Deepen Your Delight with Holy Fear

Do you delight to fear God?

The servants of the Lord on earth do. The saints before the throne of God do. Even Jesus does.

Scripture makes it clear that, for those in right relationship with God, the fear of God is a particular kind of delight in God, a full-proof pleasure that ruins us to the allurements of sin and leaves us in quaking awe before the King of all things. To fear God is to be fully alive. It is the treasure of the saints (Isaiah 33:6; Proverbs 15:16).

Yet so often Christians treat the fear of God as if it were a relic of Old Testament piety, as if God were to be feared then but now all fear is gone. To many, the fear of God is the equivalent of a drizzly, gray autumn day. But this is not the picture we find in Scripture.

I want to entice you toward the fear of the Lord. Holy fear is a delight we dare not neglect. It is not only the beginning of wisdom; it is also the chief reward of the difficult discipline of joy. So what is the fear of God?

Awestruck Adoration

Scripture differentiates holy fear, the fear of the saints before God, from the fear of unbelievers. Those who have not hidden themselves in Christ should be terrified at the prospect of his wrath (Revelation 6:15–17). They are right to be afraid of God. But those in Christ are safe from eternal condemnation and wrath (Romans 8:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). As we’ll see, they are not afraid of God, but they do fear. We can summarize this holy fear in three statements.

1. Holy fear is the fitting response to seeing God in his majesty.

Fear is the fitting response to the full-orbed revelation of God. Surprisingly, when the saints experience the fear of God in Scripture, it is most often in response to God’s goodness, grace, and mercy, rather than his judgment and wrath. Consider Psalm 111. In this poem, the psalmist studies the great works of God. There is no hint of judgment or wrath in this psalm, only overwhelming greatness and goodness. And yet, the poet concludes his tour of God’s works by saying, “Holy and awesome [fearful] is his name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:9–10).

We see this pattern throughout Scripture (e.g., Jeremiah 33:8–9; Hosea 3:5; Luke 7:14–16). As God’s people witness the greatness of his grace, mercy, and majesty in his works, the fitting response is holy fear, which is a kind of quaking wonder in the face of his staggeringly good glory. This fear causes us to dread departing from such goodness, violating it in any way, or belittling it by preferring something else. Thus, holy fear, in awe of God and aware of his fatherly discipline, acts as a bulwark against sin and folly (Romans 11:20).

It comes as no surprise then that holy fear is the exuberant song of the saints before the throne of God in Revelation 15:

Great and amazing are your deeds,
     O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
     O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
     and glorify your name? (Revelation 15:3–4)

They sing fear and glory in response to God’s amazing deeds. It comes as no surprise, then, that Solomon concludes his exploration of God’s ways and gifts to man with this:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Literally, this is “the whole of man” — the heart of what we were made for. But what about “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever”? Which is it: Fear and obey or glorify and enjoy? Rightly understood, there is no contradiction here. In calling us to fear God, Solomon (just like the poet of Psalm 111) invites us into the same kind of astonished enjoyment of God that most glorifies him, which is the chief end of man. When we are awake to God, we cannot help but be thrilled with God. And God in turn is thrilled with our thrill (Psalm 147:11). Fearing God and glorifying him are not two pursuits in Revelation 15:4; they are one. Our God looks good when his people respond to him in the heightened joy of holy fear.

2. Holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration.

For the saints, the fear of God is not the same as being afraid of God (see Exodus 20:20 for this contrast). Instead of distancing us from God, holy fear attracts us to God. It fits us to be friends with God (Psalm 25:14). As we see the overwhelming goodness and greatness of God, we balk at the thought of straying from the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13, 19). We turn from sin to him to be satisfied (Job 28:28; Proverbs 16:6). Yet this fear endures forever, growing deeper and fuller long after we are free from sin and its consequences (Psalm 19:9).

“To fear God is to be fully alive. It is the treasure of the saints.”

