The fear of the Lord is....

I've been asked a lot about this phrase. What does "fearing the Lord" mean? If the Lord is good and loving as we've been told, why are we to "fear" God? Doesn't this speak of an angry, smiting God, something characterized by preachers of long ago who preached about hellfire and brimstone? How do fear and love occupy the same space for God?

Throughout our Scriptures, we come across this decree, this foundation of wisdom..."fear the Lord." The ancient Egyptians had no "fear of the Lord" (Exodus 9) and so God delivered the Israelites through plagues and pestilence to a land where they could "fear the Lord." God required the Israelites to fear him and walk in his ways as they entered their new land full of new possibilities and with a future only God had created for them (Deuteronomy 10).

Do we fear God like we fear spiders, snakes, and Jerry Jones's decisions for the Cowboys? Do we fear God like we fear public speaking and heights? Or is this fear something else?

I've come up with answers for this phrase that revolve around, "Well, you ought to respect the majesty and sovereignty of God. You ought to never make God too small, or treat God too lightly. You ought not to take God for granted, and never take your sin for granted as well. God is our friend, and Jesus is our brother; but we never treat this casually as we do our friends and brothers."

I've never been satisfied with these answers. For me, it has always seemed that something is lacking. That this didn't quite explain what this particular "fear" meant. I centered my definition of fear based on God's "Bigness" and our "Smallness".

Here's a better answer that I ran across today. From Proverbs 8:13, we hear, "The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil." I like this answer much better because it centers on God's loving action to eradicate all evil from the world and his call to us to participate with him so that we can live well in the land/life God gives to us.

God is good and hates all evil. All the actions of God in our scriptures culminating with the sending of Jesus are God's way of dealing with evil in this world. As a redeemed person, one who has been brought out of slavery (either physical as the Israelites' release, or spiritual as our release from sin), our "fear" of God is to participate in God's dealing with evil in this world through the power of the Holy Spirit. We fear God by hating evil and working against it, no matter where it may be found, no matter how big it is.

Evil is not, as the Hollywood films would give us, that ugly monster that lurks in the shadows ready to cut us through with an axe. Evil is anything that would oppose God's will. Loving the Lord is fearing the Lord is hating evil.