What causes fear according to the Bible?

The Bible traces these fears to their real source and gives us the only effective remedy: "God is love — There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love" (1 John 4:16, 18). Nothing will cast out fear like confidence in God's perfect love. Since love has blotted out all our sins through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, we can be sure that God has forgiven them and will never again hold us accountable for them.

An accusing conscience, that says that punishment is due us, is one of the major causes of anxiety, fear and worry. Genesis gives us the first record of fear that man had. In the Garden of Eden, after he had eaten the forbidden fruit, the Lord said to Adam: "Where are you?" Adam's response was, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked" (Gen. 3:9-10). He was afraid because he knew he had sinned and deserved to be punished.

Down deep we know that sin deserves punishment, and that there will be no deliverance until the things that are troubling our conscience are cleared up in a way that is satisfactory to God.

Coupled with a sense of guilt is a consciousness that we deserve to be punished. This increases our fear. God, who knows all about this, has said: "Be sure your sin will find you out" (Num. 32:23). We cannot have peace and true happiness until the question of our guilt is settled in a way that is just.

Our God-implanted conscience, part of the moral nature of man, makes us feel guilty when we have done something wrong. It also makes us realize that we deserve punishment. Some try to ease their guilt by joining a church and getting involved in religious activities, but they know deep down that this will never bring peace.

We may not be fully conscious of the fact that sin and self-will are the cause of our anxious fears. It is so easy to deceive ourselves and make ourselves believe that someone or something else is responsible. However, we will never get rid of our fears or have any real peace until we admit the truth and get things right with God.

Adam fears, for conscience is always touched by the presence of God; it takes away every hope of enjoying sin when it penetrates into our conscience. Then one only sees God, who is feared, without our being able to appreciate Him.

The moment Adam heard the voice of the Lord in Eden, "he was afraid," because, as he himself confessed, "I was naked." Yes, naked, although he had his apron on him. But it is plain that that covering did not even satisfy His own conscience. Had his conscience been divinely satisfied, he would not have been afraid. "If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." (1 John 3:20-21.) But if even the human conscience cannot find repose in man's religious efforts, how much less can the holiness of God. Adam's apron could not screen him from the eye of God; and he could not stand in His presence naked; therefore he fled to hide himself. This is what conscience will do at all times. It will cause man to hide himself from God; and, moreover, all that his own religiousness offers him is a hiding-place from God. This is a miserable provision, inasmuch as he must meet God, some time or other; and if he has nought save the bad Conscience of what he is, he must be afraid — yea, he must be wretched. Indeed, nothing is needed, save hell itself, to complete the misery of one who feels he has to meet God, and knows only his own unfitness to meet Him.

But to the unhappy mortal who begins to feel the presence of the ghastly destroyer drawing near, by far the greater part of his dread comes from the apprehension of something which, crouching in the shadows of the impenetrable future, makes its grim reality felt by every conscience not yet rendered insensible by neglect, ill-usage, or the narcotics of hell, and that something is the dread of having to render account to God. The sting of death is sin; and however terrible death may appear in itself, this makes it ten times more terrible.

But in what an unhappy condition must the relations of the creature with his Creator be, seeing he is appalled at the prospect of having to meet Him. Everything must be woefully out of joint when such is the case. One would not naturally expect such a state of things to exist. Nor would it exist were man not alienated in heart and mind from his Creator. But the truth is he is a sinner against the God who made him, and his only anxiety is to get as far away from Him as ever he can and to keep away from Him as long as he can; and the thought of having to do with Him is a constant terror to the mind. It is conscience that makes cowards of us all; and it will continue to make cowards of us until it has been purged by the blood of Jesus.

That man is under judgment and afraid of his Maker requires no proving. The fact is evinced by his subjection to mortality, his terror at the prospect of dissolution and of what may come after, and his manifest confusion when in the presence of others he is confronted with the question of his relations with God. He may profess to be able to look death calmly in the face, and he may protest that his relations with God is his own private affair, with which no third person has anything to do, but he is not generally believed, from the sinking of a passenger ship at sea, and on the field of battle the order to be ready to go “over the top” in half an hour, will send the vast majority of even the most thoughtless to their knees. No worshipper of a false god will blush to be found at his devotions, for his conscience is undisturbed by his conception of his deity, because the idol that he worships is in his estimation no better morally than he himself is. It is the inflexible and burning holiness, righteousness, and truth of the true God with whom he has to do that fills him with dismay, for he feels his utter unfitness for such a Presence.

It is a dreadful moment in the soul's history when one wakes up to the consciousness of having committed sin — sin against light, knowledge, and privilege — sin against divine grace and goodness. Satan is sure to be specially busy at such a crisis. He casts in the most terrible suggestions — raises all manner of questions — fills the heart with legal reasonings, doubts, and fears — causes the soul to totter on the foundation.

I take Goliath here to be a sort of representative of Satan wielding "the power of death." A massive sword is in his hands, with which he terrifies the Israelites. Though terrified, they were Jehovah's people as a nation, and they stood in outward nearness and relationship to Him. Now, in Heb. 2:14-15, we are told that Satan, before the cross, had "the power of death," and that God's saints, "through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." That passage throws a flood of light upon this chapter. Unconverted men and even unestablished Christians fear to die. Now, why is this? One verse from the New Testament supplies the answer. "The sting of death is sin" (1 Cor. 15:56). Conscience accuses. Men fear to die because they know that they are sinners, and that God must punish sin. Their conscience tells them this, however indistinctly, and the Bible tells them plainly when they read it, because of which, therefore, they seldom do read it. Newspapers and novels are crowding out the word of God. But Scripture says, "The wages of sin is death," and "after death the judgment."

We had no foes more terrible than our SINS. How the guilt of them oppressed us! What a burden they were upon our consciences and souls as we staggered beneath the load of them to destruction! And the sins themselves—some of them went before us to judgment, proclaiming in trumpet tones as they went that rebels against God were coming that way, and others followed after, stealthily and sure, like a pack of hounds upon the trail of a fugitive, or an unerring detective on the track of a criminal, and ready to witness against us in the great judgment day! But whether they went before or after, the thought of them made us shudder and fear, for we knew that our sins would find us out. Before, behind, and on every side of us they gathered like a strong host besieging a doomed city.