What are the virtues most often highlighted in sacred scripture? Certainly love, faith and forgiveness are among the usual suspects. But there is one virtue that we almost never discuss which receives an enormous amount of attention in the Word of God, namely, fear of the Lord. By some counts, this foundational biblical spiritual gift is praised in over 200 verses.
Fear of the Lord is especially prominent in the Bible’s wisdom literature. It is the central theme of the book of Proverbs, for example, where it is mentioned over a dozen times. It is there that we receive the famous reminder: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10). Likewise, the first chapter of the book of Sirach contains an extended discourse on fear of the Lord, and it is a recurring motif in the psalms. Ecclesiastes 12:13 offers a neat summary: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.”
The Pentateuch also emphasises fear of the Lord on a number of occasions, including in the preface to the great Shema. We are told that the commandment to love God with our whole hearts is intimately tied up with the injunction to “fear the LORD your God … by keeping all his statutes and his commandments” (Deut 6:2). In the book of Joshua, the Israelite commander instructs God’s people: “Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness” (Jos 24:14).
The Bible’s preoccupation with fear of the Lord is not limited to the Old Testament. Consider Our Lady’s words in the Magnificat: “And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50). Later on in the Gospel of Luke, Christ warns: “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). We moderns might be tempted to assume the Saviour is referring to the Devil in this verse, but in fact He is speaking about God the Father.
In the Acts of the Apostles, fear of the Lord is one of the characteristic marks of the early Christian community: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up; and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it was multiplied” (Acts 9:31). St Paul urges the Corinthians to “make holiness perfect in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1). Similarly, St Peter instructs his readers to “conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile” (1 Pet 1:17).
All of this suggests that fear of the Lord is a critically important part of the Christian life. But what is it, exactly? The website Catholic Straight Answers provides an excellent description: “Primarily, this gift entails a profound respect for the majesty of God who is the supreme being. Here, a person realises his ‘creatureliness’ and dependency upon God, has a true ‘poverty of spirit,’ and never would want to be separated from God, who is love. As such, this gift arouses in the soul a vibrant sense of adoration and reverence for God and a sense of horror and sorrow for sin.”
Here we might recall the traditional distinction between servile and filial fear. Servile fear is fear of punishment, while filial fear is a deep aversion to offending the one whom we love. It is this latter fear which the spiritual gift of fear of the Lord primarily consists in. Just as a man should feel a filial fear towards his wife insofar as he dreads the thought of betraying her, so by extension we ought to maintain a healthy filial fear of God.
Fear of the Lord prevents us from becoming overly familiar with God without the prior conversion of heart that such familiarity depends upon. In the initial stages of conversion, this fear may rightly include a servile element. It is not a bad thing for us to fear the punishments that our sins deserve. But as we grow in holiness, our motives are purified and our fear moves from servile to filial. The husband who avoids committing adultery solely because he wishes to avoid public shame possesses servile fear only. The virtuous husband avoids adultery because he abhors the idea of ever hurting his beloved.
It is the same with us and God. As we mature in the spiritual life, we learn to hate evil not so much because we are afraid of punishment but rather because we are horrified by sin and because we are afraid of ever damaging our relationship with the Lord. This helps us to make sense of 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” The fear the verse is describing is servile, not filial. The one who acts rightly simply because he fears punishment has not yet been perfected in love.
Psalm 34 offers a beautiful illustration of the different kinds of fear. On the one hand, King David describes how “I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears” (v 4). Yet just a few verses later we are told: “O fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him have no want!” When we draw close to the Lord, we begin to be set free from all those very human fears that burden our hearts: fear of financial hardship, fear of ill health, fear of our own weakness and so forth. In time, we also begin to transcend that servile fear which shrinks away from sin not because it is evil but because it entails punishment. As all these imperfect fears recede in the soul, a holy fear of the Lord takes their place.
As we have seen, in the Catholic tradition fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The scriptural basis for these gifts is the messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 11:1–3. The prophecy points forward to Jesus, which is why the Catechism says that the gifts of the Spirit “belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David” (§1831). Christ Himself possessed fear of the Lord in the highest possible degree. To be sure, Christ did not fear punishment, nor was He ever worried that He might fall into sin. Rather, His filial fear consisted in a perfect reverence for God’s eminence, as well as a perfect aversion to sin.
As we have seen, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. St Thomas Aquinas clarifies that one thing can be the beginning of another in two distinct ways. Something can be the beginning of another with respect to its essence, and in this sense the architect’s blueprints are the beginning of the skyscraper. Alternatively, something can be the beginning of another in terms of its effect, and in this sense the concrete foundations are the beginning of the skyscraper. In terms of wisdom, Aquinas argues that faith is its beginning with respect to its essence, but filial fear of the Lord is the first effect of wisdom. At the same time, servile fear also has a role to play, for it deters us from sin, which in turn makes us more open to the effects of wisdom.
Fear of the Lord is also closely related to hope. Indeed, in its section on the theological virtues, the Catechism makes a surprising turn: “Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God’s love and of incurring punishment” (§2090). How can this be? The answer, it seems, is that fear of the Lord inculcates within us a deep sense of our own littleness before God, which in turn teaches us to rely on His promises. If fear of the Lord identifies God as our beloved Father and King who deserves our reverence and obedience, hope says that such a God must therefore be worth trusting completely.
Fear of the Lord thus provides a grounding for Christian hope while also serving as its safeguard. In particular, fear of the Lord shields hope from presumption. Authentic Christian hope does not presume that “God will be good to me no matter how I act.” Instead, hope trusts in God’s goodness while acknowledging the urgent need to turn away from evil and cooperate with His plan.
CS Lewis offers a helpful model for thinking about fear of the Lord when, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the girl Lucy asks whether the lion Aslan is safe. To which Mr Beaver replies: “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” As we grow in fear of the Lord, we learn to approach “with reverence and awe” the God who is “a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28–29). As Lewis rightly observed, God is not a tame lion, but He does have our best interests at heart, and He is perfectly good.
If we wish to become wise, we must therefore strive to cultivate our sense of filial fear towards that Primal Love who first called our souls into being. This may not be a fashionable task today, but it is an essential one. And in a world where irreverence and indifference abound, the Christian must be discerning about the kinds of people he allows to shape his mind, his heart and his relationship with the Lord: “He who walks with wise men becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Prov 13:20).
