I Will Warn You Whom to Fear
I Will Warn You Whom to Fear
`I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!' (Luke 12:4-5; cf. Matt. 10:28)
The first part of this saying presents no difficulty. Jesus faced violent death himself, and warned his disciples more than once that they might expect no less. `Brother will deliver up brother to death,' he said,'. . . and you will be hated by all for my name's sake' (Matt. 10:21-22). In a counterpart to these words in the Fourth Gospel he tells them that `the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God' (John 16:2). But those who put them to death could do them no more harm. Stephen might be stoned to death, but his eyes were filled with the vision of the Son of man standing to welcome him as his advocate and friend at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55-60). So too Paul, on the eve of execution, could say with confidence, `The Lord will rescue me from every evil and save me for his heavenly kingdom' (2 Tim. 4:6-18).
It is the second part of the saying that raises a question. Whereas in both Gospels `those who kill the body' are referred to in the plural, the person who is really to be feared is mentioned in the singular: it is he `who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell' or, as it is put in Matthew's version, `who can destroy both soul and body in hell' (Matt. 10:28). Who is he?
There are those who `kill the body but cannot kill the soul', as it runs in Matthew; there are others who do serious damage to the souls of men, women and children by reducing them to obedient automata, by leading them into sin, or in other ways. Are such people more to be feared than ordinary murderers? Perhaps they are. The singular pronoun `him' in `fear him!' could mean `that sort of person'. But it is more probable that Jesus meant, `Be more afraid of the condemnation of God than of the death-sentence of human beings.' This sense is not unparalleled in Jewish literature of the period. In a document from Jewish Alexandria, the fourth book of Maccabees (which quite certainly has not influenced the present saying of Jesus or been influenced by it), seven brothers about to be martyred because of the refusal to renounce their faith encourage one another in these words: `Let us not fear him who thinks he is killing us; for great conflict and danger to the soul is laid up in eternal torment for those who transgress the commandment of God' (4 Macc. 13:14-15). If they are put to death for their fidelity to God, they have the sure hope of eternal life; if through fear of physical death they prove unfaithful to him, certain retribution awaits them. The sense is more or less the same in Jesus's present saying. The one who has power to cast into hell is not, as some have suggested, the devil; if he is resisted, he can do no real harm to the follower of Jesus. It is God who is to be feared:
The `hell' mentioned here is Gehenna, the place of eternal destruction after death. There are Jewish parallels for the belief, attested in Matthew's form of the saying, that soul and body alike are consumed in the fire of Gehenna.
It is noteworthy that in both Gospels, immediately after the warning that the condemnation of God is to be feared, comes the encouragement that the protecting love of God is to be trusted: the God who takes note of the fall of a single sparrow knows every hair of his children's heads (Luke 12:6-7; Matt. 10:29-31).