📖 Biblical Definition
Biblical reverence is the settled inner posture of awe before God, His Name, His house, His Word, His messengers, and His ordained authorities. Hebrews commands it explicitly as the New Covenant’s appropriate response to receiving an unshakable kingdom: "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:28-29). The same disposition fits worship ("keep silence before him", Habakkuk 2:20), parents (Hebrews 12:9), magistrates (Romans 13:7), and elders (1 Timothy 5:17). Modern Christianity has often lost reverence in pursuit of casualness. Recover it. The God who saves us is also the God who is a consuming fire.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Fear mingled with respect and esteem; a feeling of profound respect, often bordering on awe.
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REVERENCE, n. Fear mingled with respect and esteem; veneration; the disposition that recognizes superior worth or holiness and responds with awe.
Scripture commands reverence in five spheres: toward God Himself (Heb 12:28), toward His sanctuary (Lev 19:30), toward parents (Lev 19:3), toward elders / authority (1 Pet 2:17), and toward the husband (Eph 5:33).
📖 Key Scripture
Hebrews 12:28 — "Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear."
Leviticus 19:30 — "Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD."
Ephesians 5:33 — "And the wife see that she reverence her husband."
Hebrews 12:9 — "Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Modern egalitarian culture is allergic to reverence; Scripture commands it deliberately and broadly.
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Reverence cuts against the modern grain. The democratic instinct is that nothing and no one deserves a posture of awe. Scripture insists on the opposite: God deserves it, His sanctuary asks for it, parents earn it, husbands receive it, and the saints owe it.
The recovery is not the recovery of inequality; it is the recovery of recognized weight. Some persons and some places are heavy in the Lord's economy. The saint who does not learn to feel that weight will treat everything as level — and miss most of what Scripture commands.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Greek and Hebrew both have words for awe-with-respect, distinct from raw fear.
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Hebrew yare — to fear, reverence; behind ‘the fear of the LORD’.
Greek eulabeia — cautious devout reverence; the word in Hebrews 12:28.
Usage
"Reverence is recognized weight, not slavish fear."
"Let us serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear."
"The husband is to be reverenced; the wife is to be loved as Christ loves the church."