“I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.” Jeremiah 32:39
God is speaking to His people, and He says: “You are to fear me. This is for your own good. This is forever.” There will never be a time on earth (or in heaven) when God’s people will not fear Him.
But some people say, “There is a God to be feared in the Old Testament and a God to be loved in the New Testament, and so the fear of God is therefore not meant for us Christians.”
This is an evolutionary view of the Bible. In other words, “In ancient times, people had a primitive view of a God to be feared, and in more enlightened times, people have come to a mature view of a God to be loved.” But this is a complete misunderstanding of what the Bible is and what the Bible says.
God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We are to fear Him as we love Him, and to love Him as we fear Him. The Old Testament is full of the love of God, and the New Testament speaks often of the fear of God.
“Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Jesus said this about His Father in heaven, and He said it to His disciples. The command to “fear God” is a New Testament command (1 Pet. 2:17). In the New Testament, we read, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31), and this was written to Christian believers.
Fearing God was a mark of the early church at its best: “And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it [the church] multiplied” (Acts 9:31). Notice how the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit are joined together.
Have you been thinking of the fear of the Lord as good? Or bad? Why?
