The Fear of God

Did you ever hear that term used? Someone decides to do something that they knew was not a good idea and did it anyway, resulting in a narrow escape from serious consequences, perhaps causing them to learn a valuable lesson. They won’t make that same mistake again. They know they “lucked out”; the incident put the “fear of God” in them. But what does the term really mean? Are we supposed be afraid of God, attempting to avoid His wrath because He could annihilate us at any time? That’s apparently the way the ancient Israelites viewed Him. After coming down from the presence of God on Mount Sinai, Moses was given the Ten Commandments accompanied by thunder and lightning. The result was that the people “trembled and stood at a distance. Then they said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.’” (Exodus 20:18-19) They were so afraid of the Lord that they begged Moses to represent them rather than face Him directly.

There’s no question that our God is awesome in the extreme, and there’s no way we can deceive Him. What we are and who we are is blatantly exposed to Him. We can’t lie, dissimulate or hedge in His presence. And given the fact that none of us are flawless in what we do, what we think and what we are, approaching our God is something that we shouldn’t take for granted. However, our experience of God is not like the experience of the ancient Israelites. We are primarily introduced to the Lord through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In my own experience I was introduced to the Lord in a violent manner, although I didn’t understand it at the time. I was “joy riding” with some friends under the influence of various “commodities,” when our car flipped end-for-end at a sharp curve. I passed out momentarily at impact and found myself hanging from my seat upside down watching blood from my head drip down on the roof of the car; this was late at night and in an isolated area. After I crawled out of the vehicle I thought I might be about to die, but “Someone” spoke to my heart and said that there was something I had to do before I died. I received this without questioning it. I knew, it was true and it drove the thought of death right out of my mind. I was in such a daze that I didn’t even ponder who was speaking. So I stood up and began assessing the situation in order to get my friends some help. “Fortunately” we all survived but I was in the hospital for a week. The result was the beginning of a journey in which I came to believe that God was not only real but was accessible. I had attended Church throughout my life yet I never knew the Lord, but from that point on it became increasingly apparent that God was not only real, He was also knowable. I didn’t draw near to Him because I was afraid of Him in the usual sense; I drew near to Him because He spoke to me in one of my darkest hours and continued to reveal Himself in the days and months that followed. Praise the Lord! He loves us and reaches out to us through His love.

However, it’s also true that we can’t take our Lord for granted. His love for us doesn’t allow us to be slack in our own behavior just because the shed blood of Christ provides a means for avoiding the penalty of sin. We’re called to engage a process whereby we become “perfected” and able to exhibit the Lord’s holiness in our lives. The Lord doesn’t countenance “slackness.” We can’t neglect our call to be holy.

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. (2 Corinthians 7:1)

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” (1 Peter 1:14-16)

We’re supposed to be like Him, reflecting His holiness; and perfecting this holiness “in the fear of God.” There’s a balance to be obtained here. As a reliable parent, the Lord has the where-with-all to impose His wishes upon us. He wants us to behave in a manner that is acceptable to Him. Starting with the Ten Commandments and continuing through examples of acceptable and unacceptable behavior throughout the Bible, we get the point that the Lord insists upon a proper conduct that reflects His nature. Listings of good behavior include the Apostle Paul’s recognition that “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” are “fruits of the Spirit,” meaning the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. In contrast are the “deeds of the flesh”—conduct uniformed by the Spirit—including “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, [and] sorcery.” The censure of these fleshly behaviors could probably be anticipated, but what may be unexpected are the additional restrictions against “enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions [and] envying.” (Galatians 5:16-24) The Lord is really expecting us to be perfect, not in the manner of precision that can’t tolerate the slightest deviation from His standard, as if He’s waiting for one false move so that He can swat us into submission. Rather He’s calling us to be mature Christians dedicated to obtaining a maturity of faith that reflects His nature, a nature that is primarily defined as Love. We may get crosswise with Him when we deviate toward a conduct informed by the flesh, conduct that satisfies desires that are in conflict with the Holy Spirit abiding within us. But that doesn’t mean that He’s watching our every move to regulate our lives according to His standards. His posture is one in which He presides over our lives in order to bring us to a maturity that reflects both His love and His purity. Such a posture aligns us with our heavenly Father, bringing us a peace and fulfilment that can’t be achieved in any other way. Our very nature as creatures made in the image of God demands this relationship in order to be complete people. Apart from the Lord we’re fractured beings struggling to sustain ourselves, which is always a futile endeavor. Nothing in our lives fits properly apart from the Lord and His holiness.

As believers the fear that should inform us is a fear of missing out, not a fear of punishment.We fear God properly when we’re informed by a fear of disappointing Him, and we have a proper fear of disappointing Him when we love Him and know that He loves us. We shouldn’t have a “fear” of being disciplined in the process; discipline is a good thing when it’s administered by our Father, even if He uses someone else to administer that discipline. Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t other factors at work when we’re confronted by adversity.  We live in a fallen world informed by evil. God reigns supreme but evil is rampant. Who we are and what we’ve been called to do as followers of God, determines what circumstances we’re asked to face. I don’t presume to understand why the Church of true believers is populated by people with such a wide range of circumstances. From believers just getting by in a third-world country to those of us who enjoy a circumstance of plenty in America, we’re all called to evaluate our lives on the basis of our common call to pursue the Lord and serve his purposes in whatever situation we find ourselves. In both situations: plenty and want, we’re directed to love the Lord with all our hearts and with all our souls. But we don’t do that because we’re afraid of the consequences of not doing so as if the Lord sits on His thrown filled with Himself as one who deserves our love. He loves us; He created us to have fellowship with Him and with each other. When we choose to go our own way, determining for ourselves how to do life, we cut ourselves off from the source of life violating the purpose of our existence. To do such a thing is fearful, but not because we’re afraid of Him and the expression of His ire. The fear should be in disappointing Him, failing to recognize Him as the source of our existence and neglecting our need for His fellowship. In saying this I’m speaking to Christians who know the Lord. We’re called to have a mature knowledge of our Lord; to love our God and to order our lives so as to please Him and fulfill His call for our lives. The fear we should have is the fear of disappointing Him. He loves us and we should show our love for Him by allowing Him to order every feature of our existence. We don’t want to disappoint Him because that would be hurtful to Him. That’s what the fear of God is for Christians. For those who don’t know Him and reject the notion of His existence, the fear of God is much more onerous. Unbelievers don’t acknowledge His reality as a supreme being who personifies love and presides over His creation; a God who longs for a relationship with each one of us. But in their souls dimmed by sin, guilt and fear percolate prompting them to imagine our Lord as a selfish tyrant looking for a reason to destroy them. As believers some of those feelings may linger as we attempt to do life as Christians. But if we consider carefully what the Bible reveals about the Lord using both the Old and New Testaments, it becomes obvious that the Lord essentially loves His creation and has always been about the business of reconciling it, and us, with Him.

    “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought of God.” (John 3:16-21)

Thank you Lord! Your “lovingkindness (really) is better than life.”