I remember the first time I encountered the term “fear of the Lord.” I saw it written on a small plaque that was given to me as a child on the day of my First Communion. The message spoke about how fear of the Lord is a beautiful gift. This message stuck with me, because I was confused and intrigued. 

Why would I want to fear the God that I love? How could fear be a part of any healthy relationship, let alone a relationship with God?

I know it’s true that God is all-powerful and He certainly has the power to do things that I should fear, but He is also a God of love. How does fear fit into this picture of a loving God? 

When I think of rulers who are worthy of fear, I think of a politician who doesn’t care for the people he or she is serving, but who rather seeks for opportunities to expand his or her own power. Or on a smaller scale I think of a school principle from my childhood who was unkind and who would punish children for making honest mistakes. The idea of “fear the Lord” starts to feel like a heavy burden when I think of these cold and self-involved figures of authority who I have attached to the word “fear.” 

It wasn’t until years later that I closely revisited the idea of “fear of the Lord.” I was taking a Catholic philosophy course and I began to read the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great philosophers and theologians of Church history. 

I began asking, what does it mean to “fear of the Lord” in a Christian context? How is it different than an unhealthy disposition of fearfulness? 

I started to find answers to my questions in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. 

Aquinas explains that there are two different fears: “filial” and “servile” fear (Summa I/II.67.4; II/II.19.9). Servile fear is inspired by a fear of judgement or punishment. It is the fear inspired by a grumpy principle or a malevolent politician. On the other hand “filial fear,” is inspired by an appropriate reverence towards God’s greatness, and a desire to never be separated from God by our sin. Unlike servile fear, which is rooted in being afraid of a ruler’s judgement, filial love in rooted in a love and reverence for a good and powerful God. Servile fear is like when a small child obeys their parent solely out of a fear over what the parent will do to them if they disobey. Filial love is like a child obeying a parent’s request because the child loves their parent and knows that the parent can be trusted to lead them towards health and happiness at all times. 

Fear of the Lord is not “being scared of the Lord.” It is understandable to fear a figure of authority who has bad intentions or who simply has inconsistent intentions. But both the teachings of our Christian faith and the lived example of Jesus Christ, show us exactly what kind of God it is that we serve. We serve a God who is pure Goodness. We serve a God who “knit us together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13) with the utmost care. He is a God who challenges us, but he is a God who never endangers us. 

Simply put, the fear of the Lord is an appropriate reverence for who God is and a sober awareness of the seriousness of sin, considering who sin is separating us from. 

We do not need to be scared of Him. God will never harm us because His nature is pure Love. 

But we also do want to give the Lord what He is due as our Creator. He also cannot be reduced to being merely a docile and friendly “buddy,” who we can predict and control. The greatness of the Lord deserves our honor and reverence. 

But what if I’m in a place where the idea of “fearing the Lord” triggers a sense of shame or anxiety?

What if, in recognizing God’s greatness and my smallness, I start slipping into that fearfulness that I associate with a God who is out to “get me?” 

What if this fear of the Lord makes me feel like I have to worship God out of obligation rather than from a free desire to honor the one I love? 

One of the best ways to practice the fear of the Lord without slipping into a sense of shame or anxiety is to remember God as Father. A healthy fear of the Lord is rooted in a belief that God is my loving father and that I am His beloved child. Fear of the Lord doesn’t work if I begin to see myself as the minion of a controlling dictator or if I begin to see God has a schoolmaster who is out to get me. 

When I fall into old habits of seeing myself as being forced to follow a set of rules in order to avoid God’s punishment, I pray for the grace to see what is true. I pray for the grace to remember that I am a child who has a Father who loves her so much that he died for her on a Cross. If a fearfulness arises in me that sees God out to “get me,” I ask for the grace to remember that my Father is eagerly looking to forgive me at every turn! 

When I’m struggling with the idea of “fearing the Lord,” I’ve also found it helpful to remember two main reasons why a healthy fear of the Lord can help me flourish as a human being:

First, when we have a healthy fear of the Lord, we are better able to engage with suffering. 

