What is “The Fear of the Lord”?
The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…
To fear the Lord as the beginning of knowledge seems to be a strange statement in our culture and today. Oftentimes, we think of learning something new and gaining knowledge as an exciting endeavor. We go off to college and pick up a new book because we find interest in that topic. Rarely, if ever, do we actually find ourselves in true fear of learning something. But this is what the wisdom literature tells us in Proverbs 1:7 (NASB): “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Our students brought up some good points this week when discussing this verse. One of those points was that fear was always taught to them as having reverence and respect for God. While this is true, what we observed was the difference between revering something—or someone—ex post facto (after the fact) versus the fear we have in the “beginning” as illustrated by this Proverb.
The Hebrew word here is יִרְאָה (yira), which can be defined as both fear AND terror! In fact, to understand God is to experience terror, since God is a holy and righteous God and we have sinned against his royal throne. We are deserving of wrath and destruction because of what we have done: born into sin and celebrating it since our childhood. Many times throughout the Scriptures, when men and women encounter God or an angel who has been in the presence of God, we see that they fall in terror and turn away from God. In Genesis 3:10, Adam, after eating of the Tree of Knowing Good and Evil, he hides from God because he was naked and afraid. Again, when Moses encounters God in Exodus 3:6, he hid his face because he was afraid to even look at Him. In both instances, that same root word is used to invoke terror at the sight and presence of a holy God. In Luke 2:9, an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds who would visit Jesus after his birth, and the angel of the Lord invoked terror. In fact, the Greek used in the New Testament alludes to the idea of being so afraid that it would “put them to flight” and cause them to run from it.
So, this fear of the Lord as terror is evidenced all throughout the Bible. Here, Solomon tells us that if we want to simply have knowledge of God, we must fear Him. It is the beginning, because without this fear, how could we, sinful and evil from our birth, know any of His attributes or His Being? Moreover, how could we, as this student pointed out, even move in the direction of revering and respecting our Awesome God? The fools are fools because they refuse to acknowledge this terrorizing presence. Fools despise it. We can name multiple reasons for this, but I believe it’s all wrapped in our pride. We don’t want to submit to a King; we don’t want to admit our wrongdoings and our need to be like God, because we think we know better; we don’t want to give up the power we have in our life (a pseudo power since it’s not actually power over anything but is instead slavery to our sin).
But how can we move to a position of reverence and respect? How do we overcome our terror and fear of what we’ve done? I’ll echo the Apostle Paul in Ephesians, “but God!” God is the one who gives us the invitation and power to overcome this fear. In fact, God responds to our fear in a beautiful and delightful way. We showed our students that God responds many times over by commanding, “do not be afraid!” We learned in Genesis 15:1 that God’s response to Abram’s was “do not be afraid,” because the Lord offered him protection and blessing. We saw, again, in Genesis 26:24 that God’s response to Isaac was also “do not be afraid,” for He is the God of Abraham (maintaining the relational status) and will fulfill His promise. Lastly, in Mark 6:50, Jesus appears to the disciples in a storm while walking on the sea, and in response to their fear, He tells them to “take heart,” or in other words, to be courageous because it was Jesus on the waters! And He calmed the storm in their astonishment.
We fear because we are timid, fragile creatures from the dirt who have violated God’s goodness, and we have attacked his very Being. But God removes our fear, He invites us into relationship with Him, and He gives us courage. In other words, God initiates His relationship with us. We serve a good God who causes us to have peace; what amazing Grace!
What does this mean for us now? How are we to have fear in a healthy way? It doesn’t disappear. Psalm 111:10 tells us that those who fear will also have good understanding and will know Him. Ecclesiastes 12:13 tells us that those fear God will, because of His aforementioned grace, bring us to imitate Him. Fear is healthy and it is good, because we need to be reminded of our fallen nature and God’s kindness every single day. That same Hebrew word also carries the definition to revere and respect God, and it applies in the aftermath of God’s response to our fear. We can now live in utmost reverence for His glory because without it, we wouldn’t even know Him to begin with. As we learn more about Him, we should notice our fear increases, because our wanting to be like Him increases too.
I’ll end with this helpful progression of righteous fear that we learn from Proverbs: 1. Fear begins with the teaching of God; 2. When we are taught about God, we learn more about Him; 3. When we learn about who God is, we fear Him and are terrified; 4. When God responds to our fear, we can now know God and His goodness; and 5. When we know God, we want to imitate Him and be like Him.
Let’s pray that our fear of God grows and that we are continually reminded that instead of living in terror, God has given us peace through our Lord Jesus Christ, and that He was the one who initiated His relationship with us.
