And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:
Ver. 17. Of your sojourning] παροικια inchoatns, commoratio. Having your commoration on earth, but your conversation in heaven. Fugiamus ad caelestem patriam, &c., could a heathen say.
In fear] Those that fear, of all others, are most likely to hold out, Jeremiah 32:40. It is a reverential, filial fear of God, as of a father, that is here required; causing us, 1. to have high and honourable conceptions of God in our hearts; "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and let him be your dread, and fear ye him." 2. Making all honourable mention of him with our mouths, whether we speak to him, or of him, Ecclesiastes 5:1; Deuteronomy 28:58. Presume not in a sudden unmannerliness to blurt out the dreadful name of God; much less to blaspheme it, and bore it through with hideous oaths and imprecations. To speak evil of one's father was death by Plato's law as well as by God's law; and Suidas testifieth of the same Plato and other heathens, that when they would swear by their Jupiter, out of the mere dread and reverence of his name, they for bear to mention him; breaking off their oath with a Μα τον, as those that only dared to owe the rest to their thoughts. 3. Walking before him in our whole course with a holy bashful ness, being evermore in the sense of his presence and light of his countenance, in the "fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost," as those ancient Christians, Acts 9:31 .