What does it mean to fear the LORD?

When the Bible tells you to fear God, the natural question is: fear Him like what?

Like a man afraid of a snake? Like a child afraid of the dark? Or something else entirely?

Solomon does not leave it vague.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

He says it again, almost word for word, later in the same book.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

And the psalmist agrees.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

Three writers, three separate books, the same starting line. Not intelligence. Not education. Not even a love of God by itself. Fear is where wisdom begins.

Why does wisdom start with fear and not with love?

Because fear tells you the truth about where you stand before you ever get to where you're going.

A man who does not fear God has no reason to take his own sin seriously. He can call it a mistake, a phase, a flaw in his upbringing. He has removed the one fact that would make him deal with it honestly: that he stands before a real God who sees him exactly as he is.

The fool in Proverbs does not lack information. He lacks the fear that would make the information matter.

Fear of the Lord is not a feeling you work up. It is the recognition that God is God and you are not, and that this difference is not a small one.

What does the Lord actually require of a person who fears Him?

Moses answers this directly, and the answer is not what you might expect from the word fear.

And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,

Fear, walk, love, serve. One sentence, four verbs, no contradiction between them. Israel was never told to fear God instead of loving Him. They were told to do both, at the same time, toward the same God.

Solomon comes to the same conclusion at the very end of his search for meaning, after he had tried wisdom, wealth, pleasure, and work, and found all of it wanting on its own.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Not part of a man's duty. The whole duty of man. Everything else Solomon tried in that book, he tried without this at the center, and none of it held together until he came back to it.

Should we fear God more than we fear anything else in this life?

Jesus answers this one Himself, and He does not soften it.

And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

A man can only kill the body. God holds the soul as well as the body, and He has the authority to cast both into hell. Jesus tells His own friends to fear that authority, plainly, without a qualifier softening it afterward.

This is not a fear reserved for unbelievers who have not yet come to Christ. Jesus is speaking to His friends. The writer of Hebrews says the same to the church.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.

Grace does not remove the fire. Grace is what lets a forgiven person stand near it and serve rather than be consumed. The kingdom we have received cannot be shaken, and the God who gave it to us has not changed. He is still a consuming fire. Reverence and godly fear are still the right response, on this side of the cross as much as before it.

Then how does perfect love cast out fear?

John writes something that sounds, at first, like it contradicts everything above.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Read closely. John is not talking about the fear of the Lord that Solomon, Moses, and Jesus describe. He is talking about torment, the dread of a person who does not know where they stand with God and lives braced for a judgment they have no defense against.

That fear, love casts out. Once you belong to Christ, you are not waiting to find out whether you will be condemned. You already know the answer, and the answer is no.

But the reverence, the seriousness, the sense that God is holy and you are not His equal, none of that disappears when the torment does. A son can be secure in his father's love and still tremble at his father's holiness. The two are not competitors. They were never meant to be.

So what does it mean to fear the LORD?

It means taking God exactly as seriously as He actually is.

Not as a threat to manage. Not as an idea to admire from a safe distance.

Fear that produces wisdom, because it starts a person telling the truth about themselves.

Fear that produces worship, because it never forgets whose kingdom this is.

Fear that stands beside love rather than against it, the way a child can tremble at a father's holiness and run to him at the same time.

Not the fear of a slave who dreads the whip. The fear of a son who knows exactly who his Father is.

That is the fear of the Lord, and it is still where wisdom begins.

You were made to know Him this way. Do not settle for less than the whole picture He has given you.