NOTES for Mat 10:24-42

Life on earth can be frightening enough as it is, but if we apply to ourselves Christ’s words addressed to the apostles, it becomes thoroughly unsettling. That is why the words “do not be afraid” are repeated so often and so earnestly in this instruction. Fear is one of the strongest human experiences, which means it can be overcome only by something even stronger. The Lord points His disciples to these “potent remedies”: trust and—strange as it may seem—fear. The trust in question is not merely the belief that “God will always help,” but the deepest, most fundamental certainty that everything is in His hands, from the little birds sold in the market for copper coins to every human life and death. The second is the fear of God: not fear of punishment, nor even fear of sin, but precisely “fear” before God—reverence and awe that make God immeasurably more real and substantial to us than any other fear.