What Does it Mean to Fear the Lord?

The phrase about fearing the Lord gets thrown around a lot, without much attendant Biblical definition. 

But in a reading of Proverbs this morning, I came across one of the Bible’s fairly straightforward takes on what it means to fear the Lord:

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil;” (Proverbs 8:13a).

There it is, in a way we can all get our heads around. 

The verse goes on to delineate exactly what this evil is that we are to hate:

“I hate pride and arrogance,

evil behavior and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 b).

In its entirety, the verse reads thus:

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil;

I hate pride and arrogance,

evil behavior and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13)

I guess we all know now why it is so easy to balk at having a fear of the LORD! It means we can no longer justify our pride, the source of evil behavior and perverse speech! 

Proverbs eight, in its entirety, is about gaining prudence, understanding, discernment and wisdom. 

Those qualities are the opposite of pride and arrogance. We cannot increase in prudence, understanding, discernment and wisdom as long as pride rules the roost, and this includes spiritual and religious pride.

So to fear God is a beautiful thing, because that’s where the ability to hate pride and arrogance begins. 

God in Christ is the antidote. 

Christ, who, just like He did for the woman at the well (John 4:29), tells us everything we ever did and in doing so, opens our eyes to our pride and arrogance. 

Knowing that He knows what we have tried to keep hidden or are in denial of or blinded to, is the beginning of the end of the dysfunctional cycle within ourselves (a cycle which manifests itself in various ways, but is always an outworking of inner pride. Even inner-woundedness and a refusal or reluctance to heal from it emanates from pride). 

Jesus comes to us and reveals what He finds there, imbuing us with His hope of what can replace it. 

That is how we are enabled to step out in a healthy and life-giving fear of Him—life giving because it arrives inside of us with a willing shared expectation that, like the woman at the well, this fear of Him will become our “fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27). 

In other words, we want what Christ wants: the end of the cycle of dysfunction within us.

This positive fear of God through Christ delivers us, over time, from every negative fear (Psalm 34:4). 

It is the seeding of Christ's Spirit that allows us this first taste of the Lord: that He is good, and we are blessed to take refuge in Him (Psalm 34:8). 

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

This is “fear” as applied to “fear of the Lord.”

And it is in this fear of the Lord in which no self-pride, and therefore no evil, can be found.

Copyright Barb Harwood