What is the Fear of the Lord?

If I were to simply ask, “What is fear?” most of us would not have an issue answering that question. Fear is that emotion I feel when I’m scared of danger, or a problem bearing down on me. It could be a real danger: perhaps a snake has slithered across my foot; or it could be a perceived danger: perhaps the snake is a harmless black racer and is very unlikely to even bite me. So, a swamp filled with mosquitoes biting me is a fear of real danger. A sign telling me there are a lot of mosquitoes who may bite me is a perceived danger (thanks Congaree National Forest for the warning!).

Further, if I were to ask who is the Lord, few Christians would stumble to find the answer. The Lord is God, the One and Only. The Lord is the Almighty Creator, the incarnate Savior, the Comforting Spirit: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in One Godhead. He is the Lord.

But, if we put both fear and the Lord into a phrase and ask its definition, many do stumble. What is the fear of the Lord? As I have briefly researched, the modern consensus seems to be a brief or prolonged journey that arrives at similar conclusions. Fear of the Lord is not fear, but something like awe, respect, worship, and love. Now, because of Jesus, praise the Lord, I do think we worship God with reverence and awe, and I do think we love God because He first loved us in Jesus Christ. But, if “the fear of the Lord” should be translated “the awe of the Lord” or “the love of the Lord,” then Bible translators have done a consistently lousy job translating the words into fear.

On the basis of linguistics, biblical theology, and logic, I’m going to argue that the fear of the Lord means fearing the Lord as in a settled emotional trembling at His Person and Presence. This fear, because of Jesus, need not remain the only emotion we habitually experience. Instead, when we come to God by faith in Jesus, and are adopted into God’s family, we combine fear and love. We fear-love God. It’s what Augustine will call a filial fear. We do not graduate from or leave fear behind, discarding any fear we experience in God’s holy presence, but we couple that fear with hope and love in Jesus. The by-product of this fear-love is habitual right-walking with God, right-worship of God, and enduring happiness.

Let’s start with linguistics. The Hebrew words yira and yare, and the Greek words phobos and phobeo mean fear. As Eugene Merrill elucidates, “The fundamental and original idea expressed by these terms (yira / phobos) covers a semantic range from mild easiness to stark terror, depending on the object of the fear and the circumstances surrounding the experience.”[1] But, one might ask, do the words take on a different meaning when attached to God? To this Merrill responds, “There is no separate Hebrew or Greek lexeme describing the fear of God so presumably such fear was from earliest times, the same kind of reaction as could be elicited from any encounter with a surprising, unusual, or threatening entity.”[2] Fear means fear. Merrill goes on to argue that the overall tone of fearing God or the fear of the Lord is one of reverential awe, but I will argue that reverential awe is a by-product of the fear of the Lord when one is brought into God’s covenantal love. More on that later. For now, linguistically fear means fear.

One example is sufficient to make the linguistic point. After God drowned Pharaoh and Egypt’s army in the Red Sea, the Israelites were afraid of God. Understandably so, the God of all might had just demonstrated that power and the disposition to use His power against those who sought to oppose Him. And God was successful in His swift justice, bringing walls of water cascading down on thousands of people, killing them all. The emotion the Israelites rightly experienced towards this God was fear: “Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses,” (Exodus 14:31).[3] Again, linguistically fear means fear.

Let’s move on to biblical theology. Again, Eugene Merrill is helpful as he cites the importance of fearing God as foundational to knowing God as He is: “Fear as a response to God and his deeds is so important an aspect of biblical faith and life that Fear actually occurs as an epithet of God himself.”[4] Merrill points to Genesis 31:42 in which Jacob describes God as “the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac.” His argument is that the patriarchs rightly understood that God is so powerful, so big, so awesome, so other than us, that He could rightly be called Fear. Now, stick with me because I know some of this flies in the face of modern depictions of God. God is still merciful. God is still good. God is still loving. But, let there be a balance to those truths about God. God is also holy. God punishes sin. God created and sustains the world and will bring it to an end. God controls our every breath. God gives and takes life. Was it wrong for Isaac and by connection Jacob to refer to God as Fear? No. It was wise.

