What does it mean to fear the Lord?

Proverbs 8:12-13 NLT

(11) I, Wisdom live together with good judgement. I know where to discover knowledge and discernment .

(12) All who fear the Lord hate evil, therefore I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech.

As a baby believer in Christ Jesus, I did not understand what it meant to fear the Lord. I assumed that fear meant to be afraid of Him. So I spent most of my early years as a believer in Christ being scared of punishment.

I now realize that is a form of legalism and religion. It is fear based religion. Fear based religion is when you "repent" because you fear the consequences of sin, not because you truly feel bad for how you live and for grieving the heart of God. Another word for this is abusing grace.

Abusing grace is the conscious decision to live in sin without any desire to change. It is when your heart posture doesn't match your words. I did that for years. I didn't understand the verse in Hebrews that is explicitly clear that if we willfully sin after knowing the truth that there is no sacrifice that will cover these sins and that there is only the terrible expectation of God's judgement and raging fire that will consume His enemies. (Hebrews 10:26-27).The difference in this is the struggle with sin, falling short, continuing to repent, and trusting God to give us the strength to overcome our sin we struggle with, or continuing to sin without any desire to repent and turn your heart to God.

This is how I was for years in my drug addiction. I said I wanted to change, but deep down I had no desire to change, I was perfectly content with using drugs to numb my pain. Thank the Lord He got hold of my heart and radically transformed me and freed from the snares of addiction I was trapped in.

Now back to the topic. Fear based religion doesn't change anyone. It simply makes one want to behave because they are scared of what God might do. It takes a merciful and loving God and turns Him into an angry dictator who will strike you down if you breathe the wrong way.

My friends, that is not the God we serve. He is just yes, but He is also loving and merciful. He is the Righteous Judge, and He is patient and gives people multiple changes to repent and turn their hearts to Him. He is not some angry God up in the sky who is waiting for us to mess up so He can send us to hell. If that was the case, why would He have sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us, have Him buried in a tomb, and then raise Him from the dead on the 3rd day by the power of the Holy Spirit? If God only wanted to send us to hell for the first mistake we made, it would have been pointless for Jesus Christ to die for us so that we could be reconciled to God our Father.

So I say all that to say this, what is the fear of the Lord? Well first, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10, Proverbs 15:33). Fear in this context is respect, awe, reverence, adoration. When we fear the Lord we are giving Him the respect we deserve, and those who fear the Lord are wise because we know that He is worthy to be praised. He is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, He is the Ultimate Authority. There is nobody higher than Him. He deserves the respect and adoration of His people.

To fear the Lord also means to love what He loves and hate what He hates. For example, I hate deception. It infuriates me now that I follow the Lord because He hates deception. Deception is not of God, and because I want to honor God in all that I do, I do not like to be deceived and I do not like when others are deceived. So to fear God, is to love what He loves which is people and hate what He hates which is sin. When we fear the Lord we have a love for others who are trapped in spiritual darkness while simultaneously hating the sin they are bound in.

So, next time you hear someone say I fear the Lord, I hope this helps you understand what they mean. As believers in Christ, we fear the Lord because we love Him for who He is and we want to honor Him, not because we are scared of Him. When I finally learned that fundamental truth, it completely changed my view on God and how I see my relationship with Him. If you are struggling to understand what this means, I hope this blog post helped.

I pray you have a blessed week and that the Lord continues to reveal Himself to you in new and profound ways.

Until next time my friends.

With love in Christ,

Alicia.