Fear Not

In Romans Paul talks about the gospel. He begins by talking about the bad news -- sin. He sums up by quoting various passages from the Old Testament:

"None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Rom 3:10-18)

Now, that's interesting, isn't it? In Romans 1 he winds up with a list of evils that we all recognize (Rom 1:29-32). But not here at the end of his "bad news" section. Here he lists those things; things like a lack of understanding, not doing good, deceiving, curses, and look at that one -- "No fear of God." Really, Paul? You want to leave that as your finale?

I think so. I think that the last statement -- "There is no fear of God before their eyes" -- is perhaps the most significant. We modern Christians, however, are not well equipped to deal with that. We've been told that we're not supposed to fear God, so "no fear of God" is a good thing, right? We've been told that "the fear of God" is really just "reverential awe" and not actually fear, so "no fear of God" is the correct place to be, right? And it's odd because the language behind Paul's phrase is not obscure. The word is φόβος -- phobos -- from which we get our "phobias." It doesn't mean "reverence" but "alarm; fright." Thayer says it is "that which strikes terror." But we're very wise moderns, so when the word "fear" is used where we deem it appropriate, we'll translate it that way. When it is not, we'll redefine it to suit our preference (like Eph 5:33 -- "respect"?).

God deserves our fear. He has earned it. Every time a biblical character encounters God, the universal response is terror. When God's prophet, Isaiah, saw God, he was terrified ("undone") because he was a man of unclean lips (Isa 6:1-5). Now, we would have said, "Eh, it's all right. God's very forgiving. No problem." Isaiah was afraid. When the disciples in the boat encountered a storm, they were afraid. Then Jesus stilled the storm, they were "very much afraid" (Mark 4:35-41). Not us. "Cool!" Jesus told Peter to drop his nets on the other side and they caught more fish than they could handle. Instead of doing what you might expect -- "Uh, hey, Jesus, could we get a contract with you to drop by here once a week and do that?" -- he responded, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:4-8). Not us. No fear of God. Just "respect" or "reverential awe."

If there was fear -- genuine fear based on the very real danger of maligning our Lord, the God of the Universe -- then sin would definitely decrease. Even among the forgiven. Because even if we are forgiven there are very real temporal consequences of sin because God is holy. If we were afraid of disparaging God and afraid of impugning His character and afraid of displeasing Him, our attitudes and actions would change. If we loved God so much that hurting Him scared us, we would avoid doing that which displeases Him at all costs.

We've worked hard to eliminate the fear of God. We -- Christians -- consider it a better understanding to shift to "reverence" and "respect" than "fear" because, well, we're not supposed to fear God. But if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7) and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10) and the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil (Prov 8:13), perhaps fear is the right response to God. Perhaps the fear of the Lord is a good thing. Perhaps we're not doing anybody any favors by turning aside the fear of God. Perhaps there is a proper fear and we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.