Articles
THE MAJESTY OF GOD
The kind of God who appeals to most people today would be easygoing in His tolerance of
our offenses. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating, and would have no violent reactions.
Unhappily, even in the church we seem to have lost the vision of the majesty of God. There
is much shallowness and levity among us. Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us that
“there is no fear of God before their eyes.” In public worship our habit is to slouch or squat; we
do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God. It is more
characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears. We saunter up to
God to claim His patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that He might send us away.
We need to hear again the apostle Peter’s sobering words: “Since you call on a Father who
judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives … in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17).
In other words, if we dare to call our judge our Father, we must beware of presuming on
Him. It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis in the atonement is dangerous if we
come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God that Christ has won for us only
after we have first seen God’s inaccessibility to sinners. We can cry “Hallelujah” with
authenticity only after we have first cried “Woe is me, for I am lost.”
John Stott
from the Lincoln Bible Reader
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and
to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in
heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to
Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the
blood of Abel … Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show our
gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our
God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:22-24, 28-29).
