The Fear of God

The question was: 'And fear of God, is that looking up to, adoration?"
***
First, let's look at a sample of some of the verses that talk about the fear of God.

Proverbs 1:7 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge"
Job 28:28 - "The fear of the Lord--that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding."
Psalm 111:10 - "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding."
Proverbs 9:10 - "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."
Proverbs 15:33 - "Wisdom's instruction is to fear the LORD, and humility comes before honor."
Ecclesiastes 12:13 - "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind."
Proverbs 2:5 - "Then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God."

Let's look closer at Proverbs 2:5 by looking at it in context. Here is Proverbs chapter 2 as a whole: "My son, if you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; For if you cry for discernment, Lift your voice for understanding; If you seek her as silver And search for her as for hidden treasures; Then you will discern the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, Guarding the paths of justice, And He preserves the way of His godly ones. Then you will discern righteousness and justice And equity and every good course. For wisdom will enter your heart And knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; Discretion will guard you, Understanding will watch over you, To deliver you from the way of evil, From the man who speaks perverse things; From those who leave the paths of uprightness To walk in the ways of darkness; Who delight in doing evil And rejoice in the perversity of evil; Whose paths are crooked, And who are devious in their ways; To deliver you from the strange woman, From the adulteress who flatters with her words; That leaves the companion of her youth And forgets the covenant of her God; For her house sinks down to death And her tracks lead to the dead; None who go to her return again, Nor do they reach the paths of life. So you will walk in the way of good men And keep to the paths of the righteous. For the upright will live in the land And the blameless will remain in it; But the wicked will be cut off from the land And the treacherous will be uprooted from it."

Do you see the theme? Wherever the Bible talks about fear of God, it also talks about seeking knowledge of Him and as a result, obeying His commandments. So, for the follower of God, fear of Him is a reverence and awe that causes us to seek to know and understand Him. And as a result, we seek to obey Him. So for you and I, fear of God is not to be afraid, but rather to be amazed by Him.

For the person who rejects God, it is an entirely different story. Luke 12:5 says "But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" Hebrews 10:31 says "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." For this person, they should fear God in the sense that they should be afraid. Afraid of judgement and hell, that is, eternal separation from God.

I think Hebrews 12:28-29 sums up this concept well, "Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

We don't have to be afraid of God, because we know that He has forgiven us and as a result we avoid His judgement. But we should never get lazy in our faith, forgetting what God is capable of.

Here are some other good articles on the subject. http://www.gotquestions.org/fear-God.html and http://www.compellingtruth.org/fear-of-God.html.


****FOLLOWUP****
Question was: "Thanks. I still find that one hard to absorb. I don't get why on earth they called it fear. We must have floated long away from the true meaning of fear."

We very much associate the word "fear" with being afraid of something. That doesn't seem to line up with our image of a loving God. A couple things though. If you look in the dictionary, for instance at http://www.merriam-webster.com/, one of the definitions of fear is "to have a reverential awe of". Also, one of the problems with translations is that there may not always be an English word or phrase that exactly means what the original language did! For instance, in Proverbs 1:7, the word translated as "fear" is the Hebrew word "יִרְאָה" or "yirah". A better translation of that word might be "reverence", according to http://biblehub.com/hebrew/3374.htm. According to Merriam Webster, to revere means "to have great respect for (someone or something): to show devotion and honor to (someone or something)" or "to show devoted deferential honor to : regard as worthy of great honor". So we might re-translate it for our own understanding and say something like "Respect of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" or "Regarding the Lord as worthy of great honor is the beginning of knowledge" or "To be devoted to the Lord is the beginning of knowledge".