Fearing God

“Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor” (1 Peter 2v17).

Most reading this will have some idea what it means to “Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Honour the emperor”. But how many know what it means to “Fear God”? We need to know what it is to fear God because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov.1v7) and because the Lord delights in those who fear Him (Ps.147v11).

Throughout the Bible, believers are identified again and again as those who fear God. One of the promises of the New Covenant was that God would put the fear of Him in the hearts of His people “that they may not turn from me” (Jer.32v40). I hardly need to say that this fear of God has nothing to do with a cringing, fearful, uncertain attitude to God. God is our Father in Christ. He loves His people with an everlasting love (Jer.31v3). He rejoices over His people with loud singing (Zeph.3v17). He spared not His only Son but gave Him up for us all (Rom.8v32). The last thing God wants is for His blood-redeemed children to cringe in fearful uncertainty before Him.

What then does it mean to fear God? Very simply, to fear God is to honour Him as God, to live before Him in holy awe, to love what He loves and to hate what He hates, to prize His “Well done” above all the accolades of this world and to make His glory the chief business of your life.

The Bible is full of examples and illustrations of men and women who feared God. Abraham feared God when he obeyed God’s command to leave his family, friends and culture and go to a land he knew nothing about. Moses feared God when he obeyed God’s command to go to Egypt and say to the most powerful man in earth “God says, ‘Let my people go’”. David feared God when he challenged Goliath who was defying the living God. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah feared God when they refused to conform to the pagan practices in Babylon, even though this could have led to their death. Jeremiah feared God when he confronted God’s people and their shepherds with their godless hypocrisy at the risk of his own life. Paul feared God when he stood before Felix and “reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment” (Acts 24v25). Above all, our Lord Jesus Christ feared God (Isa.11v2) by being “obedient into death, even the death of the cross” (Phil.2v8). He above all others perfectly epitomised what it meant to fear God – He chose the will of His Father, lovingly, even though that obedience would cost Him everything.

At the heart of the fear of God there is a driving, compelling pulsebeat. What makes men and women fear God is not first that He has absolute rights over their life, though He has. They fear God above all because He loves them and they love Him. That God should love us is a wonder of all wonders. He is the thrice-Holy One. He is of purer eyes than to look on sin. And yet He “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”. It is little wonder John wrote “this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4v10). It is when God’s love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom.5v5), that we begin truly to fear God.

The fear of God and the love of God are inextricably joined, the latter giving birth to the former.

We will never hold God in holy awe, nor give Him the unqualified obedience of our hearts and lives, until His love first shines into our hearts. “Fear God”. He is worthy of your fear, your loving, thankful, worshipful obedience. “Fear God”.