There is a whole category of advice that has never once helped anybody, and it is the advice to stop being afraid.
It is well meant. It is said by people who love you. And it is useless in the same way that telling somebody to stop noticing a noise is useless, because attention does not respond to instruction and neither does fear.
What is more, it is not what Scripture does. Anybody expecting the Bible to talk a frightened person out of being frightened has not read the passages, because in the middle of the most reassuring paragraph in Matthew there is a command to fear.
He does not remove it. He moves it.
And the way that paragraph ends, with two birds and a headcount, is the reason this is not a threat.
He starts by naming what they are actually afraid of
The paragraph opens by telling them not to fear, and then immediately names the specific thing, which is exposure.
Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. (Matthew 10:26, King James Version)
That is a strange comfort at first reading. They are frightened of people, and He tells them everything is going to come out.
Read it in context and it is aimed at the thing that keeps a person quiet: the fear that a true thing said now will be misrepresented, and that the misrepresentation will stand, and that there will be no correction. He is saying the correction is coming.
Which is a promise about a much longer timescale than the one anybody is worried about, and that is deliberate. A great deal of fear is short-timescale arithmetic, and He is widening the frame rather than disputing the sum.
You are inside a timescale where every misrepresentation is temporary. Matthew 10:26 says nothing hid shall not be known, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who is named as the one who guides into truth rather than leaving anything permanently distorted.
Then the command, and it is a command to fear
Here is the sentence, and it is the hinge of the whole passage.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28)
But rather fear him. An imperative. He is not offering the fear of God as a possible replacement; He is instructing it.
And notice the comparison is about capacity. Not able against able. He is not saying the first party is nice or harmless. He is saying their reach ends somewhere, and that there is somebody whose does not.
That is what relocating a fear actually consists of. Nobody talks themselves out of fear; a person's fear moves when something larger arrives in the room, and He is putting the larger thing in the room by naming it.
You are commanded to fear rather than instructed to stop, and the command is a relocation. Matthew 10:28 gives it as an imperative aimed at capacity, and it is the Spirit of the fear of the LORD, Isaiah 11:2, who is named as the one who supplies it.
And then the sparrows
Two verses later the paragraph does something that would be inexplicable if the fear of God were a threat.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)
Two sparrows for a farthing. The cheapest item on the market. Luke's version has five for two farthings, which means the fifth was thrown in free, and Jesus appears to know the pricing structure.
Not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. Not: without His permission. Without Him. The word is about presence rather than about authorization.
And then the hairs, which is the most extravagant image in the passage, because it is a number nobody would ever have a use for. It is not a claim about oversight. It is a claim about attentiveness so complete that it has run out of useful things to count and kept counting.
That is who the fear is being relocated toward, and it is the reason the relocation does not produce dread. A man who fears the God of Matthew 10:28 is fearing the same person who priced the sparrows.
You are counted by Somebody who ran out of useful things to count and kept going. Matthew 10:30 says the very hairs of your head are all numbered, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person addresses Him as Father rather than as a magistrate.
What the fear of God is described as producing
If the fear of God were dread, the outcomes attributed to it in Scripture would be strange, and they are not dread-shaped at all.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10)
The beginning of wisdom. It is described as where thinking starts rather than where it stops.
The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. (Psalm 25:14)
The secret of the LORD. The word carries the sense of confidential counsel, the conversation that happens after everybody else has gone home. Intimacy is the outcome attached to fearing Him.
Nobody hands their secrets to somebody they are terrified of. The fear being described here is the kind that exists inside closeness rather than instead of it, which is the difference between how a person feels about a judge and how a person feels about a father whose good opinion matters.
You are given confidential counsel as the outcome of this fear rather than distance. Psalm 25:14 says the secret of the LORD is with them that fear him, and it is the Spirit who searches the deep things of God, 1 Corinthians 2:10, and reveals them.
What happens to the old fear
The practical question is what becomes of the fear that has been running for years, and the answer in the passage is not that it is removed.
He says fear not twice, in verses 26 and 31, and both times it is a consequence of something else being true rather than an instruction to feel differently.
That is worth holding onto, because a person who expects the old fear to vanish will read its continued presence as failure. The passage does not promise it goes. It promises it is outranked, which is a different arrangement and a more durable one.
A man still notices what people think. He simply stops taking instructions from it, in the way a person still hears traffic outside without getting up to see what it wants.
You are given a fear that outranks the other one rather than a promise it disappears. Matthew 10:28 sets one against the other by capacity, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person receives the Spirit of adoption rather than bondage again to fear.
So do one small right thing this week that nobody in your family will approve of or notice.
Fear pointed at the wrong thing, you are not where this belongs. Matthew 10:28 relocates it by naming what each party is able to do, and it is the Spirit of the fear of the LORD, Isaiah 11:2, who is named as the one supplying the right one.
You are counted down to the hairs by the One this is being relocated toward. Matthew 10:30 says they are all numbered, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person addresses Him as Father rather than as a magistrate.
I am not going to tell you the old fear goes. The woman in the parable is forty-three and still frightened of the same moment, and she would say the change is that she goes in about half the time now.
What is settled is that not one sparrow falls on the ground without your Father (Matthew 10:29), and it is by His Spirit rather than by your composure that the relocation is made.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over this is genuinely yours, given to you and never invented. He put a command to fear in the middle of the most reassuring paragraph in the Gospels and finished it with two sparrows and a headcount, so speak to the fear that has been pointed at the wrong thing: you have standing to address it because He relocated it first. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Matthew 10:28 and Matthew 10:30 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not how composed you are, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Fear pointed at the wrong thing, you are not where this belongs. The Word of God says, fear not them which kill the body, but rather fear him which is able, and it compares what each one is able to do.
- Dread of being thought difficult, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am of more value than many sparrows, because Matthew 10:31 says so after pricing the birds, and His Spirit is not a spirit of bondage again to fear.
- Abba, You number the very hairs of my head, and Matthew 10:30 says You had already run out of useful things to count. I receive Your secret counsel today, and I am doing one small right thing this week that nobody in my family will approve of or notice.
Matthew 10:26-31
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