Fear of God

BY ELDER GOH CHONG ANN

What does it mean to fear God as a believer?

The fear of the Lord is a pervasive and important topic. The Old Testament is strewn with commands to fear the Lord and warnings of the terrible things that will come if we don’t and the blessings that come if we do.

Fear in the Old Testament

Proverbs 28:14: “Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.” So fearing God is contrasted with a hard, unperceptive heart. Isaiah 66:2: “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” So again, fearing is corresponding with humility and lowliness and sensitivity of heart. The sheer majesty of God, as well as the holiness, and justice, and power, and wrath of God, cannot be approached in a cavalier spirit. It would be insane to think we can just stroll up to the Creator of the universe and have a cavalier spirit. We are blind if we think we can do that without trembling.

Fear in the New Testament

Now, what does the New Testament say? Philippians 2:12–13: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.” This is really interesting. You should fear and tremble because God is working to keep you. It means that the sheer awesome presence of God in our lives working for us, not against us, should produce trembling. That is amazing. So, the New Testament treats the fear of God as a motive for not turning away from Him. We should fear in the sense that we seek refuge from God away from God’s terrible wrath. God’s grace in Christ is the refuge from God’s wrath outside Christ. There is terror outside of Christ, and there is a different kind of trembling inside of Christ.

So, for example, Hebrews 12:25, 28: “See that you don’t refuse Him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused Him who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject Him who warns from heaven. . . . Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.” That is security. “And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29; see also Deuteronomy 4:24). In other words, the same thing is there: We are safe. We have a kingdom that cannot be shaken. But our God is a consuming fire. You don’t come near Him without reverence and awe.

So, Romans 11:19–21 shows how you not only experience the fear of God as a right way of worshiping Him in reverence and awe, but you experience the fear of God as an incentive not to run away from Him. So, it says in Romans 11:19, “You will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’” In other words, Jews were rejected so that I, a Gentile, could be grafted into the Abrahamic covenant. Verse 20: “That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear.” So He is commanding believers who are standing fast in faith to fear. Fear what? Fear the prospect of becoming proud, and arrogant, and self-sufficient, and drifting away from the living God in a kind of hard-heartedness.

So fear functions as a preservative. We don’t want to run away from God. Don’t be presumptuous. So there is that aspect of fearing God.

Not Every Fear

We want to be rid of some aspects of fearing God, and we don’t want to be rid of some aspects of fearing God. 1 John describes the kind we want to be done away with. 1 John 4:18: “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.” So, God doesn’t want us to cower like slaves in the household where the children should be enjoying sweet peace in their Father’s care. So if we can get to the point of perfect love, we wouldn’t fear God’s rejection of us. We would be really content in His acceptance. So we can be done - we should be done - with a cowering fear that we might not be saved and enjoy our care and our security in His house.

But the other aspect of fear is what we should keep and enjoy. Yes - enjoy. Nehemiah 1:11: “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name.” Delight to fear your name. Delight to fear your name. So there is a kind of fear that is not repulsive. It doesn’t drive us away. It draws us in.

Or here is Isaiah 11:2-3, about the Lord Jesus: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” Jesus enjoyed fearing God.

ADAPTED FROM PASTOR JOHN PIPER SERIES