Written by John F. Evans |
Monday, October 16, 2023
Though true wisdom should never be confused with native intelligence and education, there is need for study and reflection if we are to gain wisdom. Scripture commends to us a study of the “book of nature” down to its tiniest details: “Go to the ant . . . ; consider her ways, and be wise” (Prov. 6:6). Biblical wisdom involves a perception of God-given order, purpose, and meaning in creation. We could even say that wisdom is embedded in the created order, as the handiwork of “the only wise God” (Rom. 16:27). To “be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Col. 1:9), we study the creation order, since it reveals the glory of Christ (vv. 15–20), by whom “all things were created . . . [and]all things hold together,” and through whom God has “reconcile[d] to himself all things” by the cross.

What does the Bible mean by true wisdom? We may speak of it as godly understanding and a faithful orientation to live (1) before the God we fear, (2) for the God we love, and (3) for the lasting benefit of God’s other creatures, whom He from the beginning purposed to bless. Wisdom is a pattern of life characterized by behaving with “godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2 Cor. 1:12). We all need this.
Scripture does more than encourage us in this area; it issues an imperative: “Get wisdom” (Prov. 4:5, 7). This wisdom is a “must,” and God’s people are told to make its pursuit a main responsibility in life. For the purposes of this article, we will understand “gaining wisdom” in two senses: acquiring it in the first place and then growing in wisdom.
As a first principle, every Christian must grasp that wisdom comes from God. It does not belong to us but is “from above” (James 3:17). God causes us to know wisdom (Ps. 51:6). Let us say that true wisdom is taught by God, teaches of God, and leads to God (with apologies to Thomas Aquinas for adapting his aphorism about theology). Worldly wisdom, on the other hand, will never lead us to God (1 Cor. 1:21) and tends toward foolishness in suppressing the truth about God (Rom. 1:18–23).
As the Old Testament uses the term, wisdom has many shades of meaning and practical aspects. More generally, it can denote “learning,” “cleverness,” or “common sense.” It may mean “skill” or technical know-how (Ex. 28:3; 31:6; 1 Chron. 28:21; Ps. 107:27; Isa. 10:13;), such as an artisan would possess from long work experience. The Bible associates wisdom with good character and personal discipline. Think of diligence, truth-telling, peacemaking, being a good listener, self-control, and compassion. Wisdom has been defined as “the art of steering” through life, with its obstacles, uncertainties, temptations, and injustices. It includes avoiding the wrong paths (life’s dead ends) and turning back when we make mistakes. This article, however, concerns specifically the wisdom of God that we gain in communion with Him through the gospel. In other words, our question is, How does God mean for us to gain “a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12) in Jesus Christ?
Tremble before God
Fear of the Lord is most basic to acquiring and growing in wisdom. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 9:10; see also Job 28:28). Without a deep reverence for our Creator and a dread of offending Him, we lack wisdom. Without the fear of God, we have not made a start. If we lose a proper fear of the Lord, we must go back to the beginning and start over.
If “the fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom” (Prov. 15:33), we must be inducing and exercising a proper fear. Keeping our minds focused on God and the truths about God—He created us for Himself and to accomplish His will; His eyes are always on us; He orders our steps; He is our Judge; and under His sovereignty we return to dust (Ps. 90:3)—will promote a proper fear that, in turn, instructs us. Meditating on the truth of a final judgment (Eccl. 12:13–14; Rom. 14:10, 12; 2 Cor. 5:10) goes a long way toward instilling and strengthening that fear of the Lord that instructs in wisdom.
Sense Your Need for What Is outside Yourself
Wisdom can in many respects be equated with spiritual maturity, a growing up into Christ, who is the wisdom of God. The New Testament certainly calls us to strenuous effort in the Christian life (1 Cor. 9:27; Col. 3:23; 2 Peter 1:5–10). And we must indeed apply ourselves with all seriousness to the goal of growing in knowledge and wisdom. As with the entire sanctification process, however, we must never lose sight of the truth that ultimately it is God who works in us to will and to do His good purpose (Phil. 2:13). We do not gain the wisdom of God—what this article is about—by dint of effort and study or by an unceasing determination to become like the Savior. Ultimately, we pray for God the Father to grant us wisdom. We are taught wisdom by Him. We receive His wisdom as God the Son, Jesus Christ, dwells in our hearts by faith. Just as the incarnate Son had the Spirit of God rest on Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding (Isa. 11:2), so the Spirit must rest on us if we are to become wise. The gospel is not only about coming to know in Christ an “alien righteousness” (a righteousness outside ourselves, not our own), as Paul so wonderfully explains in Romans, Philippians, and elsewhere, but it is also about receiving what we might call an “alien wisdom.” There is a righteousness and there is a wisdom that we can never achieve on our own. We will never gain this wisdom without acknowledging our need and seeking the Giver of this good gift. “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” to give you His wisdom (James 4:8).
I relate this point to the Bible’s teaching on union with Christ. How gloriously Jesus Himself is our salvation! We believers do not have life in ourselves, but we draw it continually from the Lord Jesus, in our faith-union with Him. We have no righteousness of our own, but we are counted righteous and begin to make progress in holiness as we are joined to Christ. He is our life, our righteousness, our sanctification. Likewise, Jesus Christ Himself is our wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24, 30; see also Col. 2:3).
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The Bible is clear.  In the opening account of the beginnings of human history we learn that our earliest forbears disobeyed their Creator and suffered punishment, as they had been warned.  That punishment is death – cruel, ugly, horrible, unnatural death.  That is our inheritance from that beginning to this day. Death is the consequence of sinful disobedience.  Trivialise death and you trivialise sin. 

