# “Right fear falls on its face before the Lord” by Michael Reeves - Link: https://tollelege.net/2025/08/26/right-fear-falls-on-its-face-before-the-lord-by-michael-reeves/ - Published: 2025-08-26T12:00:00-05:00 - Author: tollelege “The right fear of God, then, is not the flip side to our love for God. Moses’s command to Israel in summarizing the law was precisely that God’s people should fear and love the Lord their God. Right fear does not stand in tension with love for God. Right fear falls on its face before the Lord, but falls leaning “_toward the Lord_.” It is not as if love draws near and fear distances. Nor is this fear of God one side of our reaction to God. It is not simply that we love God for his graciousness and fear him for his majesty. That would be a lopsided fear of God. We also love him in his holiness and tremble at the marvelousness of his mercy. _True fear of God is true love for God defined: it is the right response to God’s full-orbed revelation of himself in all his grace and glory._ Evidently, the fear that Christ himself has (**Isa. 11:1–3**), and shares with us, is the opposite of being afraid of God. Godly fear casts out being afraid. But neither is it a cool, passionless regard of God. Time and again we have seen in Scripture that believers who have a godly fear tremble before God. Overwhelmed by his goodness and majesty and holiness and grace and righteousness— by all that God is—the faithful tremble. The biblical theme of the fear of God helps us to see the sort of love toward God that is fitting. It shows us that God does not want passionless performance or a vague preference for him. To encounter the living, holy, and all-gracious God truly means that we cannot contain ourselves. He is not a truth to be known unaffectedly, or a good to be received listlessly. Seen clearly, the dazzling beauty and splendor of God must cause our hearts to quake. To appreciate something of this, take a moment to enjoy the following poem by the hymnwriter F. W. Faber (1814–1863). Entitled “The Fear of God,” it is a paean to fear as the intense ecstasy of love: _My fear of Thee, O Lord! exults_ _Like life within my veins,—_ _A fear which rightly claims to be_ _One of love’s sacred pains._ _Thy goodness to Thy saints of old_ _An awful thing appeared;_ _For were Thy majesty less good_ _Much less would it be feared._ _There is no joy the soul can meet_ _Upon life’s various road_ _Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks_ _Under the eye of God._ _A special joy is in all love_ _For objects we revere;_ _Thus joy in God will always be_ _Proportioned to our fear._ _Oh Thou art greatly to be feared,_ _Thou art so prompt to bless!_ _The dread to miss such love as Thine_ _Makes fear but love’s excess._ _The fulness of Thy mercy seems_ _To fill both land and sea_ _If we can break through bounds so vast,_ _How exiled shall we be!_ _For grace is fearful, which each hour_ _Our path in life has crossed;_ _If it were rarer, it might be_ _Less easy to be lost._ _But fear is love, and love is fear,_ _And in and out they move;_ _But fear is an intenser joy_ _Than mere unfrightened love._ _When most I fear Thee, Lord! then most_ _Familiar I appear;_ _And I am in my soul most free,_ _When I am most in fear._ _I should not love Thee as I do,_ _If love might make more free;_ _Its very sweetness would be lost_ _In greater liberty._ _I feel Thee most a Father when_ _I fancy Thee most near;_ _And Thou comest not so nigh in love_ _As Thou comest, Lord! in fear._ _They love Thee little, if at all,_ _Who do not fear Thee much;_ _If love is Thine attraction, Lord!_ _Fear is Thy very touch._ _Love could not love Thee half so much_ _If it found Thee not so near;_ _It is thy nearness, which makes love_ _The perfectness of fear._ _We fear because Thou art so good,_ _And because we can sin;_ _And when we make most show of love,_ _We are trembling most within._ _And Father! when to us in heaven_ _Thou shalt Thy Face unveil,_ _Then more than ever will our souls_ _Before Thy goodness quail._ _Our blessedness will be to bear_ _The sight of Thee so near,_ _And thus eternal love will be_ _But the ecstasy of fear_.” –Michael Reeves, [_Rejoice & Tremble: The Surprising Good News of the Fear of the Lord,_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1433565323?tag=toletaupanre-20) ed. Michael Reeves, Union (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 52–56. More quotes from [Michael Reeves](https://tollelege.net/category/michael-reeves/)· More on [Holiness](https://tollelege.net/category/holiness/)