Fear of the Lord – Is This What God Wants – Really?

The people who claim all or part of the book known as the Bible are fascinated with the number seven. Seven, among some ancient peoples, was considered a number of perfection, in the sense of completion. It refers to the combination of the totality of the spiritual realm, symbolized by the number three, and the totality of the physical, symbolized by the number four.

There is a Christian tradition around the gifts which come directly from God’s Spirit, namely that there are seven of these. The list of the sevenfold qualities comes from two versions of the Book of Isaiah the prophet (Isaiah 11:2), the older Hebrew and the (relatively) newer Greek. They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, strength and fear of the Lord, which comes out as piety in Greek. Piety in the Grace-Roman world was a highly prized gift. Piety gives us a pretty strong clue as to what “fear of the Lord” means. 

In the classic Latin poem, the Aeneid, the protagonist, Aeneas, is given the designation, pious. It is the consummate praise. Piety expressed a person’s total commitment to his or her responsibilities – to God, family, country, creation… Being pious had nothing to do with a saccharine, devotional appearance or behavior. Christians added piety to Isaiah’s original six.

The Scriptural sense of fear of the Lord is to regard God with awe, reverence – as sovereign and supreme in our life.  Our actions are to be directed toward whatever God indicates to be true and right and good. All our responsibilities flow from this. Fear of the Lord is not about being scared of God, or of what God’s going to do to me if I mess up. God knows us better than we know ourselves, that we are funny, little, imperfect and fabulous. God doesn’t want us to live in, or out of, fear. Fear, in this sense, is not a gift of the Holy Spirit.