Wise-Up Young Christian
This blog post is adapted material from our English-speaking Evening Classes ‘Love God and Love Your Neighbour’. You can find recordings of all the lessons in this series at the bottom of this blog post, or by subscribing to the podcast of recordings wherever your listen to podcasts. You can also join the lessons in person every Tuesday evening, 7pm at the Greek Evangelical Church, Larnaca.
I wonder what you think of when you hear of ‘spiritual maturity?’ For many of us the phrase summons a nebulous haze of ideas usually revolving around our inner religious experience, with some practices of personal piety tacked-on.
‘Spiritual maturity means I won’t be anxious, I will feel close to God, and I will do my quiet time every day.’
This post is not about dealing with that pile of fuzziness, but here at the start of it I hope to draw attention to something missing from this imagination of Christian maturity.
Spiritual maturation necessarily involves ethical maturation. Growing in your Christian life means more than a heightened ‘religious’ experience, it also means growing into righteous living.
This ethical maturation has a threefold aim for each of us:
We must become those who know God’s standards.
We must learn to love God’s standards.
We must understand the situations around us so that we can apply those standards.
The bible has a shorthand for growing in this way: getting wisdom.
What is Wisdom?
Wisdom is what we gain when we know God’s standards, love God’s standards, and understand the situation around us well enough to apply God’s standards.
Wisdom is what we aim for as we mature spiritually, and the aim of wisdom is to apply our knowledge of God and his word to everything:
To how we see the world and everything in it.
To how we act in the world.
To how we interact with others we share the world with.
What follows in this post is a series of loosely connected observations about wisdom, and how wisdom ought to work in the life of the maturing believer.
1. Wisdom is of Inestimable Value
It is impossible to overstate the value of wisdom. We’re told plainly in the book of proverbs that ‘nothing you desire can compare with her’, that her paths are paths of pleasantness, and that she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her and don’t let go (Proverbs 3).
Simply put, if wisdom were for sale, the price would never be too high. The Facebook marketplace ad would always present a colossal bargain, the salesmen would only ever be able to give you a discount, and no matter what he charged you the swindler would only be swindling himself.
There is no price too high for wisdom.
Note in those descriptions from proverbs 3 above that wisdom is a tree of life. In other words, if you want to live as close to the ‘Garden of Eden life’ as possible then pursuing wisdom is the way to go about it.
16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honour.
17 Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
18 She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called blessed.
Whatever you do, get wisdom.
Proverbs 3:16-18
2. Folly is Morally Culpable
Wisdom and practical skill are not identical, though we are often in the habit of speaking as if they were. Certainly, the two are closely linked such that if you have wisdom you are bound to get skill as well. However, it is possible to have practical competency, great skill in a craft, without having even the faintest trace of wisdom. I'm sure we can all think of examples, there are many skilled footballers, singers, and professors who have never even dreamt of pursuing wisdom.
Mere practical skill can be morally neutral. I am not a master plumber, and that is not (necessarily) a moral failing of mine (Though it would be if I was a plumber). But if I am a fool, that is a moral failure, and always will be.
Folly is morally culpable. The fool has not simply failed to master a skillset, he has set his hand against:
Knowing God’s standards
Loving God’s standards
And knowing the world with the aim of applying his knowledge of God and his word.
The fool sets himself to work against spiritual growth, and ultimately against faithfulness to God.
The Law and Wisdom are Fundamentally United
Legal literature and wisdom literature are stylistically very different in the bible. However, we often carry that literary difference too far and take it to signify a fundamental disconnect between the content of God’s law and wisdom. But how could we do that? God’s law is fundamentally a publication of his eternal character. But what of wisdom? Where does that come from? Just as the law of God reflects and publishes the character of God, so does wisdom. All wisdom is his, such that we say he is perfect wisdom. So, to set God’s law against wisdom is to set God against himself.
We can see the fundamental unity between law and wisdom clearly in scripture. Wisdom and obedience to the law of God both begin in the same place:
‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ just as all true obedience to God’s law begins in faith-filled fear as well.
And both are really for the same ends; so that you can live the good life in the presence of God and so that you can govern whatever God gives you in a way that pleases him.
After all, why does Solomon ask for wisdom? So that he might rule God's people well. That is, so that he will know and apply God's law with just righteousness. And one of the first things we see his wisdom being used for is to apply the law rightly to a tricky judicial case; the case of the two women and the disputed baby.
Wisdom literature often looks literarily very different to legal commands, but often they are simply the law applied either to the minutiae of life or to the complexities of life (and, more often than not, to the complex minutiae).
4. Wisdom is not subjective
There's an evangelical bad habit of calling things 'a wisdom call' or 'a matter of wisdom' when we really want to pretend that something is morally grey, or even morally neutral.
'It's a wisdom call' has become shorthand for 'there's no right answer here'.
Or worse, it has become shorthand for some form of moral relativism, a way of telling others to 'back-off' and to hold their tongues if they were even thinking of offering advice.
'My situation is mine, it is unique, and no external standard could possibly be brought to bear on my truth here... it's a wisdom issue.'
But this is not wisdom. Wisdom is objective, that is, there is always a way for it to be objectively weighed. We cannot appeal to wisdom as a 'get out of moral accountability free' card. In other words, it is always possible for someone to see what you chose to do and say:
'you have appealed to wisdom, very well then, lady wisdom declares you a fool'.
Wisdom is never morally neutral. The standards of wisdom do not change from person to person. Wisdom is objective. And we are commanded to get it, in part, by getting advice from people.
The desire to set wisdom up as some sort of untouchable, subjective moral standard comes, I think, from two particular places:
wisdom can be minutely situational
That is, the wise application of a standard depends on an ever-changing situation. And sometimes that situation is so minutely detailed that the application of the same standard looks very different from one case to another.
wisdom is difficult
It is hard work to work out what is wise, which is why not many are wise.
'it's a wisdom issue' is often, then, used to write-off the quest for a right answer entirely. In this way it becomes simply a cover for laziness. Wisdom herself tells us what happens when laziness comes into play:
‘a little slumber, a little sleep, and poverty (in this case ethical poverty) will come upon you like a thief.’
5. Wisdom not the same as caution
Often, we use wisdom as a synonym for caution.
‘I think we need to be wise here and hold back.’
It is true that wisdom is sometimes cautious. But there are also times when wisdom throws every card on the table, refusing to reserve anything. How to work out which is which? well therein wisdom lies.
But some things that we can always know for sure: It is never wise to be a coward or a man-fearer. In fact, the fear of man is the opposite of the fear of God, and is therefore inimical to even the start of the quest for wisdom.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the fear of man is the seedbed of folly. Wisdom and caution are not the same thing.
Whatever you get, get wisdom
To gain wisdom and the knowledge of God is hard work, and the task ahead can be daunting. So let me end this post with a couple of encouragements.
Firstly, all wisdom is the Lord’s, and he delights to give it to those who seek it from him.
“ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” James 1:5
And:
“Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
If you turn at my reproof,
behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
I will make my words known to you.”
Proverbs 9:20-23
Secondly, though we all must seek wisdom diligently, this is ultimately the work of God in our live by the power of His Spirit.
“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6
