A Simple Way of Understanding the Fear of God

John Murray said the fear of God is the soul of godliness. This is a conclusion you can hardly avoid as you read God’s Word. The fear of God is mentioned well over 50 times throughout the Scripture. Not only is its volume of occurrences enough to require every Christian to understand this concept, but also how the fear of God is spoken of would make us fools to treat it lightly. For instance, the fear of God is a part of what saves us (Ps. 85:9), brings life (Prov. 19:23), brings fulfillment to our desire (Ps. 145:19), brings God’s careful watch care (Ps. 33:18), brings fatherly compassion (Ps. 103:13), and much more. Without a doubt, such an important topic deserves a book-length treatment. But who has time for a book? Well…you do. You can order your days to read books, and if you are going to love the Lord with all your mind, you should. If you can’t read, there is affordable technology available to everyone in America that can read any book for you.

Even though books are good, it is still beneficial to have bitesize helps. That is what I want to do in this post. And I want to do it regarding the most problematic word of this topic: fear. The issue everyone trips over is what “fear” means in the fear of the Lord. How could fearing God and loving God really go hand in hand? Doesn’t 1 John 4:18 say that perfect love casts out fear? Yes, it does. This makes us want to employ a different word. The word “reverence” has been used and it does work. The problem here is that if you are going to be biblical, you can’t get around the fact that the word fear is used over and over again. And the Bible is fully aware of what fear is in all its forms. So while substituting “reverence” for “fear” may help us in the short term, we are better helped if we can grasp the concept and let the concept bloom into all its glorious features.

Running Away and Running Toward

So here is my simple way for understanding the fear of God. There are two different responses that fearful things can illicit in people. Fear will either make you run away from something or it will make you run toward something.

We are all familiar with running away from fearful things. You run away from snakes, from bullies, from oppressive governments, and countless other things. Why do we do this? Because these things destroy us. There is no way to live with these entities in a meaningful way. But there are other things that are just as fearful and destructive, yet we run toward them. Every year countless people make their way to the ocean. They lie on its beaches and go on cruises and fish and surf and dive. But the ocean can kill you. And you know it clearly. You simply can’t look at that inestimable body of water and not know that it could overwhelm you in a moment. People also run towards the Grand Canyon. They hike it, take pictures of it and do helicopter flights over it. But the Grand Canyon can kill you. And you know it clearly. You simply can’t look at that massive cavern and not know that with one wrong step you will be gone for good.
So why do we run from one type of thing and run toward another type of thing? Because both are fearful, but only one is life-giving. One is defined by death and destruction and the other is defined by glory and life and majesty. We all realize that life is made fuller by experiencing the majesties of the ocean and the Grand Canyon. We safeguard ourselves from their dangers, but we know we will be better for drinking in all that they are.

The Spiritual Connection

By now you may have made the spiritual connection. God is ultimately life-giving. His glories and joys and surprises are infinite and breathtaking. Yet He is fearsome. Sin cannot abide in His holy presence. He can and will destroy to the uttermost. Therefore, just like at the ocean and the Grand Canyon, we must be safeguarded from this God who is a consuming fire. What safeguard could possibly shield us from God? Our safeguard from God, is God. Jesus Christ, God the Son, is the refuge from God’s just wrath. In Christ, our sin is forgiven, righteousness is imputed, and we are made co-heirs. All of his fearfully infinite power is committed to doing us good.

One part of what is good for us is the eradication of our sin. God’s unrelenting desire to deal with this poison in us is fearsome as well. He will root it out and it will be painful at times. Yet, when we are in our right mind, with a confident trust in God and the gospel, we will run toward this fear as well. We see this dynamic regularly with cancer. We will run to a surgeon when we have cancer, even while we know he is going to cut us open, and it will be painful and even life altering. But it will save our lives. For the same reason we run toward this fearfully holy God who is going to prune us deeply. We run toward it, even with trembling, because we know it will be life-giving. This fearful killing of sin will bring about resurrection power and resurrection life in us on a daily basis.

So do not be afraid to use the word fear. It is not a bad word to be used in terms of who God is and what it is to relate to Him. And how do we relate to Him? We run to Him in Christ, knowing His fearsome majesty is the very source of life for us.