Fr. Rafail Noica: the fear of God is the fear of losing God's love

God’s fear is a feeling of love, when you are afraid of losing God, because He is so precious, so dear, so beloved, so sweet to the soul.

On God's Fear

Hieromonk Rafail Noica

Conference held at the Archdiocesan Cathedral in Alba Iulia, Great Lent 1995 

Translated by Grig Gheorghiu

I'd like to say a few words on God’s fear, because it is "the beginning of wisdom" as the Psalmist says (Psalm 110/111:10). I am afraid we don't understand what God's fear is, the fear of God: that is, should you fear God if you do something bad, and then, for fear of the rod, you don’t do this or the other? But then, if we fear God in this way, how do we proclaim a God of love, and where is this love if we fear God as we fear a dangerous animal?

Then what is God's fear? And how is it "the beginning of wisdom"? I met a kind soul who, as a protection against evil, put up in her room a sort of icon, which was more like a painting depicting The Last Judgement, and especially the torments of hell; and this person was hoping that when bad thoughts come to her, she would become afraid and would cut them off from her mind by looking at the torments of hell. She was saying that in the beginning, this tactic was working, this "ascesis" of hers was working somewhat, but now she looks carelessly at all the abominations depicted in the painting and the "beginning of wisdom" does not enter into her heart for some reason. And I wanted to tell her: the fear of hell, the fear of torment, is it the same as the fear of God? And I see how other people, thinking in the same way, become afraid (or put this fear into others) by thinking of the demons and all that they bring to us, of their evil doings and the unrest they cause us so as to trouble us. But then I start thinking: the fear of the devil, is this the fear of God? That is, our God is the devil? Or our God is hell?

The fear of God. I like to say “God’s fear” because this expression has a wider range, it means much more, and I would like to offer it to you so you can keep it in your thoughts now, when you are young. Every divine word has a much wider range than the human word. With God’s help I will try to talk to you about this.

I prefer “God’s fear,” first of all, because “fear of God” suggests too much that you are afraid “of” something, and if you are afraid “of” - be it God, be it a dragon - what do you do then? You run away and you hide yourself. But this is exactly Adam’s mistake - being deceived and not obeying God. God enters into Eden with His love, looking for Adam, and Adam, hearing the voice of God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8), runs away and hides behind the trees. The Church teaches us not to hide, but to confess. And what is confession? We come to God and show ourselves, not even waiting for God to come to us (like Adam in Eden) and to say “Adam, where are you?” But we go and meet God on the way with our confession.

And what was Adam’s answer in Eden? “I was afraid because I was naked”. And God then asks “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” And here is how God Himself confesses to Adam. And what happens in the end? Adam, when he showed himself before God, had covered his nakedness with fig leaves. But when that whole tragic dialogue ended (tragic, because Adam had lost his original beauty, and did not recover it by confession, by repentance), when Adam lost the Eden in which he delighted, what did God do with Adam? He dressed him in “garments of skin.” 

These garments of skin - isn’t the garment of skin a more perfect covering than the fig trees? That is, when there arose a quarrel, so to speak, between Adam and God, Adam remained secluded in his condition and didn’t turn back to tell God: “Yes, Lord, I ate from the fruit from which You told me not to eat, and look what happened to me. I thought that my eyes would be opened so I could raise them to God, because that’s what the snake told me, but You had told me that I would die; and indeed I died, I died spiritually. My eyes were opened, and what did I see? Nakedness and shame. But why this shame? I lost Your grace, I died!”

Adam did not answer like this. He said: “Here, the woman You gave me, she gave me the fruit to eat, and of course, I ate it” (so in conclusion, whose fault is it? - God’s fault!). Then God gently tried to save Adam through Eve, but Eve also did not show herself to be like the Mother of God would be later - so that through her love, through her humility she might save Adam. Eve also replied in a spirit of dispute, in the same spirit as Adam:  “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” And that is why I say “quarrel,” because neither Adam nor Eve repented, they didn’t humble themselves before God, and they didn’t show humility (that wonderful state that is known by everyone who has tasted it even once, even a little) so that they could allow God to show Himself to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to become angry, overflowing in gracious love, and sorrowful about this evil;” (Joel 2:13) to be healing - so that, after their death through sin, God may heal them and Eden may not be lost. And they remained in a quarrel.

And they left from the face of God, and Eden with the Archangels and the Seraphims became closed off, guarded with a sword of fire. And I say it again, what did God do? He covered them, He covered the shame of their nakedness with better clothes than they themselves could make. In this way, you can see some of God’s endless love - because even amidst a quarrel, He blessed them with better gifts than what they themselves could produce.

So if God is like this, why don’t we go to God from the beginning to tell Him, as I said that Adam should have told Him: “Yes, Lord, I sinned, but I don’t want to fall away from life!” - because God doesn’t want us to fall away from life either, “but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

The fear of God, in the wrong sense of the word, is what sin caused in Adam: separation from God. It didn’t complete it, because there was still room for repentance, but the state of sin became ingrained to some measure.

Oh, if Adam had understood “the fear of God” as God’s fear, in the good sense...We see this in those who lived in God’s fear: in the Saints, in the Holy Fathers, in the Psalms which tell us about it - God’s fear is something that makes man close to God. And how can it still be called fear, if it draws you closer, and does not separate you?

God’s fear is a feeling of love, when you are afraid of losing God, because He is so precious, so dear, so beloved, so sweet to the soul. Only when you lose God’s grace do you truly understand what death is. Because “death” is not the separation of the soul from the body, but the separation of the spirit of man from the Holy Spirit, from God’s grace. This is what death is, and we all suffer from it. But if we have known grace, we have more experience than Adam had before the fall, paradoxically because we know evil too. Adam had known only good, and we can say he didn’t know a good thing when he saw it - in the sense that he was not able to treasure this good until he lost it.