In fact, Solomon next shows us that to know God rightly is to fear Him, and to fear Him is to begin to know God rightly. He simply states, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight,” (Proverbs 9:10). If wisdom is navigating life well, then to so navigate life begins by knowing God as He is, and this begins with fear. To come to even the brink of the Person and Majesty and Power and Eternality of the Holy God requires a trembling, and evokes fear. To come into the Presence of the Almighty, even as we learn about Him in Scripture, without fear would only show that we have not truly contemplated His enormity and power. But, lest we think that fearing God is only the first step to navigating life well, perhaps that we should graduate some day from fearing God, Solomon continues in the next chapter to show that wise living means we continue in the fear of the LORD: “The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short,” (Proverbs 10:27). If a lifetime is not long enough, we can go to David where he states that we will continue to fear God forever: “the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever,” (Psalm 19:9). So, God is to be feared if we meet Him as He is in all His truly amazing qualities.

Now, before we get to Jesus, let’s first ask: how does fearing God because of His power and His disposition to punish evil produce fear in us? Because, naturally we are evil. The Bible reveals that everyone is unrighteous naturally. We have all sinned. Because God is holy, He pursues His own righteousness, and punishes evil, to the utmost. This rightly causes fear in those who are evil. To be in God’s presence and sense danger is to sense rightly for anyone who has sinned, which is everyone. Take a moment and listen to David teach us about the fear of the LORD:

“Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.
Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.” (Psalm 34:11-16)

David invites us into a journey that is both terrifying and good. See God in his power. Know His disposition against sin. Let that fear motivate a desire to be right with this God. Let that fear steer you away from that which God says is wrong and which provokes His anger and wrath. According to David, the most important need in our life is to be right with this God who is against those who are not right with Him.

Now, this drives us into even scarier territory. As I said earlier, none of us is righteous. But there is much that can be said here. None of us is inclined to seek God, but instead to seek our own will, essentially to worship ourselves is God. All of us, by thought, word, and deed, have turned away from God in sin. Though by creation and conscience we on some level know there is a God, we do not fear enough to faithfully follow Him. Instead, we live in sin. Moreover, this holy God is rightly provoked to anger against sin and against those who commit sin. He will punish those who deserve punishment for sinning against Him with eternal punishment. The only thing keeping any of us from eternal fire is God’s common grace to extend our breaths another day. To be in God’s hand is the predicament of mankind. The only thing keeping natural man from being plunged into hell is the hand of God who is rightly angry with us for our many sins against Him. This is the terrifying and true conclusion of Jonathan Edwards in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Take a moment and let these words sink in.

“Thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.”[5]

Ok, I know this is a lot, but let’s take a breath and see where we’ve come. So far, we have seen that fear means fear in the Bible. Thus, fearing God, linguistically and theologically, means fearing God. We should rightly fear God because of who He is: holy, wrathful against sin, powerful, holding our very breath in His hand. We should rightly fear God because of who we are: sinful, deserving His wrath, infinitely less powerful than He is, destined for eternal punishment.

Now, we are ready for Jesus, and the good news of the gospel. This will take us into what the reformer Zacharias Ursinus called “filial fear,” and out of “servile fear”: fear of God as sons, not fear of God as slaves to sin.[6] But first, the gospel. The same God who made all things, owns all things, and stands in judgment over all things, including His creatures who have rebelled against Him, for reasons spectacular and unknown, purposed to save some of mankind from the eternal punishment we all deserved. Out of His goodness, and His delight, God sent His Son Jesus, who is mysteriously both fully God and fully man, into the world. Jesus came filled with the LORD’s Spirit, and thus filled with fear for the LORD, as Isaiah prophesied:

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, and the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD,” (Isaiah 11:1-2).

In fact, Jesus not only had the fear of the LORD in perfect fullness, but He delighted in fearing God. That settled afraidness of the Lord was the joy of His life: “And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD,” (Isaiah 11:3). This Jesus, therefore, lived the perfect life we never could. He was without sin (not even a sinful thought). All of his fears found their proper place beneath fearing God.

Thus, Jesus achieved in His own righteousness what David sang about: right standing with God. He deserved God’s undying, covenantal affection and love. David sang, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all,” (Psalm 34:19). So, Jesus was kept and held by God, His heavenly Father, and deserved to be kept forever in heaven. Jesus deserved eternal life.

