Law and Fear as Motivations to Obedience

The minutes of Session 699 of the Westminster Assembly:

Neither is it an evidence that a man is under law, and not under grace, when he refrains from evil and doeth good, because the law encourageth to the one, and deters from the other, but rather a sign of the power of God’s grace in him, when his heart is subdued conscientiously to live according to the Rule, though in things contrary to the dictate of corrupt nature, from the consideration of God’s goodness in rewarding freely those that do well, and of his justice in punishing them that do ill.

Ezekiel Hopkins:

And, therefore, the Antinomian is to be abominated, that derogates from the value and validity of the Law: and contends, that it is to all purposes extinct unto believers, even so much as to its preceptive and regulating power; and that no other obligation to duty lies upon them who are in Christ Jesus, but only from the law of gratitude: that God requires not obedience from them, upon so low and sordid an account, as the fear of his wrath and dread severity; but all is to flow only from the principle of love, and the sweet temper of a grateful and ingenuous spirit.  But this is a most pestilent doctrine, which plucks down the fence of the Law, and opens a gap for all manner of licentiousness and libertinism to rush in upon the Christian world . . .” (“An Exposition Upon the Commandments,” in The Works of Ezekiel Hopkins [ed. Charles Quick; Philadelphia, 1874; repr., Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995], 1:251)

John Murray:

Is it proper to be afraid of God?  The only proper answer is that it is the essence of impiety not to be afraid of God when there is reason to be afraid . . . The Scripture throughout prescribes the necessity of this fear of God under all the circumstances in which our sinful situation makes us liable to God’s righteous judgment . . . To aver that the fear of God’s wrath and of the judgments which execute his wrath is an improper motive to action is to go counter to all that sound reason would dictate . . . It is quite obvious that the Scripture represents the dread or terror of God’s wrath as belonging to the total concept of the fear of God.  Even where there is no sin, and therefore no existent wrath, we cannot eliminate the fear of incurring God’s displeasure as one motive deterrent to the commission of sin” (Principles of Conduct, 233-35).

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