The first in a series of articles on the fear of God.
When was the last time you heard a sermon about the fear of God? My guess is that if you have, it was a long time ago. But the Scriptures teem with references to the fear of the LORD. Most famously: “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10). Or again, from the great Psalm 2: “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling” (Ps 2:11). Yet one of the most frequent commands in Scripture is “do not be afraid”. So are we to fear, or not to fear? The answer is that there are different kinds of fear. There is a wrong fear that drives us away from God. There is a right fear that drives us toward God.[1] This is the first of three articles that aim to explore what it means to have a right fear of God as our Creator, our Judge, and our Father.
The Poweful Creator
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the people of the world revere him. For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. (Psalm 33:6–9)
Our God is so overwhelmingly powerful he created everything by his word. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. But his power is never divorced from his other attributes. As Mark Jones eloquently wrote in his book God Is, “The majesty of God’s dominion comes from his naked unlimited power clad in the beauty of his holy, eternal, unchangeable being.”
Nevertheless our Creator truly is all-powerful. What fraction of God’s naked unlimited power have you experienced in his creation? Perhaps being caught in a storm, or standing at the foot of mountain range. Maybe it is feeling the effects of a bushfire. Cosmologists tell us that if the Earth were just a fraction closer to the Sun no life would be able to survive. How much more should we fear our God who created all suns!
Knowing Our Creator Gives Self-Knowledge
Consider the series of questions with which the LORD confronts Job:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? .. . Who shut in the sea with doors? … Have you commanded the morning since your days began? … Have you entered the storehouses of snow? (Job 38:4, 8, 12, 22)
Each of these questions is designed to remind Job of the kind of things that only God can do! Why? Because God alone is the Creator.
So how does Job respond?
I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?”
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
You said, “Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.”
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:1–6)
Job does not repent of sins that his ‘friends’ allege have brought on his suffering. Rather, he repents of not knowing God better as his Creator, and therefore his understanding of himself as God’s creature. A right fear of God not only increases our knowledge of God, but also increases our knowledge of ourselves. It brings greater self-awareness. And for Job, this self-awareness drove him to God. Not against him.
John Calvin writes: “We are never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of our lowly state until we compare ourselves with God’s majesty.” [2] We can be too easily pleased with ourselves and blur the distinction between the Creator and the creature. It is all too easy to feel confident in our own righteousness when in conflict with others, or in our own abilities when comparing ourselves with others. Our best efforts at humility are often expressed by saying: “I could be wrong, but…”. Certainly a right fear of God will strip us of our self-righteousness.
Without this right fear, my self-awareness will be easily deceived by pride. But when we quake with an awareness of God’s otherness, we see ourselves for who we truly are: sinful creatures saved by the mercy of our Creator.
Fearful Joy
But let me remind you of Psalm 2:7: “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling”. When you experience fear, your body reacts. You feel the adrenaline release, your heart races, your breathing quickens, and your muscles tense. It is a kind of ‘trembling’.[3] Sometimes it is like the trembling excitement of a Swiftie waiting in the stadium before the concert begins. At other times it is a trembling dread like many had in Sydney during the recent stabbing rampage. But whereas trembling dread drives you away from someone you fear, joyful trembling draws you towards someone of whom you in awe.
Godly fear draws us to our Creator and leads to praise:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:13–14)
Fearful Hope
You can tell a God-fearer by their hope: “the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.”(Ps 147:11) The hope of a God-fearer rests on the certainty of God’s unfailing love. Because of his unfailing love, God reached across the Creator–creature distinction. God the Son took on human flesh to die the death that we deserve and rise bodily from the dead to ascend as our King. We try to blur the Creator–creature distinction in idolatry and sinful pride. But our Creator reached down to us because of his unfailing love. It is in this that God-fearer puts their hope.
A right fear of God the Creator and the incarnate Saviour draws us to him. It drives out every other fear—the fear of the unknown, instability, insecurity, what others think of us. So whatever you are going through, serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
[1] I am indebted to Michael Reeves for this insight, What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord, chapters 2 and 3.
[2] Institutes 1.1.39.
[3] M. Reeves , What Does It Mean to Fear the Lord?, p. 31.
