The angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people.
They think God is a selfish Person, they keep at a distance from Him, and if they hear now and then, in a sermon, that God is Love and will save everyone that comes to Him, the right desire for Him never matures into the practical resolve to do something. They don’t say, “I will get up and go to my Father,” because they don’t know Him as a Father, they only know Him as a consuming fire. A man does not say, “I will get up and go into a consuming fire.” No, but, like Jonah, he would pay his money, regardless of the expense, and go to Tarshish to flee from the presence of the Lord. This is what makes man so miserable the fact that they cannot get away from God, since they think that if they could only escape from His presence they would then wander into absolute happiness; but being doomed to be where God is, then they conceive that for them there remains only anguish and misery. The soft warnings of mercy and the thunderings of justice are powerless on men so long as their hearts are seared and rendered hardened by an unholy dread of God.  This depraved fear of God frequently drives men and women to the extremities of sin. 