The Fear of the Lord
The fear of the Lord means hating evil.
Let me just say that again.
The fear of the Lord means hating evil.
Proverbs 8:13 in the King James version – this is the scripture.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate.”
So let’s look at God’s nature.
God’s nature is immortality.
It’s life, righteousness, holy, truthful, loving, good, just, merciful, faithful, wise, lifegiving, never dies, eternal.
Now, what we reject because we hate evil is pride, arrogance, the evil way, the forward mouth, lies, deception, injustice, hatred, corruption, immorality, cruelty, selfishness, oppression, destruction, the death and enemy.
So why does the fear of the Lord produce hatred of evil?
It’s because God’s nature is righteous, holy, truthful, loving, and immortal.
Evil contradicts his character.
And as we grow in our knowledge of him, we increasingly reject what contradicts his character.
We do not reject evil merely because we fear punishment, but because we love what is good.
The fear of the Lord is loving what God loves and rejecting what contradicts his nature.
We oppose death and everything that unjustly destroys life because God is the source of life and death is an enemy.
Amen and amen.
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