Proverbs 14:27 ESV
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+14%3A27&version=ESV]
The world is dangerous to body and soul. Toes can be stubbed, fingers can get squashed, and cars can crash into each other at distressingly high speeds. Temptation is ever present, from without and within, aided by our own natures (1 Cor. 10:13). Sometimes, physical and spiritual threats blur the lines- mold makes our brains go haywire, gluttony makes our bodies sluggish. Despite all these dangers, though, God reigns, and His presence is a continual guard and guide to His people; their reverence for Him turns them away from danger, motivates them in forethought, prudence, and righteousness.
In this life, the danger to our souls will not ever fully depart. The temptation of sin will still loom. The fears and desires of our hearts will still bend towards evil all too often. God’s people, though, have a surety to stand against this evil. We have a strong tower which cannot be overrun, for we have the assurance of God’s hand. “Though troubles assail us, though foes all unite,” we have this assurance: God is in heaven and He has covenanted with us to keep us from the fiery darts of the evil one, from our own follies (John Newton, Though Troubles Assail Us; Eph. 6:16). In the end, those whom He justified He will also glorify (Rom. 8:30). He will not lose any lamb which His father has given Him, any of those for whom He died (John 6:39).
In guarding us in this life, though, the Lord employs many ‘second causes’- tools and instruments of His hand, which display His power to those who have eyes and hide it from those that have not (Matt. 11:15). Among these tools is the ‘fear of the Lord’. This fear is for the believer not the fear of one who expects imminent and unavoidable destruction. This fear is rather an ever-growing apprehension of the infinite majesty and might of God, a growing reverence towards Him which characterizes, as it grows, every part of the believer’s life. God is “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” states the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 4, What is God?), and a right fear of Him is a reflection of that- for the believer- comforting truth.
In the believer, the fear of the Lord will come ever more to characterize his life. Consider how you might act in the presence of a king, or the president (back when we respected those), or the leader of a foreign nation. If you can’t think of any of those, imagine you’re meeting with King Arthur or King David. You would be careful, right? I know I would. I would be conscious of who was watching, and I would strive to so conduct myself as to give a favorable impression, to show respect, to demonstrate virtue before the mighty. How much more, then, will the Christian, who lives in perpetual audience with his Creator, who has felt the re-shaping hand of God upon him (John 3:1-15), how much more will the Christian seek to act in righteousness? We are before God, and though on this earth we do not wholly leave our sin (1 John 1:8-10), we will, by God’s grace, list ever more towards the fear of Him which leads to righteousness.
For the unbeliever, the fear of the Lord is a different beast. For the unbeliever, the face he sees is not the face of the Savior, He who “bore the sins of many and makes intercession for the transgressors” (Is. 53:12). He sees instead the visage of the man who comes from Bozrah, whose garments are ruddy, who said, “I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood spattered on my garments and stained all my apparel” (Is. 63:1,3). The fear of the Lord for the unbeliever, then, should be a realization of His awesome power, of His terrible might, of His just and unceasing anger (Jer. 4:8).
This fear is still, I hasten to add, an instrument to turn the wicked from the snare of temptation, though in a different sense. In God’s grace, this fear will turn the wicked man to see the Lord, to repent, to put his faith on the one who saved the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). By this means, the fear of the Lord calls the sinner to Himself, transmutes terror into reverence, hatred into love. Outside of this, though, the wicked man is doomed, damned. The wicked man, save God call him effectually, will not heed the fear of the Lord, will not let it guide him. In his soul’s deepest parts he knows it (Rom. 1:20), but he will not listen, will not turn to be healed, will not submit himself to God. He may be given for a brief time a likeness of that fear which would lead him to repentance (Matt. 13:1-9), but in the end he turns of his own will. In the end, his state is worse than at the first (Mark 12:45).
The fear of the Lord can seem to us moderns a strange and incongruous concept. We read “the fear of the Lord” and have difficulty reconciling it with the image we’ve learned to accept of ‘Jesus, wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ The fear of the Lord, though, is an integral and essential part of the Christian’s life, of sanctification. Through the fear of the Lord we are guided and motivated to give proof of our faith; by the regenerating which accompanies faith we are given a true fear of the Lord, a fear which casts out all other worries, for what matter that which is against us when God is for us (Rom. 8:31)?
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
