The New
Testament renders three different Greek words with forms of reverence.  The Gospels indicate that the Son of God must
receive “reverence” (Matt 21:37; Mr 12:6; Lu 20:13), and Hebrews 12:9 indicates
that if human fathers deserve “reverence,” God the Father is so much the more
worthy of reverent submission.  The word
employed in these verses[1]
means “to cause to turn (in shame),
to shame” or “to show
deference to a person in recognition of special status, turn toward
something [or] someone, have regard for, respect.”[2]  It is to “give heed or regard to,
respect, reverence,”[3]
“to show respect to a person on the basis of his high status.”[4]  Elsewhere in the New Testament the verb is
employed of showing “regard” for and connected with “fearing” (Lu 18:2, 4), is
rendered “shame” (1 Cor 4:14) or “ashamed” (2 Thess 3:14; Tit 2:8).  The related noun is rendered “shame” (1 Cor
6:5; 15:34), and means “the state of being ashamed, shame, humiliation”
or “deference to a person in recognition of special status, respect, regard,”[5]
that is, “respect, reverence.”[6]  The word indicates “a state of embarrassment
resulting from what one has done or failed to do,” focusing “upon the
embarrassment which is involved in the feeling of shame”[7]
and which is associated with a “change of conduct, that return of a man upon
himself, which a wholesome shame brings with it in him who is its subject”
(Trench).  The Father and the Son are
shown reverence when believers, conscious of and ashamed of their sin,
approach God with deference, deep humility, abased subjection, and profound
respect, recognizing that this One with whom they have to do is the omniscient
and infinitely holy King.  Such reverence
is not optional—those who show God reverence live (Heb 12:9)—those who do not
die.

            Hebrews
12:28-29 indicates that God must be served
or worshipped[8] with “acceptably with reverence and
godly fear:  for our God is a
consuming fire.”  The only other text in
the New Testament with this word for reverence[9]
translates the word as “shamefacedness” (1 Tim 2:9).  This word for reverence signifies “modesty, with . . . resulting respect.”[10]
 It is man’s “attitude in face of . . .
the awful, wherever and however manifested. It is dread . . . of the violation
of the [standard]. Its opposite is hubris.
It is thus ‘reverence’ before God . . . respect for the one visited by the
[grace] of God.”[11]
 Hebrews 12 associates reverence with “godly fear.”[12]  One can compare Ephesians 5:33, where
“reverence” is the standard New Testament verb for “fear,”[13]
signifying “to have a profound measure
of respect for, (have)
reverence, respect, with special reference to fear of offending.”[14]  The “godly fear” of Hebrews 12:28 is employed
of the prayers of Christ in Hebrews 5:7, where the Father accepted the Lord
Jesus’ prayer “in that he feared.”  The
noun is related to the adjective meaning God-fearing,
devout, reverent, or pious[15]
found in Luke 2:25 and Acts 2:5; 8:2. 
“Godly fear” involves “that mingled fear and love which together
constitute the piety of man toward God”; 
the devout man:

[Is] accurately and scrupulously performing that which
is prescribed with the consciousness of the danger of slipping into a careless
negligent performance of God’s service, and of the need therefore of anxiously
watching against the adding to or diminishing from or in any other way altering,
that which has been by Him commanded[.] . . . [T]he [one with “godly fear” is
the] anxious and scrupulous worshipper, who makes a conscience of changing
anything, of omitting anything, being above all things fearful to offend [God].[16]

Noah had such piety when he was “moved with fear”[17]
to build the ark (Heb 11:7), acting out of anxious “concer[n] [and] reverent
regard.”[18]  Such reverence and godly fear are necessary
if believers are to “serve” or worship God “acceptably”[19]
(Heb 12:28), that is, in a way that is “wellpleasing” and thus “acceptable” to
Him (Rom 12:1–2; 14:18; 2 Cor 5:9; Eph 5:10; Phil 4:18; Col 3:20; Titus 2:9;
Heb 13:21).[20]  Reverence and godly fear are the necessary
attitude for acceptance before a God who is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29).

TDR

This entire study can be accessed here.

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