The Fear of God
John Murray
The fear of God is the soul of godliness. The emphasis of Scripture in both the Old Testament and the New requires no less significant a proposition. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10; Psalm 111:10). If we are thinking of the notes of biblical piety none is more characteristic than the fear of the Lord.
Lest we should think that the religion of the Old Testament is in this respect on a lower level, and that the New Testament rises above that which is represented by the fear of the Lord, we need but scan the New Testament to be relieved of any such misapprehension. Nothing could be more significant than that the fear of the Lord should be coupled with the comfort of the Holy Spirit as the characteristics of the New Testament church: “So the church . . . walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit was multiplied” (Acts 9:31).
This emphasis which Scripture places upon the fear of God evinces the bond that exists between religion and ethics. The fear of God is essentially a religious concept; it refers to the conception we entertain of God and the attitude of heart and mind that is ours by reason of that conception. Since the biblical ethic is grounded in and is the fruit of the fear of the Lord, we are apprised again that ethics has its source in religion and as our religion is so will be our ethic. This is to say also that what or whom we worship determines our behaviour.
The whole nine page article is well worth your time.
You could read it slowly, looking up and meditating on each reference, and make it a personal study project for a while.