Peter argues along similar lines:
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you“ (1 Peter 5:6-7).
Peter, having just reminded his readers that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet 5.5), now tells them what humility looks like. Humility looks like a casting of anxieties, off my shoulders and on to God.
To not cast my cares on him is pride. To hold on to my anxieties is to contend for his supremacy.
When I’m anxious, I’m trying to take God’s job. I think that either he doesn’t care enough for me, or he doesn’t have the situation in control. When I’m anxious, when I’m refusing to ‘cast’ my cares on him, I’m thinking that the situation is better handled by me than God.
That is the opposite of humility. It’s the opposite of trust. That’s why it’s sin. And it invites his opposition (in a Romans 1, giving over to more sin sense, which is sometimes why it can manifest in physical and behavioural ways that the world describes in strictly physical terms, attributes to strictly physical causes, and then offers strictly physical approaches to healing).
Is There a Right Kind of Anxiety?
So is all anxiety always sin? I don’t think it can be, in one sense. Paul speaks of the anxiety he has for the churches (2 Cor 11.28) and elsewhere he speaks of the anxieties that a married person will always feel for pleasing their spouse (1 Cor 7.33, 34). And he contrasts that with the anxiety that one should ideally feel for pleasing the Lord (1 Cor 7.32).
So some form of anxiety is not sin. But anxiety that is free from sin is not free from sin because of some mental or physical excuse, but rather because the nature of that anxiety is different. It seems more like eagerness or zeal than worry. It expresses how concerned one is with their need to carry out God’s prescribed will for their life.
How far that is from the anxiety I typically feel!
The only excusable anxiety, it would seem, is that which is actively “seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” with a heart of trust already in place, believing that “all these things will be added” in God’s way, by God’s means, in God’s time (Matt 6.33″ data-version=”esv”>Matt 6.33). I wish that I had more.
