Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

In the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel today, Jesus tells his disciples to fear God, not people. 

The notion of “fearing the Lord” shows up with frequency in the Scriptures, particularly in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In the Psalms, to be one who fears the Lord is to be one of the righteous, the one to whom the psalmist writes:

“Come, you children, and listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.” (Psalm 34:11)

“Fear you, the LORD, you His saints; For to those who fear him there is no lack of anything.” (v. 9)

“But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting for those who fear Him, and His justice to the children’s children.” (Psalm 103:17)

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10)

These passages suggest that this biblical concept of fear is not merely a kind of existential dread resulting from God’s anger at our sins. The sense of these (and other) psalmic passages equates fearing God with being in communion with him.

Failing to follow the commandments and following our own disintegrated desires also means losing our communion, our union to God and throwing up a wall between us and God. That separation, in an ultimate sense, is what Hell is.

Such a reality helps to explain why we should nurture a fear of God in our lives. To fear God means to fear the results of our sinfulness: the disorientation, the fragmentation, the loss of God’s presence—spiritual death. The saints talk about the fear of losing the Holy Spirit (Psalm 51), and similarly, we should desire to be found in God, and with God’s Spirit in us.

“My soul longs after the Lord and I seek Him in tears.” (St. Silouan the Athonite)

Yours in Christ,

—Justin