If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
This psalm clearly states that unless we are forgiven we will not be able to fear the Lord. This means that the fear of the Lord’s punishment, the healthy respect for him that exists when we sin and that keeps us from sin is not the full extent of what “fearing the Lord” means.
If we are forgiven, it allows us to fear the Lord in a way that we would not if we had not experienced that forgiveness. The reason for this lies in the way that God forgives people. His forgiveness is never unjust. His forgiveness always involves the deserved punishment being borne by Christ at the cross. Therefore, when we experience the forgiveness that comes from Christ’s cross work on our behalf, we experience the holiness of God portrayed before us in judgment.
The alternative is in verse 3. If the Lord marks our iniquities, we would not be able to stand before him, but would be judged and condemned. That might result in a certain kind of fear of God, but not the fear that verse 4 describes.
This verse then is very helpful for understanding the many verses that talk about the “fear of God” in the sense of worship. There are more ingredients to this fear than simply seeing and understanding God’s justice and wrath and power to condemn. There is also the ingredient of seeing his merciful forgiveness. Without this, we would be unable to fear the Lord in anything but a cringing, even hating way. But because of forgiveness, the fear of the Lord can be reverential, fearful awe as we see BOTH his justice and his mercy.