"Fear of God is a profound reverence for God and a dread of His punishment."Questions
- What does it mean to fear God?
- To me, fearing God means to be imminently aware of the magnitude of God and the scope of His power, keeping in mind, by comparison, the smallness of myself.
- How is the fear of God healthy for your Christian walk?
- It keeps me from treating God as if He is my peer, from being so familiar that respect and reverence is lost.
- How does your fear of God correlate with your love of God?
- I don't love God in the same way I love my wife or my friends. Instead, the manner of love I have towards God could be called devotion - I am devoted to the cause and work of Christ. My entire life, my body, mind, heart, and soul, is devoted to God, in love, for His purposes to all eternity. That's a very different type of love than what I show to my wife or my friends. It's a very different type of love than what I show my unborn son.
1 Timothy 1:12-17
But I received mercy because I acted out of ignorance in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ... But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of [sinners], Christ Jesus might display His extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in Him for eternal life." - vv. 13b-14, 16Paul was brought to Christ by the magnitude of God's grace, mercy, and patience. Here, in Paul's own testimony, we get a glimpse of the awe-inspiring greatness of God in comparison with the miniscule state of man. It is this unwarranted redemptive work, that the majestic God would reach across the gap of sin and provide atonement for a meagre man, the self-appointed "worst of sinners, that prompts Paul to end his testimony with a statement of reflective praise:
"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen." - v. 17
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