Fear God. This is a statement that does not hold much water today. People are told at a very young age to be fearless. Don’t talk to strangers and be fearless. Modern Christians have changed the word fear to mean respect, full of awe. However, the Bible uses the word respect and the word awe here and there so we must believe that if God wanted fear to mean that, he would use those words.
Fearing God is actually a command in the Bible. It is a standard that people must meet. It is something that needs to be present in everyone who believes in God. It is a standard with good consequences. Fearing God is the beginning of wisdom, according to Palms 111:10 and knowledge begins with the fear of God in Proverbs 1:7. We are told that fearing God is a great thing 36 times in the psalms. Many of those occurrences rise to the level of a command or a standard that people need to meet. Proverbs, the great wisdom book tells us 19 times to fear God and there is never a negative result given. The word used in the Old Testament for fear means scared and being terrified. It means you encounter God and you run or hide your face of fall down like dead because you are so afraid of him.
So why has the modern church changed terrified to reverential awe? I think that people today get into the love of God so deeply knowing that God’s love caused him to send his Son to die for us that God is now our daddy, our abba father. And God being a loving teddy bear of a father, they think, there is nothing to be afraid of. God is love, and God is justice and God is holy, holy, holy. God is forgiving, but he is also disciplining and punching and he is the creator the lake of fire, where all who reject Christ will spend eternity. God is truly just and full of wrath toward the sin of the world. So to say that fear just means reverence is missing the whole truth.
A cursory reading of the Bible will give one simple and basic reason for why people fear God. There are consequences to our actions. God says that if we obey we get blessings unsurmountable, but if we sin we get unimagined curses. Actually, the blessings and curses can be counted and imagined because they are found in the last several chapters of Deuteronomy. And if you read those curses, and imagine them happening to you and your family, they are scary. We fear God because of what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do in response to the sin and disobedience on the earth.
Now, if you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, you know that Jesus took all the wrath of God that was being saved up for you. He took your sin, he became sin for you and God the Father blasted him with all the anger and punishment that was saved for you. Then Christ rose from the dead and you are now adopted into the family of God. Christ attuned for your sin, you are redeemed through his blood, he is the propitiation for God and you are forgiven. So God is never going to curse true believing Christians. He cannot. He has already caused Christ for you. So Christians do not fear God because of what he going to do to us. We fear God because of what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do to all who reject his Son. We might way that Christians fear God on behalf of non-believers.
Finally, how does the fear of God bring wisdom and knowledge and all the blessings written about in the psalms? For the unsaved, truly understanding what God will do to the unsaved sinner can be a very sobering thought. If an unsaved person believes in God and believes that he will eternally punish sin, fear of that should drive them to repentance and believe which brings wisdom and knowledge. Becoming a Christ follower out of fear is not a bad thing, but it cannot stop there. Growth in Christ will move the fear of God into a fear of what God will do to sinners, and no longer do to the saved.
#Thoughts on the fear of God#
Fearing God is actually a command in the Bible. It is a standard that people must meet. It is something that needs to be present in everyone who believes in God. It is a standard with good consequences. Fearing God is the beginning of wisdom, according to Palms 111:10 and knowledge begins with the fear of God in Proverbs 1:7. We are told that fearing God is a great thing 36 times in the psalms. Many of those occurrences rise to the level of a command or a standard that people need to meet. Proverbs, the great wisdom book tells us 19 times to fear God and there is never a negative result given. The word used in the Old Testament for fear means scared and being terrified. It means you encounter God and you run or hide your face of fall down like dead because you are so afraid of him.
A cursory reading of the Bible will give one simple and basic reason for why people fear God. There are consequences to our actions. God says that if we obey we get blessings unsurmountable, but if we sin we get unimagined curses. Actually, the blessings and curses can be counted and imagined because they are found in the last several chapters of Deuteronomy. And if you read those curses, and imagine them happening to you and your family, they are scary. We fear God because of what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do in response to the sin and disobedience on the earth.
Now, if you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, you know that Jesus took all the wrath of God that was being saved up for you. He took your sin, he became sin for you and God the Father blasted him with all the anger and punishment that was saved for you. Then Christ rose from the dead and you are now adopted into the family of God. Christ attuned for your sin, you are redeemed through his blood, he is the propitiation for God and you are forgiven. So God is never going to curse true believing Christians. He cannot. He has already caused Christ for you. So Christians do not fear God because of what he going to do to us. We fear God because of what he has done, what he is doing and what he will do to all who reject his Son. We might way that Christians fear God on behalf of non-believers.
Finally, how does the fear of God bring wisdom and knowledge and all the blessings written about in the psalms? For the unsaved, truly understanding what God will do to the unsaved sinner can be a very sobering thought. If an unsaved person believes in God and believes that he will eternally punish sin, fear of that should drive them to repentance and believe which brings wisdom and knowledge. Becoming a Christ follower out of fear is not a bad thing, but it cannot stop there. Growth in Christ will move the fear of God into a fear of what God will do to sinners, and no longer do to the saved.#Thoughts on the fear of God#
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