The essay is lengthy (about fifteen pages in total), so I will be spreading it out over several (probably three or four days) in order to make it more palatable. Let's face it, not many people would read a blog post that's the equivalent of fifteen pages.
Normally I would not do acknowledgements for a simple essay, but looking back on it, I do want to mention my Dad's helpful teachings on Proverbs and theology in general over the course of my life. Apparently he liked it, so we must think similarly. I will always be grateful for his solid biblical teaching. It would also be wrong to not mention the influence of a book by Dan Phillips that I will speak more of in the essay. While I'd already crafted a rough outline when I started reading his chapter on Proverbs 1:7 discussing the fear of the Lord, his work was very helpful in putting my mind on the right track regarding the basic meaning of the fear of the Lord.
The essay is long enough on its own, so I'll end the preamble at this juncture and let you dive right in.
The Fear of the Lord
an essay by Justin Orman
In C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a scene in which the protagonists are told about Aslan, the lion whom Lewis used in the Narnia series to represent Jesus Christ. When informed that Aslan is, in fact, a lion, Susan and Lucy question whether he can really be safe.
“‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver…‘Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” (Lewis, pg. 73).
Throughout the series, one description of Aslan that Lewis’ characters repeatedly return to is this: “He’s not a tame lion.”
In writing tales that allegorically teach biblical concepts, Lewis has come up with perhaps the most profound explanation I have ever heard on the dual nature of the concept of fearing the Lord.
What does it mean to ‘fear the Lord’? This theme is absolutely foundational to the understanding of the book of Proverbs. Solomon uses the phrase no less than 18 times. In fact, Proverbs is practically book-ended by the phrase. It follows immediately after the introduction of the book (Proverbs 1:1-6),
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7, ESV).
It also is found in the second to last verse of the book,
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” (Proverbs 31:30, ESV).
So, recognizing that the fear of the Lord is important, we must now set ourselves upon the task of understanding what Solomon (or, more importantly, God) means by the phrase. For this task we will primarily be trekking through its usages in Proverbs, but we will also take a few detours along the way around other parts of the Bible that impact our understanding of this seminal concept.
Our study will go through three main points:
- The range of meaning for ‘fear’
- The biblical usage of ‘the fear of the Lord’
- A warning regarding ‘the fear of the Lord’
First,
1. The Range of Meaning for ‘Fear’
For most people, when we think of the word ‘fear’, we probably tend to view it in an abstract sense, not far removed from this definition from Webster’s 1828 dictionary:
“To feel a painful apprehension of some impending evil; to be afraid of; to consider or expect
with emotions of alarm or solicitude. We fear the approach of an enemy or of a storm. We have reason
to fear the punishment of our sins.”
And, to be sure, we do not want to categorically dismiss this idea entirely from how we understand ‘fearing the Lord’. But at the same time, as Dan J. Phillips argues persuasively in his volume, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs:
“The fear of Yahweh is not a concept without a context, hanging on nothing. It is not a vibration, not
a virus. We don’t catch it, and it doesn’t happen either outside of us, or to us. It is an attitude, it is a
mindset. More, it is a worldview: it is the grid through which we perceive, arrange, understand, interpret
and interact with the world.” (Phillips, pg. 66).
Phillips points us to Deuteronomy 17:18-19, to help develop this thought. God’s command for the future kings of Israel who would one day take the throne was this:
“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law,
approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life,
that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and
doing them,” (Deut. 17:18-19, ESV).
Do you see that? Solomon is to ‘learn’ to fear the Lord. In the Lord’s instructions and revelation of His will to Israel, He makes clear that fearing the Lord is not simply an emotion that is brought on us by dire circumstances. Rather, it is a state of mind that all true believers must possess.
After all, Solomon informs us that, ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge’, (Prov. 1:7). Without knowledge, we cannot conceive anything accurately about God; and the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord.
Does this mean, then, that we are not to fear God in the traditional sense of the word ‘fear’?
I think, at this point, it is helpful to look at examples of those who received a fuller revelation of God’s glory throughout Scripture. We want to look carefully on how sinful men reacted in response to a greater visual revelation of Almighty God. First, let us return to the very beginning of creation in Genesis 3.
“6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and
that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to
her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that
they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 And they heard
the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God
called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the
garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (Gen. 3:6-10, ESV).
Adam and Eve sinned, and subsequently experienced fear in the presence of God. The man specifically says that he ‘was afraid, because [he] was naked’. His recognition of his nakedness was a direct result of his sin in eating fruit from the forbidden tree (v.6-7). Thus, while mankind was not created to feel sin in God’s presence, the presence of sin in our flesh necessitates fear when we come before a holy God.
We see another example of this in Isaiah 6, when the Lord sends a vision of His holiness to Isaiah the prophet.
“1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train
of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered
his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the
thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said:
“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1-5, ESV).
While we see no written description of whether Isaiah was afraid, his words in verse 5 can hardly be taken otherwise. Nothing less than sheer terror could have led him to cry out, “Woe is me! For I am lost;” (v.5). And again we see that it is sin present in Isaiah that brings this statement from his lips. He is ‘a man of unclean lips’, and his ‘people [have] unclean lips’ (v.5).
More precisely, Adam and Isaiah recognize that they are in the presence of a Being far greater than themselves. This One is not only far greater than them, but He also hates sin. And when they find themselves in His presence, they become overwhelmed by a realization of how sinful they are and that they deserve to be punished. While the Creator, Sustainer, and Lord of all the universe should always be approached with awe and respect, for practicing sinners, the closer we are brought to Him the more we become aware of how far short we have fallen from His standard. And while, for those of us who share in His grace and the atonement and redemption that has been provided through His Son, Jesus Christ, there is a new confidence present in us that we can come before His presence without terror, that feeling of awe in His presence never wholly can or should disappear. On the contrary, it should (and will) grow more and more as we learn more of Him throughout eternity.
We could examine every instance in Scripture in which God reveals some degree of His glory and holiness to mankind, in order to demonstrate the consistent response that these men gave to these extraordinary visions, but the two we have given are sufficient to demonstrate our point: In fearing the Lord, while the primary and dominant purpose of the command is in regards to a mindset or worldview, the emotional aspect of this fear cannot be entirely absent from our conception of it.
The relation of sin to this fear of God will be something that we will return to as we continue this study.
--- Check back Tuesday morning for Section Two: The Fear of the Lord - How it is used in Scripture ---
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