Episode #92—The Fear of Man: Putting to Death the Paralysing Power of Others’ Opinions 

The fear of man is not always sinful. If you walk into a dark alley and sense danger, the instinct to withdraw is a God-given mechanism for self-preservation. What distinguishes the sinful fear of man is its elevation—when fear of others occupies the place in our lives that belongs to God alone.

Proverbs 14:26 offers a helpful corrective: “In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.” Biblical confidence is not the brash self-reliance of arrogance, but the settled assurance that comes from seeing God for who he truly is. The psalmist captured it plainly: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2). When your helper is the one who created and sustains the universe, what can any person ultimately do to you?

The fear of man becomes sinful when it rises to a level of paralysing, controlling reverence—a kind of worship that properly belongs to God alone. At that point, it is not merely a character flaw but an act of idolatry.

The fear of man rarely announces itself. It disguises itself in ways that can be easily mistaken for other things—strength, diligence, sensitivity—and it is worth examining some of its most common disguises.

Defensiveness. When someone offers a criticism or a loving rebuke and your instinctive response is to defend yourself, pay attention to what is underneath that reaction. Sinful defensiveness is rooted in a high view of oneself—a view that you are desperate for others to share. When someone punctures that image, the fear of exposure drives you to push back. Paradoxically, this is not the cowering timidity most people associate with fear. It is proud and reactive, because at its core it is the fear of being truly known.

Living a false life. A related manifestation is the refusal to be transparent about sin. When we hide our struggles for fear of what others will think, we choose reputation management over genuine community. The person living this way is not free but a captive to the opinions of those around them.

The inability to say no. Being known as the person who gets things done is not inherently wrong, but when that reputation becomes the source of one’s worth and significance—when identity is built on performance rather than on being loved by God through his grace—saying no to a request can feel like a threat to self. The result is a kind of slavery, driven not by genuine service but by the need to be seen in a certain way. And often the people who suffer most are those closest to us: spouses, children, and close friends who are left waiting while we serve an audience of acquaintances.

When the people demanded a king like the other nations, Saul gave them what they wanted. When David was praised for killing his ten thousands against Saul’s thousands, Saul’s insecurity erupted into accusation and eventually violence. His life is a tragedy, not because he was weak but because his need for the crowd’s approval overrode his obedience to God. The fear of man in Saul did not look like timidity. It looked like a spear being thrown across a room.

Paul’s warning to Timothy is pointed: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Timothy 4:3). Every preacher knows the temptation to tickle those ears—to say something crowd-pleasing that will grow the church and make the ministry look successful. But this is, at root, a form of self-promotion masquerading as pastoral sensitivity.

The remedy is not bluntness. Paul’s instruction in 2 Timothy 2:24–26 is worth quoting at length:

Jesus modelled this. In John 6, after hard teaching, many disciples turned back and walked away. He did not soften the message to recover the crowd. When he asked the Twelve whether they would leave as well, Peter’s reply settled the question: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Faithfulness to the text, not size of audience, is the measure of faithful preaching.

The fight against the fear of man is not primarily a matter of technique. It is fundamentally a matter of vision—of seeing God more clearly. Here are several tools that scripture itself commends.

Cultivate a biblical vision of God. The antidote to a big view of people is a bigger view of God. Seek out the passages of Scripture that speak to his attributes—his holiness, sovereignty, and power—and dwell in them. Write them down, memorise them, meditate on them. The more clearly you see who God is, the more the paralysing fear of what people think will begin to dissolve. As Ed Welch has noted in his book on this theme (When People Are Big and God is Small), the fear of man grows in proportion to how small God appears to us.

Step out in obedience. Jesus’ words in John 14:21 connect obedience with a deepening experience of God: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” We often wait for certainty before we act, wanting grace for next week delivered in advance. But Hebrews 4:16 tells us to “draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” God meets us in the moment of obedience, not before it. If there is a hard conversation you are avoiding, a word of truth you are holding back, or an act of obedience that frightens you, step into it. Trust that he will meet you there. Your vision of him will grow precisely because you will experience his faithfulness in the moment you needed it most.

Know yourself rightly. The world tells us that self-knowledge breeds confidence. But biblical self-knowledge is something different. To know yourself is to see yourself as God sees you: a sinner known entirely and loved completely. When someone confronts sin in your life, the proper response is not defensiveness but honest engagement, because the person confronting you is only glimpsing the tip of what God already sees in full. And yet he loves you still. That is the ground of confidence: not a flattering self-image, but the grace of a God who knows everything and chooses us anyway.

Practise thankfulness. Paul’s command in 1 Thessalonians 5:18—“give thanks in all circumstances”—is only possible if we believe that God is good and that he is sovereign over every circumstance of our lives. Grumbling, by contrast, is an inward gaze, a fixation on our circumstances, disappointments, and losses. It is the posture of a person whose eyes are down. Thankfulness lifts the gaze. It does not pretend that the trial is not real or that the loss is not painful, but it sets those things against the backdrop of a God who is greater than all of them—the conqueror of death, the giver of life, the one who raises the dead. The bigger your view of him, the more your circumstances find their proper proportion.

Do not fight alone. The fight against the fear of man is not a solo project. We have blind spots. We need brothers and sisters in the local church who will both exhort us when we are wrong and encourage us with evidences of grace when we forget who we are in Christ. Exhortation has two components—warning and encouragement—and we need both. The person who only ever hears correction will struggle as much as the person who only ever hears affirmation. The church is the context God has given us for this work.

Where does your help come from? The psalmist’s answer has not changed: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2). With that God on your side, the opinions of others begin to find their proper, smaller place.