Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #29 of Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:18-20:

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

I will stop reading there.  We will begin with Romans 3:18:

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

God is referring to people – all who were made in His image and likeness.  We have seen in this terrible description that God has given to us, there has been verse, after verse, describing the ugliness and sinful nature of fallen man.  This is basically a summation of all the things we have been looking at in the Bible concerning man’s dead condition.  It leads to there being no fear of God before their eyes.  They do not fear God, and that is a problem.  It is a huge understatement to just call it a problem.  It is the utmost in failure considering what man was created and designed to do.  We were created to fear God.  That is what the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 12:13:

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

This is a summary statement in God’s divine communication and revelation to mankind.  This is the essence of it: “Fear God, and keep his commandments.”  This is your duty, and my duty, and the whole duty of man.  It is our responsibility.  It is our obligation.  It is the purpose of life.  It is why we are here.  This is the most important thing for a creature created in the image of his Creator: “Fear God, and keep his commandments.”

Yet Romans 3:18 declares, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  It is not that they mostly fear God, or that there is a little lack of fear, but they have no fear of God before their eyes.  We wonder how that is possible, and if man’s whole duty is to fear God, how can he not fear Him at all?  And it does not just apply to a few people, but to all the people, everyone born since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  None fear God.

I think we will understand why the Bible says that sinful man has no fear of God, and we will get a good picture of what is in view here.  And all we have to do is read the Bible, comparing spiritual with spiritual, and Scripture with Scripture.

There is an interesting statement made in Amos 3:6-8:

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and JEHOVAH hath not done it? Surely the Lord JEHOVAH will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord JEHOVAH hath spoken, who can but prophesy?

God is related to a lion and his voice.  His prophesying or speaking is related to the roar of a lion, and who would not fear?  Of course you could place anyone in a jungle and let them hear the roar of a lion close to them, and they would fear, and that is because of the strength and power of a lion.  People understand that a lion is a beast that can destroy them and rip them to pieces, so it prompts a very appropriate reaction of fear.  How much more powerful is Almighty God of the Bible than a lion?  He is more powerful than all the lions on the earth, if you could put them all together.  He would be trillions and trillions of times more powerful than that. 

He is a God that can destroy, and the Bible tells us that in several places, such as in Matthew 10:26:

Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

God is able to destroy both (body and soul), and it is not just a temporary injury.  It is an everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.  It means to be removed from all existence, and to be annihilated out of being, where one will be no more.  And that is the power of the God of the Bible.  But, incredibly, what has developed as a result of man’s sinfulness is that when sin enters into his mind and soul there is tremendous perversion and distortion of reality and distortion of all sensibility.  There is a certain madness and insanity that comes with sinfulness.  Man prefers to sin over doing that which is upright. 

Man fears his fellow man who is nothing but a pathetic, finite creature like himself.  He often fears him greatly, rather than the Creator who possesses this kind of power to destroy and wipe out an individual in the most total way possible.  So there is no reasonable way of understanding this.  There is no logical explanation for why people would fear their fellow man rather than to fear the powerful God of the Bible, but that is the case.  No wonder when God looks down and sees the hearts of men, He sees how quickly they fear and tremble with trepidation and anxiety to speak in front of people, or to act or perform in front of other people.  They would shake with fear, and yet they do the most horrendous and sinful things against the Law of God right before God, and there is no fear of God before their eyes.  Again, it is not a sensible or reasonable thing, but this is the situation in this world, and it is an awful situation.  That is one of the many reasons why sin is so terrible.

Let us look at some of the commandments of God to fear Him, and then we will begin to understand what it means to fear the Lord, and why it is that the sinner has no fear of God before his eyes.  Let us start in Deuteronomy where there are several verses that will help us to understand this.  To begin with, let us read Deuteronomy 5:29:

O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!

Here, we see again this joining together of fearing God with keeping His commandments.  Remember what the whole duty of man is, according to Ecclesiastes 12?  It says in Ecclesiastes 12:13:

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

We see the same thing here in Deuteronomy 5:29, where God is, as it were, bemoaning the fact that it is not the way the people of the world are living.  They are not doing this.  And here, this is especially related to Israel:  “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” 

We see an “eternal” reference.  If it were true that they feared God and always kept His commandments, they would live forever. 

If we go to the next chapter, we will see the same thing in Deuteronomy 6:1-2:

Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which JEHOVAH your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear JEHOVAH thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.

And here is a veiled reference to eternal life.  If your days are prolonged rather than shortened, the idea of living forever is in view, just like in the previous chapter in Deuteronomy that said that if they would fear Him and keep His commandments always, it would be well with them and their children for ever.

Here in Deuteronomy 6:2, notice the way this is put: “That thou mightest fear JEHOVAH thy God, to keep all his statutes.”  In the other verses, there was a conjunction: “…that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always.”  But in Deuteronomy 6:2, it said that if they feared Him, it would lead to keeping the commandments and statutes.  They will obey.  They will live according to the Bible, the Law of God as found in the Bible.

Another verse is in Deuteronomy 8:6:

Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of JEHOVAH thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.

If you keep God’s commandments, you will walk in His ways.  This is the Old Testament equivalent to what we read in the New Testament about walking in the truth, or walking in the light, or walking in the commandments.  They are all synonymous.  So if we keep the commandments of JEHOVAH and walk in His way, we fear Him.  They go hand-in-hand.  The Bible is a Law book, and everything in it are the commandments of God, and by doing them, you are fearing God.  You see, this is giving a biblical definition for what it is to “fear God.”

We should keep in mind that when we read the word “fear” in the Old Testament, there are a few different Hebrew words translated that way.  The word we have been  looking at is Strong’s #3372, and it has a related word, #3373 or #3374, and they go along the lines of fearing God and keeping His commandments.  It is the same word in Ecclesiastes 12.

But there are a few other Hebrew words that may present a difference aspect to “fearing God.”  And our word may also have a few different aspects, but this is the main one.  What we are learning about fearing God is related to this series of words, #3372, and so on.  This series of Hebrews words is probably the most common word for “fear” in the Old Testament, so it should be helpful.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will continue to look at more Scripture where God mentions “fearing Him,” and it should be interesting.  It is definitely helpful in learning about this common reference in the Bible to “fearing the Lord.”