Title pretty much sums it up.
What is the meaning of "God Fearing"?
- Thread starter LearningToLetGo
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Are you speaking of Gentiles as 'God-fearers' (prospective converts to Judaism) or just 'God-fearing' in general?
As cossnote stated....it depends of what you are referring to.
For the unbeliever, the fear of God is the fear of the judgment of God and eternal death, which is eternal separation from God in hell.
For the believer, our fear is reverence and awe of God. That does not mean we are afraid of Him but we have respect and honor for Him.
This is what I wanted to touch on. The word translated as "fear" means so much more than that.
This is what I recently discovered when researching this topic:
Linguistically: the Hebrew term יִרְאַת ה' (yir’at Hashem) and its Greek equivalents in the Septuagint and New Testament (φόβος τοῦ θεοῦ / phobos tou theou) draw from words whose semantic range is broader than modern English “fear.” In both biblical Hebrew and classical Greek, the root verbs (יָרֵא yārēʾ and φοβέομαι phobeomai) can denote everything from outright terror (e.g., fear of an enemy in battle) to deep reverence and veneration (e.g., fear shown to a king or deity). Context determines the nuance. Thus, when Scripture speaks of “fearing God,” it deliberately evokes the stronger end of that spectrum—not to instill panic, but to convey that the appropriate human response to divine holiness is one of overwhelming gravity. Awe that silences presumption, reverence that commands obedience. (Source: Grok.com)