I bumped into something in the Westminster Confession of Faith the other day that piqued my interest.
By this faith, a Christian believes to be true whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein; and acts differently upon that which each particular passage thereof contains; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life, and that which is to come.
It was the 'trembling at the threatenings' that grabbed my attention. So, does God threaten? That doesn't sound very loving. Now, I know that the fellows who wrote this confession were smart guys who knew their Bibles quite well. They might not always be right, but they always had something from the Bible that they thought backed up what they wrote. So, is there something in the Bible to support this claim?
Well, the fact of the matter is that, according to the Bible, God does threaten. Here are two examples. The first is from Deuteronomy. In chapter 28 God promises great blessings if Israel is careful to do His commands. And He goes on to list a sampling of what He has in mind. Then in verse 15 everything changes. Here, God makes a different kind of promise. He promises to curse His people if they do not obey His commands. To say it differently, He is threatening them with bad things if they don't obey.
The other example that I thought of comes from Jesus' teaching. In Matthew 25 he tells the people several parables. In each one, good things happen to some people because they responded properly to Jesus' teachings. They obey Him. But also in each one, bad things happen to other people because they responded badly to Jesus' teachings. It really is the same pattern as in Deuteronomy 28: blessings and cursings. So, yes, God threatens.
Why does the Bible have threats? I think that the best way of taking this is that it is a warning. 'Do what is right, and it's all good. But do what is wrong, and it will be very bad.' It's important to understand that behind the threats is God's love. Behind the threats is God's desire that we would obey and be blessed. The threats are simply a motivation to obey and thus be blessed.
That leaves that other interesting word: tremblings. So, we are to tremble at what God has to say? Actually, we are. It only makes sense in light of the threats. Here's the verse that the Confession's authors refer to that makes this point.
All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. Isaiah 66:2
We are to tremble at God's word.
What does this trembling look like? What are we supposed to be doing? We show that we get the point when we tell ourselves, 'It could happen to me. I could be cursed. I could end up left out of the kingdom of Jesus if I don't obey.' Believing that to be the case, one thing we do is pray. We pray that the Father would protect us from falling into such a plight. We pray for a faith that takes these threats seriously. We pray that he would help us to work at being obedient to what He commands and to quickly repent when we fail to obey. That's what trembling at the threatenings will look like.