What Does it Mean to Fear the LORD?

The Bible says that the beginning of both knowledge (Proverbs 1:7) and wisdom (Proverbs 9:10) is “The fear of the LORD.”

To fear someone or something is to orient our behavior toward gaining or avoiding a consequence from that someone or something. For example, we fear policemen because they have the power and authority to charge us with fines for breaking rules. As a result of that fear, our response is to not break the rules. Another example is social fear. We fear being rejected by a group of people because we do not conform to the behavior they demand in exchange for their approval; we conform our behavior to avoid the risk of rejection.

To fear God is to care foremost about what God values, what God approves of, and what God wants for us. There is a social fear, because our foremost desire should be to please God, as He is our maker (Romans 8:8, 1 Thessalonians 4:1, Hebrews 11:6). Our desire for acceptance and approval is built into us by God, our creator. That is only ultimately fulfilled when we gain acceptance and approval from Him.

We can gain acceptance into God’s forever family through faith, sufficient faith to look at Jesus in hope that His death will save us from the poisonous venom of sin, which separates us from Him (John 3:3, 14-15). That acceptance is given to us as a free gift, and requires no further action on our part; Jesus did all that was required when He died for all our sins (Colossians 2:14).

Approval is different. We gain approval from God when we behave in a manner that leads to life and benefit for ourselves and for others. We please God when we walk in His ways, because His ways lead to life and benefit (Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Matthew 22:37-39). The world system seeks to convince us that its ways lead to life, even though its ways lead to death.

All the world’s promised benefits pass away, but the benefits God promises last forever (Matthew 5:12, 1 John 2:15-17). The world uses rejection to pressure people to conform to its ways. Jesus endured immense rejection, even to death. But He regarded that rejection as something to despise (to give no value to). He endured hostility because of the “joy set before Him,” which was to be rewarded with the authority to reign over the world (Hebrews 12:1-3).

We all like to be approved and rewarded. We fear being rejected. God will never reject His children, to reject those who are in Christ would be rejecting Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). But God will only reward and exalt those who walk in His ways. God promises that if we will humble ourselves under His mighty hand, walking in His ways, He will exalt us in due time (1 Peter 5:6).

We are all driven by fear. By making the fear of the LORD our primary fear, we can gain true knowledge. This is because we can look at things through God’s eyes, and God is truth. We can also gain wisdom, because wisdom is walking in ways that actually lead to life. Since God created the earth and all that is within it, He knows how it works. So when we follow His ways, we are following the ways that actually lead to life.

In this fallen world that is separated from God’s original intent for it, we are caught in the tension of wanting to please other people—to fall in line and placate our fear of the world and its priorities. We live through our own latent perspective and our own priorities, which naturally come from our sinful inclination to serve ourselves. But it is through fearing the LORD that we can learn wisdom and knowledge, and live in a way that brings peace and benefit to ourselves and others. Jesus tells us that it is difficult to choose God’s ways that lead to life (Matthew 7:14). This is because of the Fall of Man (Genesis 3), and our resulting sinful nature. But when we believe that God’s ways are true, we actually can fear the death that comes from following the ways of the world, in that we want to avoid such death. This is also fearing the LORD, which leads to knowledge, wisdom, and life.

It makes sense to fear God rather than the world, because God is the one who created us and who designed the world (Jeremiah 51:15). He knows how things work. He will also evaluate us for how we lived our lives. Everything we do, good or bad, will be judged by God (2 Corinthians 5:10, Ecclesiastes 12:14).

We can live out our intended design by living in the fear of the LORD. By caring more what God thinks than what other people think. Again, each believer in Jesus has God’s acceptance of us as His child, given to us freely and unconditionally (Romans 8:16-17, 1 Peter 2:9-10), but God’s approval depends on what we do (2 Timothy 2:15). By fearing the LORD, we place gaining God's approval as a value above all other values.

In a deeper sense, we can reasonably see that “the fear of the LORD” is not only caring what God thinks (and will do) above all others, but also as seeing things from God’s perspective.

