What does it mean to fear God?
Scripture treats the fear of God as something wholesome and expected, yet the phrase troubles people who have been told that God is love. The question is what kind of fear this is — and whether it belongs to a person who is already forgiven.
What Its Absence Looks Like
The clearest way into the phrase is to look at people who have none of it. One writer takes the verdict that "there is no fear of God before their eyes" as a description of a whole way of living:
W. W. FeredayThis is a very broad word, because it covers feelings as different as a criminal's dread of his judge, a child's reverence for its parent, and a wife's respect for her husband. When Scripture says of Gentiles and Jews alike that "there is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:18), it means that God has no place in their thoughts, and that His commandments are not allowed to have any restraining influence on their ways.
Put positively, it is the felt weight of who God is:
Frank WallaceThere must be a sense of His greatness and glorious supremacy that would bow my spirit and my heart in wonder and adoration before Him... This is what is meant by reverence. God is so great that something is demanded of me in the way I approach Him. It is not to be a careless, casual approach that treats God as if He were of the same standard as myself.
Why It Is Called the Beginning of Wisdom
The saying that the fear of the Lord is where wisdom starts is not a compliment to religion. It describes a mind finally set the right way up:
Numerical Bible NotesThis is not something put at a distance, or something that makes us want distance. It is simply the creature conscious of being a creature — and where else should it be more conscious of that? — and this is its safeguard. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom": for God is kept in His place, and man in his, and this is the simple key to true understanding.
Grace Awakens It
This fear is not natural to us, and it does not come from being threatened. It appears where God gives it — as in the criminal crucified beside Jesus, who had earlier joined in the mocking:
W. W. FeredayOf Abraham and Job, among others, it is expressly said that they feared God. Since moral alienation is stamped on the whole human family, such fear of God is the fruit of divine grace alone. This is shown fully in the case of the dying thief... As he drew near to eternity God rose up before his soul, and he became filled with reverential awe. His own evil, and the infinite holiness of his Creator, overwhelmed him as he thought about them.
Being forgiven does not remove this fear; it is the very thing that produces it:
Numerical Bible Notes"There is forgiveness with You," says the psalmist, "that You may be feared" (Ps. 130:4). Such fear always goes with nearness to God: the one who does not know it has not been near Him.
What It Looks Like in Daily Life
In practice it is less a feeling than a habit of consulting God about everything:
The Christian's FriendThe "fear of God," then, is not a cowering fear, but rather setting the Lord always before us, not doing or undertaking anything without reference to Him. Sadly, how many things we do without ever consulting Him at all! As long as it is not absolutely wrong, we seem to think we can do pretty much as we like. "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts." Who from this time will begin to do it? It is not talking much about it, but "in your hearts."
It also shapes what a person can stomach:
W. W. FeredayAlong with this there develops an inward horror of sin in every form, and an earnest desire to walk in complete separation from it. "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil" (Prov. 8:13). Whoever wallows in sin, whatever his religious profession, has never known our God.
Not the Fear of a Slave
Commentators consistently separate two fears that share one word. One is thrown out by the love of God; the other deepens under it:
Leslie M. GrantGodly fear, of course, is another subject, involving wholesome, reverential regard for the greatness of God; but a tormenting fear of possible judgment is dismissed when the love of God is rightly known.
What remains is the fear a child has of grieving a father who is watching:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThis is not a slavish fear, nor a fear that carries uncertainty about salvation, a fear that trembles before a holy God, dreading His wrath. It is a godly, holy fear — a fear that we might not please Him.
Freedom from Every Other Fear
Fearing God is not one anxiety added to the rest. It is the fear that swallows the others:
C. H. MackintoshHere the heart is taught not only to fear God, but also to trust Him — it is not only warned, but also calmed. "Fear," and "fear not," may seem a contradiction to flesh and blood; but to faith it is no contradiction. The man who fears God most will fear circumstances least.
Summary
- Missing — Where there is no fear of God, God simply has no place in a person's thoughts and no restraint on their ways.
- Given — It is not squeezed out of us by threats; it is the fruit of grace, and forgiveness is the very thing that produces it.
- Meaning — It is reverence, not cowering: God kept in His place and man in his, which is where wisdom starts.
- Living — It shows itself in undertaking nothing without reference to God, and in a real hatred of evil.
- Freeing — Love casts out the fear that torments, and this remaining fear casts out the fear of man: fear God most, fear circumstances least.