Sinful Fear of Man

Directions against the Sinful Fear of Men, and Sufferings by Them, by Richard Baxter

Direct. I. Ground your soul and hopes on Christ, and lay up your treasure in heaven; be not a worldling that lives in hope of happiness in the creature; and then you are so far above the fear of men, as knowing that your treasure is above their reach, and your foundation and fortress safe from their assaults.

It is a base, hypocritical, worldly heart that makes you immoderately afraid of men. Are you afraid lest they should storm and plunder heaven? Or lest they cast you into hell? Or lest they turn God against you? Or lest they bribe or overawe your Judge? No, no! These are none of your fears! No; you are not so much as afraid lest they hinder one of your prayers from prevailing with God; nor lest their prison walls and chains should keep out God and his Spirit from you, and force you from your communion with him! You are not afraid lest they forcibly rob you of one degree of grace, or heavenly-mindedness, or hopes of the life to come! (If it be lest they hinder you from these by tempting or affrighting you into sin, (which is all the hurt they can do your souls,) then you are the more engaged to cast away the fears of their hurting your bodies, because that is their very temptation to hurt your souls.)

No; it is their hurting of your flesh, the diminishing your estates, the depriving you of your liberty or worldly accommodations, or of your lives, which is the thing you fear. And does not this show how much your hearts are yet on earth? And how much unmortified worldliness and fleshliness is still within you? And how much yet your hearts are false to God and heaven? Oh how the discovery should humble you! To find that you are yet no more dead to the things of the world, and that the cross of Christ has yet no more crucified it to you! To find that yet the fleshly interest is so powerful in you, and the interest of Christ and heaven is so low! that God seems not enough for you, and that you cannot take heaven alone for your portion, but are so much afraid of losing earth!

O presently search into the bottom of this corruption in your hearts, and lament your worldliness and hypocrisy, and work it out, and set your hearts and hopes above, and be content with God and heaven alone, and then this inordinate fear of man will have nothing left to work upon.

Direct. II. Set God against man, and his wisdom against their deceit, and his love and mercy against their malice and cruelty, and his power against their impotency, and his truth, and omniscience, and righteousness against their slanders and lies, and his promises against their threatenings; and then if yet you are inordinately afraid of man, you must confess that in that measure you believe not in God. If God be not wise enough, and good enough, and just enough, and powerful enough to save you, so far as it is best for you to be saved, then he is not God: away with atheism, and then fear not man.

Direct. III. Remember what man is that you are afraid of. He is a bubble raised by Providence, to toss about the world, and for God to honor himself by or upon. He is the mere product of his Maker's will: his breath is in his nostrils! He is hastening to his dust, and in that day his worldly hopes and thoughts do perish with him. He is a worm that God can in one moment tread into the earth and hell. He is a dream, a shadow, a dry leaf or a little chaff, that is blown awhile about the world.(Job 13:25; Psalm. 1.5, 6; 68:2; 73:20; Job 20:8) He is just ready, in the height of his pride and fury, to drop into the grave; and that same man, or all those men, whom now you fear, shall one of these days most certainly lie rotting in the dust, and be hid in darkness, lest their ugly sight and stink be an annoyance to the living.

Where now are all the proud ones that made such a bustle in the world but awhile ago? In one age they look big, and boast of their power, and rebel, and usurp authority, and are mad to be great and rulers in the world, or persecute the ministers and people of the Lord; and in the next (or in the same) they are viler than the dirt; their carcasses are buried, or their bones scattered abroad, and made the horror and wonder of beholders. And is this a creature to be feared above God, or against God? See Isa. 51:7, "Hearken to me, you that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation." Isaiah 2:22, "Cease you from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Psalm. 146:3, 4, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help: his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." When Herod was magnified as a god, he could not save himself from being devoured alive by worms. When Pharaoh was in his pride and glory, he could not save his people from frogs, and flies, and lice. God says to Sennacherib, "The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, and laughed you to scorn,---and has shaken her head at you: whom you have reproached and blasphemed, and against whom you have exalted your voice and lifted your eyes on high?" Oh what a worm is man that you are so afraid of!