This is evident in scripture, such as when King Jehoshaphat was in the process of reforming the kingdom of Judah. Having torn down idols, he began appointing judges to lead the people to follow God. Jehoshaphat gave the judges this charge:

“Now then let the fear of the LORD be upon you; be very careful what you do, for the LORD our God will have no part in unrighteousness or partiality or the taking of a bribe.”
(2 Chronicles 19:7)

In this passage, we see that the “fear of the LORD” is to see justice as God sees it, and to execute justice the way God sees it because of a belief in consequences.

Then, in verses 9-10, Jehoshaphat charges the Levites, the priests, and other judges over Jerusalem to exercise their authority in a manner that sees things as God sees it, acting in “the fear of the LORD”:

“Thus you shall do in the fear of the LORD, faithfully and wholeheartedly. Whenever any dispute comes to you from your brethren who live in their cities, between blood and blood, between law and commandment, statutes and ordinances, you shall warn them so that they may not be guilty before the LORD, and wrath may not come on you and your brethren. Thus you shall do and you will not be guilty.”
(2 Chronicles 19:9-10)

Our greatest obstacle to fearing the LORD is our sin nature, of course. But more specifically, our greatest obstacle comes from our instinct to rationalize what we want as right, without consideration to God or others. When reality conflicts with our personal preferences, sinful desires, and illusions, we rationalize in order to prevent reality from intruding on our illusions. Rather than fearing God and seeing things from His perspective, we naturally want to see things only from our own perspective and rationalize why this is the best way to see things. This causes us to exploit others for our own gain, rather than serve others and live in harmony with them.

From birth, our ability to perceive, to think, and to think outside ourselves moves in a progression.

The progression humans ought to follow is this:

• I see you (as a newborn)
• I see you seeing me (when I am six months old)
• I see what you see (learning to listen, which is not just hearing what others say but seeing what others see)
• I see what God sees (fear of the LORD)
• I gain knowledge (seeing things from God’s perspective puts me into reality)
• I gain wisdom (I know and can apply what actually works, because God designed it all)

Validation for this sequence can be observed in scripture. James 1:19-21 can be applied to say, “Learning to listen to another person is a necessary prelude to learning to listen to God and receive reality from Him.”

But what we typically do instead is this:

• I see you (as a newborn)
• I see you seeing me (when I am six months old, and I like it)
• Since I like you seeing me, I begin to imagine what you see when you see me (which allows me new and creative ways to think about me)
• I imagine what you are seeing when you see me (and assume that is what you mainly care about), so I begin to manage my illusion of what you see when you see me. This gives me the illusion that I control what others think and do.
• When reality conflicts with my illusion, I rationalize in order to prevent reality from intruding on my illusion.

Following this self-serving perspective leads only to loss. The Apostle Paul outlined this progression and its end result in the book of Romans, where self-orientation destroys us over time, moving from lust to addiction to loss of mental health (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). But fearing the LORD and having God’s perspective leads to life.

Psalm 34:11-14 also tells us that life comes from seeing the definition of “evil” and “good” as God sees it:

“Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
Who is the man who desires life
And loves length of days that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil
And your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.”

Likewise, the book of Proverbs says that the “fear of the LORD” is to see evil like God sees it (to see things from His perspective) rather than obeying our “pride and arrogance” (which is “I will define what is good and evil”—i.e. rationalize):

“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil;
Pride and arrogance and the evil way
And the perverted mouth, I hate.
Counsel is mine and sound wisdom;
I am understanding, power is mine.”
(Proverbs 8:13-14)

Isaiah 33:5-6 is also fascinating and instructive,

“The LORD is exalted, for He dwells on high;
He has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
And He will be the stability of your times,
A wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge;
The fear of the LORD is his treasure.”

Isaiah describes the LORD as “stability of your times” and asserts that “the fear of the LORD is His treasure.” This would imply that seeing things the way God sees them leads to “stability” filled with “justice” and “righteousness.” “Righteousness” is when things are done in alignment with God’s good design, which is for humans to work together in harmony with one another toward a shared purpose in glorifying God.

These desirable things—stability, justice, righteousness, harmony—are a “treasure” of God and come about when we have His “fear,” which can be considered as seeing things from God’s perspective.

And, of course, seeing things from God’s perspective is seeing things as they actually are. How do we see things from God’s perspective? Through the study of His revealed Word—the Bible.