Then, Jesus did the beautiful and unthinkable. He suffered God’s punishment against the sins of those God purposed to save, even though He deserved only God’s loving affection. The heart of the gospel is the substitutionary atonement of Jesus paying the penalty for our sin. As Paul put it, “For our sake he [God the Father] made him [God the Son] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus’s sacrifice was unthinkable because the Son experienced agony for the first time at the hand of the Father, treated not as Son but as sinner. Thus, he cried out with words of anguish from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). This Son had revealed earlier his fear of God at experiencing God’s wrath against sin. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.’ … And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will,’” (Mark 14:33-36). Luke fills in the picture showing Jesus’s fear resulted in a physical symptom: “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground,” (Luke 22:44). Jesus feared God to the end and died on the cross for sinners. Then, three days later, Jesus rose victoriously from the grave. Death had no claim on the One who never sinned.

Succinctly, the good news is the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the implications for us. Here’s Paul’s version: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Now, because of Jesus, we have the only Way to forgiveness: by repenting of our sins and placing our faith in Him. This is what Paul meant by “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe,” (Romans 3:22). Paul elaborated, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith,” (Romans 3:23-25). The gospel is the good news that God saves sinners from God’s wrath by punishing His Son in their place if they place their faith in Jesus. The great church leader, Augustine, described his fear that led him to faith: “I trembled with fear, and at the same time I was on fire with hope and with exaltation in your mercy, O Father.”[7] Fearing God, in his holiness and just wrath against sin, makes us desperate for Jesus, and overjoyed when we are received and pardoned for our sin as we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Amen, and amen.

This brings us not only to worship, but to a big question. When we become Christians, should we exchange fearing God for loving God? I mean, there’s no more wrath from God for us if Jesus was punished in our place, right? If that’s true, should we still fear Him, or is fearing Him only a pre-Christian experience?

The short answer is no, becoming a Christian does not and should not remove fearing God from our lives. Instead, we combine fearing God with loving God, and the result is worship overflowing into obedience and joy.

First, let’s consider passages of Scripture that show Christians fearing God. Paul, shortly before he shared the heart of the Gospel with the Corinthians said this, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others,” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Fearing the Lord motivated Paul to share the gospel with others because he knew the fate that awaited all who did not believe in Jesus. The church grew and spread by the power of God and the fear of God: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied,” (Acts 9:31). Here again, we see Christians fearing God, and this is a good thing. In fact, Luke holds out growth in the fear of God as fertile ground for spiritual blessing and church growth. Paul will urge the Corinthians to walk in the fear of God, knowing the promise of salvation they have in Jesus, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God,” (2 Corinthians 7:1). Peter is more blunt and to the point when he commands Christians: “Fear God,” (1 Peter 2:17).

Let’s recap so far. Christians should fear God because Jesus feared God, and Paul told Christians to fear God, and the joy and prosperity (spiritually speaking) of the early church was directly tied to fearing God. Any claim that fearing God (and by that I mean fearing God, being afraid of God, responding with fear to His presence and power), is a pre-Christian only experience does not hold up to Scripture on linguistic, theological, or logical grounds.

Let us round out this discussion by speaking to what fear is combined with, and what this combination produces. Because of Jesus, Christians combine fearing God with loving God. It’s the beautiful combination of fear and joy Augustine experienced in light of God’s mercy towards him (a sinner) because of Jesus (the Substitute): “I trembled with fear, and at the same time I was on fire with hope and with exaltation in your mercy, O Father.”[8]

When we come to God by faith in Jesus Christ, we experience acceptance, forgiveness, and adoption as sons. So, transforming is the combination of fear and love, that there are passages that seem to speak as if we no longer fear. What we find is by combining these passages with the above passages, we come to a complete understanding: we no longer fear as rebels, we now fear as sons, and it’s a much better fear.

So, Paul taught: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:14-15). When we become Christians, we are adopted as God’s sons and daughters, and we receive the Holy Spirit, who changes our fear of God from fear of wrath, to a fear-love that continues to fear God’s power, but also loves God as Father. Because of God’s love for us in Jesus, we no longer fear as rebels expecting wrath, but as sons for whom there is no more wrath.

This is the great change with regards to our fear that John taught: love for God by God’s love for us in Jesus drives out fear of God’s wrath.