In this sense, the fear of God is a particularly poignant kind of joy in him. Thus, Nehemiah calls God’s servants those “who delight to fear your name” (Nehemiah 1:11). Perhaps the most important passage for understanding this holy fear comes in Isaiah 11, which is a prophecy about the coming Messiah:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
     and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
     the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
     the Spirit of counsel and might,
     the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. (11:1–3)

Notice the Holy Spirit, the great Comforter, is called the Spirit of the fear of Yahweh, and God’s Messiah will delight in this fear. This fear cannot be terror or dread or else he wouldn’t delight in it. This is our King’s thrilled pleasure in his Father. It should come as no surprise that the fear of God is an explicit blessing of the new covenant, for we have this Spirit within us so that we may share in Christ’s own tremendous joy in God (Jeremiah 32:38–40).

For the saints, as for Christ, holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration; it keeps us fixated on him. The word fear qualifies the kind of affection we should have in the presence of God. In his book Rejoice and Tremble, Michael Reeves explains how holy fear relates to love and joy:

The living God is infinitely perfect and quintessentially, overwhelmingly beautiful in every way: his righteousness, his graciousness, his majesty, his mercy, his all. And so we do not love him aright if our love is not a trembling, overwhelmed, and fearful love. In a sense, then, the trembling “fear of God” is a way of speaking about the intensity of the saints’ love for and enjoyment of all that God is. (Rejoice and Tremble, 52)

In other words, fear specifies the kind of love and joy we should have for God.

An acronym may help draw these first two points together:

F — Focus: Holy fear is the proper response to seeing the glorious goodness of the great God.
E — Evaluate: Holy fear rightly evaluates the worth of God as the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty.
A — Adore: Holy fear is the adoring response of a child to his heavenly Father, an affection that draws the saints toward God.
R — Revere: Holy fear is the experience of awe and trembling thrill in the presence of a Being who is overwhelmingly holy, just, and good.

Holy fear begins by focusing on God and evaluating his worth and results in the affectionate response of adoring and revering him.

3. Holy fear is the foundation of all wisdom and happiness.

We all know the mantra of biblical wisdom: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In other words, awestruck adoration is the foundation of true wisdom, which is the ability to see and respond to God’s designs in the world. As Solomon says, “The wise person has his eyes in his head” to see the patterns of God’s ways in the world (revealed in his word) and go with the grain of reality (Ecclesiastes 2:14).

But why is the fear of the Lord the foundation of wisdom? Because without an awestruck awareness of God, you don’t know the most fundamental thing about anything. Watch almost any nature documentary, and you’ll find assiduous study paired with laughable folly. Have you heard charming, sophisticated voices like David Attenborough’s marvel at the design of some animal, and then attribute that great work to natural selection? They see the wondrous works of God but do not fear the God behind the wonders. If you don’t marvel that all things are from him and through him and to him, you can never be wise.

Moreover, awestruck adoration is also the foundation of happiness. Psalm 112, a poem celebrating the wonderful well-being of those who practice awestruck adoration, begins,

Happy is the man who fears the Lord,
     who greatly delights in his commands. (112:1)

Here we see another dimension of the happy man: He fears God. Holy fear is the foundation of his happiness. And that fear is explained as delight in God’s words — great delight. This is not lukewarm affection for God but delight that threatens to burst the bounds of our capacity, like a flooded river buffeting a flimsy dam. To fear God is to be alive in the fullest sense — to be happy and wise and to tremble before the majesty of our King.

Invitation to Fear

Given the way many Christians orient toward the fear of God, as a gray and dreary thing, a wet blanket on our otherwise warm affections for God, it is easy to be left asking, Do I dare to fear God? But if we take seriously how the Bible speaks about holy fear as a pleasure to God, as the blazing affection of awestruck adoration, as the bedrock of wisdom and happiness, the better question is, Do I dare not fear God? Reeves reveals the stakes in no unclear terms:

The living God is not moderately happy but fearfully happy, and when we have [holy] fear, we enter into the joy of our Master. (Rejoice and Tremble, 59)

So, do you delight to fear God? How could you dare do otherwise?