Thou shalt have no other gods.

What does this mean?

We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

In our modern context, we often gloss over the first word in that list: fear. We know that we should love and trust God, but we have come to neglect that we must also fear Him. The word “fear” appears hundreds of times in Scripture, and a great many of those instances are part of commands to fear the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is not an animalistic fear or the sort of fear that one has for an encounter with a bear or a particularly nasty storm, but it is also not entirely other from that sort of fear. The proper fear of the Lord for the Christian is a filial fear — the right and good fear that a son has for his father. In fact, we cannot properly love or trust God without first fearing Him.

The fear of the Lord is good; it is the beginning of wisdom; it revives the soul.

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Show Notes

“fear”

See Also

Further Reading

Job

Parental Warnings

None.