Fear of the Lord enables us to encounter hardship with a supernatural sense of peace because when life is marked by suffering, we can trust that the providence of our good and all-powerful God is working through even the worst seasons of life. Because of his goodness, we can rest in the knowledge that even when we can’t understand why bad things have happened, we do know that the goodness of God will prevail. Because God is all-Powerful, we can be assured that even amid our suffering, God is in control and that he is holding us close. 

If we were to reduce God to merely being our buddy, the kind of God we are friendly with but who we do not approach with holy fear, we are not only failing to give God what he is due, but we are also robbing ourselves of the kind of almighty God who can care for and comfort us in any and all circumstances. 

When we have a clear vision of who we are in relation to God, we can grasp a fear of the Lord that brings us closer to Him, not farther away. In times of suffering, having intimacy with God can be an immense source of comfort. Therefore, by knowing the reality of our littleness and God’s greatness, we are able to have a much more real intimacy with God in times of suffering, which would be impossible if we were still operating from the inaccurate idea that God is merely our buddy. We can’t be close to something that isn’t real. When we know the reality of God’s greatness through fear of the Lord, we are enabled to be close with a real God, rather than an imaginative God who has no real power. 

Second, when we have a healthy fear of the Lord, we are freer to resist temptation. 

Because fear of the Lord gives us a humble awareness of just how big a deal sin is, it can inspire us to be much more motivated to resist sin in the face of temptation. When we have a fear of the Lord that is rooted in our reverence for the greatness of our Father, and therefore the seriousness of disobeying him, we are given even more strength to avoid choices that can harm our souls and which separate us from our Father. Fear of the Lord helps us to remember that “wow - the Creator of the universe died for my sins!” When we remember the sacrifice that God has made so that we can be free from sin, sin can begin to look a lot less desirable and therefore it can be easier to avoid things that the Lord has asked us to avoid. 

When we approach our relationship with God with a healthy sense of holy fear, this fear is like the protective mantle of a Father who doesn’t want us to be destroyed by sin and who is covering us with his power and love. Fear of the Lord has the power to protect us from the forces that would seek to separate us from our loving Father. 

Ok. So there are good reasons to cultivate a fear of the Lord within our hearts, but how do we cultivate a fear of the Lord within ourselves? Here are a couple practices that I have made a part of my life:

1. Meditate on God as Creator and Ruler of the Universe. 

I love reading the Creation Story in the Book of Genesis because it focuses on God as the sovereign ruler who quite literally created the universe out of nothing. When I sit with the image of God creating light out of the darkness or creating humanity out of the dust, it instills in me an increased sense of the grandeur of God. 

Then, when I think of this all-powerful Creator of the Universe and realize that he is one and the same as Jesus, who died on the Cross for my sins, I am struck by the fact that the King of the Universe died for me. The same God who created everything has chosen to die for my sake. As I sit with this reality, a growing sense of reverence and awe is able to grow in my heart. 

2. Spend time worshipping the Lord in the Eucharist. 

As physical, material beings, I have learned that it is important to conform our bodies to what we believe. If I believe that God is worthy of my reverence and worship, then a great way to nurture that belief is to literally bow before Him in the Eucharist. 

When I approach the altar to receive the Eucharist during Mass, how can I physically offer a sign of our reverence? How can I show with my body that I am approaching a God who is worthy of holy fear? 

When I attend Eucharistic adoration, how can I spend some time in prayer in a posture that indicates that I am in the presence of the almighty King of the Universe? Can I kneel or bow down in his presence? If I am struggling to have a holy sense of fear when I approach the Lord, I have learned that choosing to take a posture of reverent worship like bowing or kneeling can help move my mind and heart towards a deeper belief in what my posture is indicating. 

Especially surrounded by a culture that has forgotten a sense of reverence for the Divine, I often find it hard to remember the power of a holy fear of the Lord. But I am grateful for figures of wisdom like Thomas Aquinas who remind me that in a world that is scared of so much, I can lean into a holy fear of the Lord that pulls me deeper into the comfort of my Father’s embrace.