Advent 2025, Week 1: Psalm 112, Part 2
Have you heard of the fashion brand Fear of God? It is a curious name for a clothing company. Company founder Jerry Lorenzo says that the name, “…‘Fear of God’ evokes a sense of reverence, acknowledging the Christian upbringing of Lorenzo’s youth. Representing the influence of faith on his work and life, it is not about being afraid, but about recognizing God’s holiness and majesty.”
How is the fear of the Lord related to Christianity?
Proverbs begins, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” A version of that phrase is repeated several times in Proverbs. Did you know that “the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom” (or a similar statement) is also used in Job 28:28, Ecclesiastes 12:13, and in a number of Psalms?
The fear of the Lord used that often in Scripture because it is a foundational concept for understanding our relationship with God. We are in the best possible relationship with God when we fear him. Fear him? Fearing God can sound very odd and even wrong. Yet, that is how Psalm 112 begins, “Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands.” How can people who fear God be blessed?
Think about all the verses in Scripture that talk about God as love, God caring for us, wanting to make his home with us, Jesus as our brother and friend, the Holy Spirit living with us. To fear God sounds like the opposite of all that relational closeness.
Furthermore, to be blessed is to be happy. “Blessed” seems totally inconsistent with fear. Until we realize that the fear of the Lord is not horror or being scared. The fear of the Lord is proper reverence, respect, awe, honor.
The emotions of being scared and of having awe are admittedly very, very similar. Whether you are scared of something or in awe of something, it is usually because you respect its size, its power, its ability to affect you. But where scared is a negative fear, awe is a positive fear.
Have you ever been in awe of the magnitude of a situation? I’ve written previously that the moon sometimes freaks me out. Something so big, so far away, yet we can see it clearly. It’s craters, mountains, and moon. I look at it, and I get the shivers. But I’m not afraid of it. I’m in awe of it.
The psalmist is talking about that positive fear. We so respect the power, the love, the knowledge of God, in a positive way, that we want to be close to him, we want to follow his precepts, as the second half of verse 1 suggests. We want to be a part of what God is doing; it brings a deep awe, a healthy, positive fear.
That positive fear of the Lord is what motivates us, the psalmist says, to not just follow God’s commands, but to delight in God’s commands. In addition to fearing God sounding odd, it might also sound odd to delight in his commands. Laws, commands, and rules are not generally things we find delight in. How many times have you ever thought, “I just love the speed limit”? Or “I really enjoy coming to a complete stop at stop signs”? Or “The tax code gives me delight”?
While we generally might not feel negative about God’s laws, there are some that are tough for us, even if we know they are for our good. Telling the truth when lying could really get us out of trouble. Giving generously to those in need when we want to spend money on ourselves. Most of us, I suspect, do not always feel delight in God’s laws.
Sometimes we follow God’s ways begrudgingly, and sometimes we just don’t follow his ways. But when we have fear, respect, awe for God, we can grow a sense of delight, truly, in following his commands and choosing his ways with our actions. Yes, because they are good for us. But we can not only know intellectually that his laws are good, we can grow emotional delight in following his laws. Admittedly, though, getting to that point of delighting in his laws begins with actually doing what they ask of us, whether we feel like it or not.
And when we fear God and grow delight in his laws, what happens? We’ll learn what Psalm 112 says about that in the next post.
Engaging Scripture 