The Fear Of Man

The owner of the company I worked for beckoned me into his office, tapping his knuckles against the plastic internal window. I stepped inside—timid, but without hesitation - he gestured for me to sit. For a moment, I braced myself, half-expecting I was about to be handed a P45 for the little mishap of the hole in the wall curtsey of a forklift (I promise it was not as bad is sounds!). Then, without blinking, he asked: “How come you only work part-time hours?” I stuttered slightly before replying: “ Erm, I write songs, and part time hours gives me two full days to really commit to it.” After a brief interlude about my personal finances—how I manage to afford working part-time—and a few questions about the genre of music I produce, I found myself wriggling out of sharing anything of my faith. I breathed a sign of relief after thwarting the first interrogation. Before my fob touched to clock out for the day, I was sat opposite him, with a nervous swivel in my office chair. Recalling the moment as best I can, it went something like:

"You seem to be avoiding my questions about what you write and produce music about. If you are serious about this music thing you must have something I can listen to—something to show for it.” ”Jake you seem to care so much about what others think about you” After what seemed like an eternity of silence. I reluctantly moved my chess piece in this conversation, and sent him what was my debut single "feelings". He promised to keep it to himself and not say a word. I made a quiet getaway, feeling slightly well embarrassed.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back on my ignorant bliss, developing in my blindspot was a version of me that prioritised fitting in rather than being true and honest to myself. Subtly this fear had crept into my life. I cannot pin point the moment it started but a tactic of the enemy is to work his way in unnoticed rather than busting through your front door.

The fear of man is the setting human approval and acceptance above the cost of remaining loyal and obedient to God and being honest with ourselves. Do you obsess over how you be perceived by others? Does it easily impact your self esteem? Do you struggle with peer pressure? Do you overcommit and struggle saying no? Are you afraid of messing up and as a result looking bad in front of others? There are many many ways in which it manifests itself in our lives.

Let’s jump into scripture, I am sure you will know this story well. Matthew 26: 69-75:

69 Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.
70 But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
71 Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
72 He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”
73 After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.”
74 Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”
immediately a rooster crowed.
75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly

There are two short points I would like to make from this passage.
Firstly, Peter was the first to drop his nets and follow Jesus, yet he was also the first to drop his allegiance to Him after a truthful accusation from a servant girl. Peter had journeyed with the Messiah from the very beginning of His ministry, but fear overcame him. When faced with the possibility that what was happening to Jesus might also happen to him, Peter denied even knowing Him.
Ironically, this moment of denial had been foretold by the Son of God Himself. This highlights the fear of man can affect us all—even those who are deeply devoted to Jesus. It exposes how easily we can fail to stand with Christ when loyalty might cost us something. The cost of being cast out by your colleauges at work, being perceived as a strange, maybe even the cost of physical suffering.

Secondly, notice the progression of Peter’s lies and the growing intensity of his denial. It begins with a simple denial (verse 70), then escalates to a denial backed by an oath (verse 72), and finally ends with Peter calling down curses upon himself (verse 74). Lies. Well they often lead to even more lies. The fear of man leads not only to the denial of our relationship with Christ but also to dishonesty. The same pattern can be seen in the story I shared earlier—my fear of man caused me to shy away from sharing my faith in Jesus and led me to give evasive, dishonest answers, at if I am honest the stakes of telling the truth were low!

There is hope for us all.

The bible is clear that we are called not to fear man but only to fear God. There is that saying fight fire with fire. The idea comes from deliberately setting smaller fires in the path of a larger wildfire to burn away fuel, to starve the main fire. In a similar way, we fight our fear with fear. We use the healthy fear of God to burn away the fuel that feeds the fear of man, leaving it with nothing to sustain it.

The Bible never instructs us to not fear people, only God. As Jesus says in Matthew 10:28:
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
What people can do to us are ultimately false fears when believers stand in the light of the eternal life to come.
Jumping forward a few books in the Bible, we arrive at First Peter. By this point, through God’s plan of redemption, Peter has been restored and called into his role as a shepherd of the Church. We no longer see the man defined by his past denial, but one walking in boldness.

In 1 Peter 3:13–15, we read:
13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?
14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”
15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord.
The fear of man does not have to rule your life anymore. Peter’s story shows us that there is redemption, grace, and security when we remain close to the light—Jesus Christ.

Standing between my plan to get home, a car pulling up along the loose gravel while simultaneously dropping it's window. Before I could even get a word out he announced :"this (my debut single) is great, what are you doing? We will talk more about this tomorrow" As I settled into bed after an eventful day to say the least. These words appeared on my phone "what are we going to do about this" (tagging the unreleased song in his text

Hopefully most of you know where the song ended up, this moment of realising I was falling into a fear of man awoke me to what needed to change. Asking God to work within me and give me more opportunities to confront this fear. Don’t let it have it’s place in your life, fear the Lord and not man! Yes the fear of man occasionally finds me time to time, I am not writing this from the point of having it all together myself.
Here is a quick prayer to end:
Dear God, Give me a healthy reverence, a healthy fear of you that when remaining loyal to you may seem to come at a cost. We consider what we may gain as rubbish, that we may gain Christ instead.
Amen.
Amen.