3 minute read
So YouWant to Be aWise Guy, Eh?
By Timmothy Heath, Jr.
If anyone knew about being a wise guy, it was Solomon. God gave him “wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore,” more than anyone who has ever lived (1 Kings 3:12, 4:29). And he knew better than to keep all of that wisdom just for himself; he passed it on in the form of Proverbs. So what does he say is the first step to becoming a wise guy?
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“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” (Proverbs 9:10) The fear of the Lord, which is faith, is the only path to wisdom.
To put it another way: Only faithful guys can be wise guys.
Why? To answer that, there are a few things we need to understand about wisdom.
First, wisdom belongs to God alone (Proverbs 2:6). It’s His to use and bestow as He sees fit—not ours to earn and employ.Wisdom is not a human creation; it’s what God used to create humans (Proverbs 3:19). Nothing we can come up with even compares (Proverbs 3:7; 21:30; 1 Corinthians 1:25). So whatever knowledge anyone in the world may claim about life, the universe, and everything is only hype and fluff without the wisdom that only God can supply.
This is because wisdom is pure grace—something the world cannot begin to provide. It is a gift of God, from a Father to His children, to enlighten and enliven us. In fact, God’s wisdom is God’s Word, and God’s Word is God’s Son. Jesus is wisdom incarnate (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30). Jesus, the wisdom greater than Solomon (Luke 11:31), is the only wisdom out there. Without Him, nothing in life, nothing in God makes sense, and anything we might deduce about either is bunk and death (Proverbs 14:12). It is through Him that God created us, enlightened us, and gave us life (John 1:1-4, 9; Colossians 1:16; Hebews 1:2). And it is only in Him, through the power of the Gospel received by faith, that we are able to trust in God’s forgiveness, hope in His promises, and live what He teaches in Proverbs.
If you only look in Proverbs for little nuggets of advice to make your life easier, you won’t find many. That’s because its intent is not to help you live an easy life, but rather a godly life.That being so, you’ll quickly find that a life of wisdom is a life lived under the Cross. It’s not only because wisdom produces a life the world hates (Proverbs 29:10, 27). It’s also because one can only gain the fruits of wisdom through discipline (Proverbs 12:1; 13:1, 18, 24; 22:15). Discipline happens when God, in love,uses the suffering we endure in this world for our good (Romans 8:28, Hebrews 12:5-11, Revelation 3:19). This includes injury, heartbreak, doubt, persecution, disability, frustration, sickness, loneliness— any and all of the darkness that life in a broken world sends our way.It’s when we suffer these things that we’re forced to admit that we don’t know all the answers,we don’t understand everything, and we can’t work it all out on our own.Just like a sick man must confess his condition before he can be healed,we must confess our ignorance before we can be taught and receive wisdom.
If this pattern seems familiar, it’s because you repeat it every week in the Divine Service.We come each week hounded by the same darkness, the same sin, and we confess our condition and our deeds. And in the very next instant God starts blessing us and doesn’t stop—giving us absolution, forgiveness, His Body and Blood given and shed, life, salvation, and yes, even wisdom. In and through all of these gifts, we receive Christ Himself.
Solomon understood that all knowledge, all thinking, all wisdom begins and ends with God.We must rely on God alone, and not upon our own minds and reasoning (Proverbs 28:26). He won’t teach it to you in a single flash of brilliant inspiration, but through a lifetime of patient suffering in Christ. Although it doesn’t number among Solomon’s 1,005 songs (1 Kings 4:32), this hymn sums it up pretty well:
—LW 277:5,“One Thing’s Needful”
Timmothy Heath, Jr., is a seminarian studying at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He tips his hat to Andrew Steinmann’s Concordia Commentary on Proverbs for many insights into wisdom, and can be reached at Timm.Heath@gmail.com.
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