“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love,” (1 John 4:15-18).

John says that when we are loved by God in Jesus, and receive that love by faith in Jesus, we no longer fear God’s wrath to come on the day of judgment. Praise God, we no longer fear as rebels, but we fear as sons.

So, what does fearing God as sons and daughters look like?

Fearing God as sons looks like having sufficient gratitude for our salvation, sober understanding of what our forgiveness cost Jesus, and a healthy fear of God’s holiness that we do not persist in sin. Paul taught Timothy, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control,” (2 Timothy 1:7) because we no longer fear God’s wrath. But, Paul also taught Timothy, “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear,” (1 Timothy 5:20). Certainly, they were not to fear Paul, but to fear God.

Fearing God as sons looks like pursuing diligence in our earthly vocations no matter whether our employers deserve our hard work and respect. So, Paul taught even slaves to fear God, and to let this fear motivate hard work: “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,” (Colossians 3:22-23). Fear God as sons, and let this motivate a God-honoring work ethic.

Fearing God as sons looks like pursuing Christlikeness, putting sin to death, and sanctification by the power of God’s Spirit in us, what Paul calls working out your salvation: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” (Philippians 2:12-13). Fear God as sons, and let this motivate putting sin to death.

Fearing God as sons looks like worshipping God, and treasuring God above all else that was, is, or will be. So, an angel proclaimed the gospel as a call to fear and to worship God: “Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water,” (Revelation 14:6-7).

The author of Hebrews tells followers of Jesus one powerful reason we continue to fear God, even as sons: God disciplines those He loves. As he said, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,” (Hebrews 12:5-6). As we persist in sin, we invite not the Lord’s wrath (that was finished in Jesus’s substitutionary atonement), but the Lord’s discipline. That discipline may be God’s convicting presence rather than comforting presence, as we live convicted of sin, rather than comforted. That discipline may come in the form of hardships, such as God allowing difficulties to wake us up and drive us back to Him. That discipline may be as hard as our physical deaths, as Ananias and Sapphira experienced when they lied in church about their offerings (Acts 5:1-10). Even then, their deaths motivated the church to fear God (Acts 5:11). So, we do not fear God’s wrath as rebels, but we do fear God’s discipline as sons, a discipline that is loving and designed to motivate us to pursue Christlikeness and weighty worship.

Pastorally, I think many Christians today do love God. They love His mercy in Jesus. They are grateful for forgiveness of sins. They cling to His gentleness and His compassion on sinners. To all of this I say praise the Lord. And, I think many Christians need a healthy pairing of fearing God with loving God. We should not lose that sense of trembling and being afraid in the presence of the Almighty, the utterly Holy, the eternally Other, Triune God. When we lose all sense of fearing God, reverence is thin, worship grows stale, obedience becomes haphazard, and evangelism devolves into something we plan to do someday but never get around to. However, when by God’s grace, as His beloved children, we pursue a rich fear of the Lord, we revere the Almighty; we worship the One who was, and is, and always will be; we hate sin and repent quickly by confession and by action; we share the gospel passionately as we are fully aware of the predicament of man without Christ. Christian, fear the God who loves you in Jesus.

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[1] Merrill, Eugene H. “Fear.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Electronic ed., 248–49. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016. For all Bible verses cited.

[4] Merrill, Eugene H. “Fear.” In Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Electronic ed., 248–49. Baker Reference Library. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996.

[5] “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards, Preached at Enfield on July 8^th, 1741, accessed on 11/3/2023 at https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/edwards_jonathan/Sermons/Sinners.cfm.

[6] Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (Cincinnati, OH: Elm Street Printing Company, 1888), 514. Accessed on 11/3/23 at https://heidelblog.net/2015/11/another-helpful-distinction-filial-versus-servile-fear/. I do not completely agree with Ursinus who states that servile fear arises from conviction of sin as juxtaposed with confidence in God’s love. I think sons of God continue to experience fear arising from conviction of sin, but it is coupled with a love for God in Jesus by whom our sins are forgiven. I agree that filial fear hates sin and loves God whereas servile fear hates punishment only and flees God.

[7] Augustine of Hippo. Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, Confessions 9.4. Edited by John Farina. Translated by Mary T. Clark. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984.

[8] Augustine. Confessions 9.4. Farina, 1984.