What Does "Fear of the Lord" Mean?

This post was first published on ROOTSS on Friday, 19th January 2007

I have been worshipping in the same church all my life. My great-grandfather, the late Rev Wee Chin Kam was a pastor of this church. Since then, my grandparents, parents, siblings and now children have been faithfully worshipping in this church.

Having grown up in this denomination, I was led to believe the Bible to be full of paradoxes and contradictions. I struggled but finally just had to accept it without questioning God, because “His ways are higher than our ways”.

Recently however, I have begun to understand that the Bible should be a consistent message throughout of God’s redemption plan for mankind. Because God is a God of order and not confusion, He will not contradict Himself in His Word. It is often our misinterpretation of His Word that leads us to believe otherwise.
 
One topic close to my heart is that of the "fear of the Lord". The fear of the Lord has been interpreted as the "reverence of the Lord" by some people, and being "afraid and terrified of the Lord" by others. What may be helpful is to see how our Lord Jesus Christ Himself interprets it.


One of the passages which mentions the fear of the Lord is found in Deut 6:13, which says “Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.” Jesus quoted this part of Scriptures when He was faced with temptation in the wilderness by the devil. In Matt 4:10, He said 'It is written ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’.”

Is it not amazing that Jesus uses the word “worship” to interpret the word “fear”? That immediately dispels the notion of a person being scared or afraid of God, and ending up running away from God (like how the Israelites reacted when Moses just came down from Mt Sinai with his face aglow after meeting with God). Rather, it is the worshipful reverence of the Lord, and this should then draw us towards Him.

I was also meditating on Luke 12:5 where Jesus told "a crowd of many thousands" (Luke 12:1) to fear God who has the ability to punish them in hell. The crowd would have included both believers and non-believers. Believers like us do not need to fear because we are going to heaven. Rather, the fear was meant for those who were not.

Another passage (1 John 4:18) talks about the fear of punishment. John, apparently writing to believers, reminds them that because of God's love, “we will have confidence on the day of judgment.” In other words, "perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.” Those who love God and believe in Him know that He loves them and can trust in Him to save them. Thus unbelievers have reason to be afraid of God; believers are not to be afraid because of their trust in God's love (fear on the part of believers is a sign of doubt or inadequate knowledge of God – “the one who fears is not made perfect in love.”).

Yet another frequently quoted passage is Phil 2:12, where we are being told to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling". Eugene Peterson's The Message paraphrases this as "be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God". This makes it more consistent with what Paul wrote in Eph 2:8-9 where he said that "for by grace, you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast".

Let us draw near to God! As believers, there is no need to fear Him because perfect love casts out all fear! Instead, we should love, revere and worship Him!