to see if we can jump through the hoops. He created the universe to operate in a certain way and has give mankind knowledge about how it works best for us. Anyone offering another explanation is deceiving people, to their harm.
