Get Wisdom (2)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
A good understanding have all those who do His commandments.
His praise endures forever. Psalm 111.10

Loving God…and fearing Him
We read of Solomon, at the beginning of his reign, that he loved the Lord and walked in all the statutes of the Law of God (1 Kgs. 3.3). Loving God is one side of what we might call the gold coin of affections defining how we are to relate to the Lord.          

To love Him is one side; to fear Him is the other. Fear of God is the first and most important affection of the heart, for unless we fear God, we will not truly love Him. Thus, the heart plays an important role in helping to establish wisdom as the conscientious outworking of our inner life.

As the Lord wrote through Moses, “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him…” (Deut. 10.12). As surely as Solomon loved the Lord, he must have feared Him as well. Fearing the Lord is the starting-point for gaining the wisdom of God; indeed, without a proper fear of God, we shall in no way get the wisdom we need to live for and serve Him well. If we do not love and fear Him, He will not give us that which is most characteristic of Him.

Most of us have an idea of what it means to love the Lord. But what is involved in fearing Him? It is important that we review this affection here.

The fear of God
The fear of God is more than simply a kind of reverence for Him. It’s not just being in awe of God, although it certainly includes that. We fear God when we have a proper sense of His immensity and might. In our day, the tendency is to bring God down to our size, and to make Him our Friend and Counselor; but we neglect to see Him as our Creator and sovereign Lord, as the Father Who disciplines and the Judge Who purges.

But He is every bit these as well, and given our smallness, our tendency to drift into unrighteous paths, and our too-easily complacent approach to living by faith, it is good for us to fear what God may do to lead us to greater fervor and devotion in our walk with and work for Him (Heb. 12.3-11).

The Scriptures teach that all the vast cosmos is contained within God (Acts 17.28). He exercises power and authority over everything He has made, so that nothing exists or continues to exist without His direct supervision and care (Heb. 1.3). When we realize just how great, vast, and powerful God is, fear of Him will begin to rise within us.

But fear of the Lord goes beyond even that. To fear God is, literally, to be afraid of Him. For when we know God in His immensity and power, we will also begin to know Him in His purity and justice. Confronted with the purity and justice of this immense and all-powerful God, we will see ourselves as altogether unworthy of anything but judgment, wrath, and destruction at His hands. Such a prospect should cause us to tremble with fear before the awesome might and holy power of God.

Thus we will fear God because we know what we deserve from Him, and we know what He is capable of doing, to bring justice against guilty sinners.

What God can do
Further, even though we are redeemed through our Lord Jesus Christ, we continue to sin and stray from the path God has marked out for us. This is not where God wants us to be, and it is not what is in our best interests, though we may be otherwise persuaded.

Thus straying from the Lord, and drifting from the moorings of our salvation (Heb. 2.1-3), we become vulnerable to His discipline, which, the writer of Hebrews reminds us, is never pleasant (Heb. 12.11). We fear God as we should when we understand His immensity and power, tremble before His holiness and justice, and dread His discipline against our daily sins.

This fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. We must have this fear firmly stationed within our heart, or we will fail to discern the true wisdom of God for any situation.

We will not get to wisdom apart from the fear of God. Yes, we must love the Lord, for we know how much He loves us. But we must also fear Him, for only then will we properly humble ourselves before Him, so that He might give us all His most precious gifts.

If we would get wisdom, we must learn to love the Lord and to fear Him, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

For reflection
1.  Do you agree that it is important to fear the Lord? Do you hear much talk – teaching or preaching – about fearing the Lord? How can you nurture fear of God in your heart?

2.  How does fearing God in your heart help to ensure that your conscience will lead you to practice wisdom?

3.  Fear and love are two sides of the coin of our most important affections toward God. Why is it important that we develop both together?

Next steps – Transformation: Outline your own approach to sustaining a healthy fear of God. Share this with another Christian and ask for your friend’s response. Talk about fearing God as the beginning of wisdom.

T. M. Moore

This is part 5 of an 8-part series on Purifying the Conscience. To download this week’s study as a free PDF, click here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.