In the last few blogs we established that Jesus is both our Savior and our Lord. We noted as we made this point that language associated with believing in and worshipping the Lord involves the word, ‘fear.’ Deuteronomy 10:12 asks and answers the question, “What does the Lord require from you, but to fear the Lord…”
“Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him… Deuteronomy 10:12
So, in the Word, you see that God is love (1 John 4) and that we are to fear Him (Deuteronomy 10). What should we make of this?
The difficulty lies in what we tend to understand as fear and what we tend to understand as love. Most people tend to think of fear as some kind of terror, an idea that we should cower in the presence of someone who we are afraid of.
What does it mean to fear the Lord? It means to hold Him in reverence and awe. Think about how John spoke about seeing Christ as he is in Revelation 1. What was his response? He fell down as though dead. Yet, John is often spoken of as John the Beloved, Christ’s best friend on earth.
If Jesus’ best friend held Him in reverence and awe - fear, then we should be able to fear the Lord as well. See, it’s not terror that we hold in God, it’s utter astonishment at the wonder and majesty that He is.
In our next blog we’ll talk about what it means that Jesus loves us.
We have works to do and we’re going to need faith to do them!
**(See earlier blogs for more on God’s plan for you or buy the book “From Here …By Faith”)