Fear And Reverence

Fear And Reverence

When the Bible mentions the fear of God, we have to understand what is happening. The Bible puts great effort into making sure that we have a proper understanding of who God is and what He is like.

It is the Bible that reveals God to us. It stretches our idea of Him. While our minds are trying to conceive of God through what is familiar to us, the Bible describes God with words like “inexpressible, different and holy”.

What the Bible is trying to tell us is that God is not like us. He is what we would call “other.” When we compare God to what is familiar to us, we humanize Him. In effect, we make God into one of us.

God is not common or ordinary. Because of that, when we wrap our minds around His true nature, we become keenly aware of His perfect holiness and purity and our complete and utter unworthiness before Him. As we come closer and closer to God, an awe and a reverence overcomes us. We are in the presence of “Other”. That is the fear that the Bible talks about.

Fearing God has less to do with being scared than it does with owning a proper respect for the incomprehensible, unimaginable perfectness of God. The Bible wants us to feel that fear when we approach Him. Reverential fear is the thin line between terror and awe. It is mankind’s way of saying that we understand who God is while still acknowledging that we can never really understand Him.

Reverence is the element of fear that leads us to worship Him instead of flee from Him.

Genesis 28:17

He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”