A member of my church asked me about the fear of the Lord. I
promised to write them something. This is what I wrote.
You had asked about the fear of God. There are two kinds of
fear in the Bible. One kind is the fear that a slave has before his cruel
master. The Bible speaks to that when it says,
There is no fear in love, but perfect
love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has
not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18
There is another kind of fear that the Bible talks about.
This shows up in places like this:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning
of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Proverbs 9:10
This fear is not about relating to a cruel master. It's about
understanding that we will be evaluated by God. So, there's this:
And if you call on him as Father who
judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear
throughout the time of your exile … 1
Peter 1:17
We will be evaluated. But don't think of that merely in terms
of being in trouble. God will look at the works of faithful Christians who
sincerely desire to do what is good and right, and He will reward them (even
though there will still be much that isn't good in those works). Part of the
motivation for working at sincerely desiring to do what is good and right is
that we will be evaluated and rewarded.
There is also the flip side of this. Those Christians who do
not work at sincerely desiring to do what is good and right will also be
evaluated. They will suffer loss. And in some cases they will be excluded from
the Kingdom. The last day will reveal that there was no love for Jesus.
I'm going to guess that this will raise other questions. If
that's true, let me know.