What does it mean to fear God?

There is a moment in Mark's Gospel where a group of men are more frightened after the danger passes than they were while it lasted. The disciples are crossing the lake at night when a storm comes down on them, and the boat begins to fill. They wake Jesus, convinced they are about to drown. He speaks to the wind and the sea, and the storm stops — not gradually, the way weather usually clears, but at once. The water goes flat. And in that silence, with nothing left to threaten them, Mark records this:

Mark 4:41 (NKJV)

And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!”

Notice the drastic change. The first fear was fear of drowning — the ordinary fear of something that can hurt you. That fear left when the storm did. What replaced it was greater, and it had no danger attached to it at all. It was the fear of the One sitting in the boat with them. They had just discovered whom they had been travelling with, and the discovery frightened them more than the sea had.

That is where the biblical phrase “the fear of the Lord” begins. It is not anxiety, and it is not the fear of harm. It is what happens in a creature who suddenly grasps what he is standing in front of. When John saw the risen Christ in glory, this is what became of him:

Revelation 1:17 (NKJV)

And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last.”

John's collapse was not a misunderstanding that needed correcting. He was seeing accurately for the first time, and the sight flattened him. Yet the response of Christ was not to confirm his terror but to put a hand on him and tell him not to be afraid. The fear was right. And the hand was what changed it.

This is why the Bible speaks about fearing God in two very different ways, and why they must not be confused. There is a fear that expects punishment — the fear of a guilty man before a judge who has every right to condemn him.

That fear is not irrational. Outside of Christ it is the only sane response to a holy God, and the Bible never tells the unrepentant that they have nothing to worry about. But it is precisely this fear that the gospel removes:

1 John 4:18 (NKJV)

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

John is not saying that Christians stop fearing God. He is talking about one particular fear — the fear of being punished. That is what his word torment points to. And that fear is gone for the Christian, because Christ has already taken the punishment in his place.

What remains is a different fear altogether, and remarkably, Scripture says it is produced by forgiveness rather than removed by it:

Psalm 130:4 (NKJV)

But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.

That line is worth pausing over. We would expect forgiveness to end fear. A judge pardons a guilty man, and the man stops being afraid of him — the danger is over. The psalmist says the opposite. Forgiveness is the reason God is feared.

Here is why. Being forgiven shows you two things at once: how serious your sin was, and what it cost God to forgive it. A man let off lightly has forgotten it by evening. A man pardoned at enormous cost never gets over it. He does not walk away from God casually. He walks away in awe of Him.

Being loved by God does not make Him smaller in our eyes. It is how we find out how great He is.

That is the fear a child has for a good father — not the cringing of a servant who expects the whip, but the unwillingness to grieve someone whose love is the safest thing in his world. He is not afraid of being thrown out of the house. He is afraid of offending the one who brought him into it. Take away the love and you are left with mere dread; take away the fear and you are left with a casualness that no one who has actually seen God has ever felt.

This does not change when a person becomes a Christian. Hebrews was written to believers who already stood secure in God's grace, and it still tells them:

Hebrews 12:28-29 (NKJV)

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

Grace and godly fear sit in the same sentence. God is still a consuming fire. Grace does not put the fire out — it brings us near enough to feel the heat, and calls us sons while we stand there.

Another famous verse we should look at with regard to the fear of the Lord is found in the book of Proverbs:

Proverbs 9:10 (NKJV)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

The verse makes a claim: fear God, and you will become wise. Here is why that is true.

Wisdom is knowing how to live. But you cannot know how to live until you know what you are — who made you, what you are here for, what happens when you die. Leave God out and you have left all of that out. You are guessing about the things that matter most, however clever you may be about everything else.

So wisdom does not start with a subject. It starts with a Person — the Holy One. You do not become wise by learning more. You become wise by coming to know God.

That is why the Bible can call a brilliant man a fool. It is not measuring how much he knows. It is measuring what he has left out.

Ecclesiastes spends twelve chapters trying every route to a meaningful life — pleasure, work, money, learning — and finds each one empty. This is where it ends:

Ecclesiastes 12:13 (NKJV)

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all.

Notice what the verse joins together: fear God, and keep His commandments. The two go with each other. Fear of God is not a feeling you have in church and leave behind in the car park. It shows up in how you spend your money, how you speak about people who are not in the room, and what you do when you are certain no one will ever find out. Someone who knows God is watching behaves the same in an empty room as in a full one.

So what does it mean to fear God? It means seeing God as He really is, and living as though you have seen Him.

And you cannot work it up by trying. Look at the men in this chapter. The disciples did not decide to be afraid in the boat; they saw what Jesus did, and the fear came. John did not choose to fall at Christ's feet; he saw Him, and his legs went from under him. Fear follows sight. So the prayer to pray is not “make me more reverent.” It is “show me who You are.”