“Praise the Lord!
How blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
Who greatly delights in His commands.”
When I think of the blessedness of fearing the Lord I think of Jesus’ words in Mark 9 after he warns that it is better to remove a hand or an eye, if it causes us to stumble, than to enter hell with two hands, or two eyes. He concludes His warning with an analogy of salty fire. Ultimately, for those who do not flee from sin, they will encounter the unquenchable fires of hell. Such thoughts are, and should be, maximally disturbing to us. They should produce a deep dread and fear of hell – and of Him who puts people there. Ultimately, the fires of hell are an awful, dreadful, horrifying thing to contemplate. However, they can also bring a blessing. Jesus equates the fires of hell with salt. He says everyone, in a sense, will be “salted with the fires of hell.” For those who end up in hell, such salting will be an unimaginably and excruciatingly eternal reality. But for those who are turned away from sin by such thoughts, the salt is good, and it is good that we should have such salt in us. He warns that if this salt becomes un-salty that it would be no use to us. This salt, the salty fires of hell, are good for us – they can actually produce a blessing that makes us happy; abundantly happy, as this verse concludes.
I think the connection between how fearing God to the end that we are happy in Him and delight greatly in Him is seen in how Jesus is speaks of the salty fires of hell as a means of preserving us, and thus keeping us out of hell. In other words, as I have a genuine – salty – and lively sense of the horror of hell in me (by contemplating it) I will be highly motivated not to go there. I will thereby avoid, by any means, the stumbling sins that would lead me there. Jesus knows that we do not like to think about terrible things like the fires of hell, yet He knows that having such salty fear within us is good. Therefore, He gives grotesque illustrations of chopping off limbs, unquenchable fire, and worms that never die. Such realities ought to disturb us, create dread and fear in us, and motivate us to flee from sin into the arms of our savior.
When this salt does its intended job and we flee to God, we find Him to be a powerful, unstoppable savior that keeps us from hell and brings us into His eternal kingdom. To the degree that our fear is active, lively, real, and salty, our feelings of delight in God will be all the more active, real, and lively.
“Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commands.” Happy is he who has a salty fear of God, he will “greatly delight.” He will be exceedingly pleased, extremely delighted, take rich pleasure in, highly favor, and be sorely pleased in God. Could one reason why we fail to experience the depth of joy and delight in God come from the lack of effective salt in our lives? Have we passed too quickly over those inspired scriptures that warn and threaten of hell? Do we desalinate the salt God ordained to preserve us by improperly understanding such blessed doctrines as eternal security and truths such as “once saved always saved?” Do we too quickly say to ourselves that such scriptures as Mark 9:42-50, Romans 11:17-22, Galatians 6:7-8, 2nd Thessalonians 1:5-10, and Hebrews 2:1-3, 10:26-31 do not apply to us because we’re saved? Or does God want to keep and preserve His eternally saved saints, of whom He will not lose a single one, through, and by the means of such salty and fearful warnings?
John Owen in “The Mortification of Sin” gives directions for how to practically kill sin in our lives. One of his encouragements is this…
“Keep alive upon thy heart these or the like considerations of its [sin’s] guilt, danger, and evil; be much in the meditation of these things; cause they heart to dwell and abide upon them; these considerations; let them not go off or wander until they begin to have a powerful influence upon thy soul – until they make it to tremble. ”
Such a genuine fear of God, such effective use of good salt for our soul, will cause trembling. But it will be happy, delightful, trembling. Trembling that produces humility before the Lord. Trembling that the Lord looks upon with infinite grace, mercy, and love. When we are thus humbled, God draws near to us, and we can draw near to Him. So in the end our souls forget their dread as they are swallowed up in a happy view of Christ.
O Lord keep and preserve me, save me from sin. Keep my soul alive and desperate for you. Don’t let me ignore the reality of hell – in as much as my thoughts of it send me running to you. Lord let me have salt in myself that I will all the more delight and take great pleasure in “all that you are for me in Jesus.” In His name I ask. Amen.
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