M.L. Barre said, “The fear of Yahweh is…the first step – square one – in the quest for a meaningful existence.” This an assessement of the importance of the concept of the fear of the Lord in the wisdom literature of the Bible. The fear of the Lord is a major theme in the Book of Proverbs. Just a few of the references demonstrate its significance. The fear of the Lord…
- is the beginning of knowledge (1:7)
- is the beginning of wisdom (9:10)
- prolongs life (10:27)
- is a fountain of life (14:27)
- leads to life (19:23)
So, what does it mean to fear the Lord? Here are some helpful definitions.
It is that indefinable mixture of reverence and pleasure, joy and awe which fills our hearts when we realize who God is and what He has done for us. It is a love for God which is so great that we would be ashamed to do anything which would displease or grieve Him, and makes us happiest when we are doing what pleases Him. (Sinclair Ferguson)
The fear of God in which godliness consists is the fear which constrains adoration and love. It is the fear which consists in awe, reverence, honour, and worship, and all of these on the highest level of exercise. It is the reflex in our consciousness of the transcendent majesty and holiness of God. (John Murray)
To fear God means to acknowledge His superiority over man, to recognize His deity and thus respond in awe, humility, worship, love, trust, and obedience. (R.N. Whybray)
To fear God is to know God as He has revealed Himself and to orient every part of your life around that fundamental understanding of God. It is to live theocentrically. It is a life in which every aspect orbits around the foundational reality of who God is. Tremper Longman said it this way, “Thinking about life begins with acknowledging that God is at the center of the universe, not humans.” As the defnitions above demonstrate, this orientation produces a number of different responses including awe, humility, love, adoration, grief (when we disobey God), obedience, and trust among others.
According to Proverbs, if you don’t get this, you never leave the starting line in terms of living properly. Without God, as he has revealed himself, at the center of your reality, everything is distorted, imbalanced, flawed. As John Murray put it, “The first thought of the godly man in every circumstance is God’s relation to him and it, and his and its relation to God. That is God-consciousness and that is what the fear of God entails.”
