NOTES for Mat 10:24-42

Living on earth can be frightening enough as it is, and if we apply to ourselves Christ's words addressed to the apostles, it becomes deeply unsettling. That is why the words "do not be afraid" are repeated so often and so seriously in the instruction. Fear is one of the strongest human experiences, which means it can be overcome only by something even stronger. The Lord points the disciples to these "powerful remedies": trust and, strangely enough, fear.

The trust in question is not simply faith that "God will always help," but the deepest, most fundamental confidence that everything is in His hands, from the little birds sold in the market for copper coins to every human life and death. And the second is the fear of God: not fear of punishment, not even fear of sin, but precisely "fear" before God, reverence and awe that make God immeasurably more real and significant for us than any other fears.