If someone receives grace from God, then grace produces a certain fear, a certain sorrow. How did it come to me? Who dwells in my mind? What is it that caused all my thoughts, all my feelings to change? But, even more frightening: how do I keep it? How do I not lose it? And the stronger the grace, the more intense the fear. Some saints talk about “horror,” not in the ugly sense of the word, but the “horror” of losing that grace that is so precious. And, oh, how easy it is to lose it! A thought, however insignificant, but which is not in harmony with Him, and the grace is gone! And you didn’t even feel it when it was gone. You suddenly realize: where is it? Where is what was most precious to me? It felt so good when I had it. How, where can I find it again?

The truth is that, without God’s “fear,” we are unable to cherish His gifts, and undoubtedly we will lose His grace. And I think that the expression “God’s fear” is more appropriate than “the fear of God,” maybe also because God too would have that fear if He lived our imperfection for a while; it is a divine attribute of a “God in the making” such as the human being. And I believe that this is why fear is the “beginning of wisdom,” and this is why some who “do not change, therefore they do not fear God” as the Psalmist says (Psalm 54/55:19) also cannot receive and cannot keep God’s grace.

If this grace comes at the beginning of life, it is lost, because man doesn’t know how to protect it, and doesn't yet know how to live without sin. But if the spiritual instruction of man continues, then grace comes back after some time, when God wills it. And, even though this second grace is already less indulgent than the first, even so man, having passed through trials of repentance, knows that even if grace is lost, it can be found again (see St. Sophrony, “St. Silouan the Athonite”, pages 49-50). Still, the soul feels the grace with so much tenderness that it is filled with fear of not losing it again. And this fear that leads to horror is God’s fear, or, if you will, fear of God - the fear of losing God, the One who made us. We see here already in its “germ” the love of God, the love towards God, the love that, in our imperfection, in our state of sin, manifests itself as fear - fear of being unworthy of that inexpressible life.

However, don’t try to imagine what that beauty can look like, but ask God to show it to you, to unveil it for you, so you can live it in your souls, in your hearts, in your bones, in your flesh, because it is real - and if it is not real, then we don’t even need it. I say this to you as a priest of the Orthodox Church, having been a monk for more than thirty years. If all that is preached in our Church is only philosophy, then throw it in the garbage heap! Forgive me for speaking so coarsely, but I want you to know that it is the truth. God is truth, and the truth is lived; it is possible, literally, for truth to be lived “in your bones.”

Literally in your bones? The saint I mentioned another time, Saint Silouan, said that grace penetrates the bones of a person, and that is why the bones of that person after death become relics. Relics are not only bones, relics are bones hallowed by the grace of the Holy Spirit which dwells in them - and this grace can be felt in the heart, in the soul, in the mind, in the body, and even in the bones! And this is why I ask you, as a monk of the Church, not to try to imagine these things, because all our imaginings are cheap caricatures compared with the truth of grace, and are necessarily lies. Live in truth, ask God: “If you are real, God, awaken me! Take me out of the darkness in which I dwell. And if you chastise me for my sin, Father, do it with kindness, because I am weak, and teach me to cry out so I can be saved, and give me the strength to repent! Make my life true, if you are the God of truth!” And I say this because either God is truth, or we don’t need Him. And I say this from the certitude I have from my own limited experience, and even more from the testimony of many saints, some of whom I’ve known from books, but some of whom are still alive.

Then, God’s fear starts to be “the beginning of wisdom”, the  beginning and not yet the wisdom, because the end of wisdom is love - a love so strong that it casts out fear, as the Holy Apostle John says in one of his Epistles (1 John 4:18). The beginning of wisdom is God’s fear, and God’s fear is felt like life, even though it can lead to “horror.” But, as our Elder Sophrony was describing it, it is life-giving and not paralyzing like our common fears and horrors. It is life-giving and you feel it like a precious gift, which you instinctively don’t want to lose (in fact it happens intuitively and not instinctively, but I used this word which is maybe closer to our understanding: just as instinct creates us, pushes us, leads us, if you will, in our material, bodily life, even so, intuition does this in our spiritual life).

God’s fear creates in us a different fear of sin compared to the fears I described in the beginning. Because, seeing things that are not in harmony with that unutterable, indescribable but real beauty, and knowing that this beauty is so tender that you can lose it without even knowing it’s gone and you just realize you don’t have it anymore, then you are gripped by a fear of everything that is not in harmony with it (see St. Sophrony, “We shall see Him as He is”, pages 124-125). And “everything” that is not in harmony with it - that is what sin is.

For us, the definition of sin is not one that is moral, social, ethical, or logical (there is some truth in all these as well, but it is not the ultimate truth). The definition of sin is one that is vital, existential: it is whatever is not in harmony with that unutterable fragrance which we call the grace of God. That is what sin is! And we are gripped by a fear of sin. Not an unhealthy fear: “Woe is me if I do this, woe is me if I do that!” The soul knows that God is magnanimous and mighty in healing us from sins, but we start to live what the Psalmist said: “I hate them with perfect hatred” (Psalm 138/139:22). All that does not belong to grace becomes hateful, and again I say, not an unhealthy hatred, but a  perfect one. A hatred which, if you love light and life (we are talking spiritually and not materially), makes you hate all that belongs to death and corruption with a “perfect hatred” - that is, not with passionate hatred, like someone who hates you with passion, but with a hatred through which you want to separate yourself by all means from evil.