Fear of God

Filial respect

The Fear of God

If we wish to live a life with inexhaustible strength and unshakable faith, we must fear God. This fear is described for the first time in Genesis 3:6-10: "Then the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, pleasing to the eyes and desirable to acquire wisdom; she took her fruit and ate it, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he also ate it. Then both of their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked; they intertwined fig leaves and made themselves belts out of them. Then they heard the Lord God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called the man and said to him: "Where are you?". He replied: "I heard your step in the garden: I was afraid, because I'm naked, and I hid" ».

Yet both the man and the woman had been warned that if they ate of that fruit they would die, but they deliberately ignored the warning, not fully believing it. Even today there are many who have excluded the fear of God from their lives; they believe in a kind, compassionate and loving Jesus, and have forgotten the furious Jesus who wielded the whip and drove all the merchants out of the temple: they were greatly afraid when they experienced his indignation and in Him they saw the infinite greatness of God.

The fear of God, in summary, derives from the love for God, and from the respect that comes from the awareness of his transcendence and his greatness, from the interior understanding that God is infinite and is the Almighty, while we are a "nothing". in his regards. The fear of God leads us to consider that He is our creator, our justice and our protection. When we understand who He really is, the desire arises in us to know Him more, to love Him more and to grow in relationship with Him in respectful recognition of His power.

The fear of God also derives from the awareness of always being under the gaze of the Almighty, who will be the judge of our actions at the end of time; for this reason, cultivating a "healthy" fear of God can become the feeling that keeps us away from evil and drives us to serve him by doing his will.

"Blessed is the man who fears the Lord and walks in his ways" (Ps 127, 1) and, as Solomon reports in Proverbs, "if indeed you call upon understanding and call for wisdom, if you seek it like silver and for you will dig it as for treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and you will find the knowledge of God, because the Lord gives wisdom, from his mouth comes knowledge and prudence"
(Pro 2,3-6).

Only in this way does one arrive at the fear of God through the gift of wisdom, taking care not to confuse the fear of God with natural fear: one learns to know and recognize it by observing the commandments, by leading an innocent life and by always seek the truth.

The fear of God leads us to hear His warnings, obey His commandments, and trust His promises. Let us therefore listen to the Scripture which says: "Now Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, except that you fear the Lord your God, that you walk in all his ways, that you love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you observe the commands of the Lord and his laws, that it may come to you well?”
(Deut 10:12).

Without the gift of the fear of God we fall into insecurity, arrogance, sadness and we find ourselves lost, like a tiny atom in the universe. Dependence on God instead gives us a sense of trust; and doing the will of this Father is not a utopia, but a concrete possibility, because we are his children: the Spirit of Christ is also in us.

The fear of God humbles us before His greatness, since humility does not arise from the thought and awareness of our sins alone, but from the comparison with the immensity and omnipotence of God. For this reason, in Psalm 49, God -Father reproaches the sinner-son, prudently warning him: «You go with adulterers, you steal, you lie; and then: you laugh at me, but do you think I'm like you, that I approve of you? You are wrong, I am not like you and then return to yourself, become wise and learn again not to be so casual with my law, obey as my Son did".