I do not fear death.  There are reasons why I would welcome it, but I definitely have no thought of ending my present life.  I want all that to be clear.
Like most people, I have never been pre-occupied with thoughts of death or dying.   However, also like most people, death has been no stranger in my life.   I was a teenager when my sister died and later my mother.  My mother’s death, in tragic circumstances, deeply affected me. I had thoughts then about there being some deeper meaning to life.  Mum had taught me prayers as a child, and I had been to Sunday School, but I had more questions than answers on life.  Dad died the year after I was married, and one brother a few years later.   My closest brother died later still, and after sixty-eight years together, my dear wife departed last year.  I am acquainted with death.
A dictionary definition of ‘death’ says:
1/ Final cessation of vital functions;
2/ Event that terminates life.
This turns us to the meaning of ‘life’ where the definition is not so simple.  In fact, it is lengthy and complicated.  Personally, I think of words like ‘being’ and ‘existing’.  Briefly, one has to know about life to understand death.
In this enlightened age we tend to ‘go online’ for more information about most things.  So, I searched ‘death and dying’, and wow!  I was surprised.  What I had always understood to be a taboo subject was up front there.  I was presented with many options as to where I could go for information:   ‘Goodreads.com’ offered me 1,347 quotes on death and dying.   Among other options were ‘Death is nothing at all’, ’82 death quotes that comfort and inspire you’, ‘119 death quotes that will bring relief’, and there were many others.   Those that I sampled were generally upbeat about death, and I was supposed to feel warmed and reassured after reading them.
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Our Lord, assigns us various “subordinate identities” under our primary identity as Christians…In a generation that likes to play dress-up with our own identities, we do well to regularly rehearse what our actual, objective identities are, rather than those that are aspirational, subjective, and not yet actual….He determines our nationalities, our families, our vocations, and the various “stations” in which we are placed.

Any big life updates? It’s a question that I ask old friends when we reconnect over the phone or at a conference or reunion. Taking a new job, moving to a new home, planting a church, getting married, having children—these are among the big life updates that we communicate in catch-you-up conversations and Christmas letters.
We live in especially mobile and transitory times. Now, in addition to the ageless major transitions of human life, many people regularly move from job to job, even town to town and church to church. Added to this complexity is the modern confusion about life’s givens and chosens. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places where we’re hardwired (such as biological sex) and to pretend hardwiring in the places where we’re actually plastic (desires and delights). We pretend that our desires are fixed while presuming that our stubborn, external worlds should adjust to the preferences of our inner self. In reality, the inverse is true. Our desires are far more plastic than we often assume, and the external world is far more fixed than we care to admit.
How, then, as Christians do we approach the big chosens in life, such as getting married or taking a new job? We want to live with Christ-honoring contentment in whatever station and season we find ourselves. How might we be content in Christ and yet move toward, and through, the various transitions in our lives?
Christ Assigns Our Stations
Before addressing the practical question, let’s first establish that Christ, our Lord, assigns us various “subordinate identities” under our primary identity as Christians, and let’s clarify what these secondary identities are. In a generation that likes to play dress-up with our own identities, we do well to regularly rehearse what our actual, objective identities are, rather than those that are aspirational, subjective, and not yet actual.
As Christians, we have our fundamental identity “in Christ,” servants of the Master, assigned to various stations in life. Paul’s orienting word to the Athenians in Acts 17:26 remains true for us today in all the complexities and confusion of the twenty-first century: God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” You live when and where you do by God’s good providence and design. He determines our nationalities, our families, our vocations, and the various “stations” in which we are placed, however temporarily or indefinitely.
Writing to the Corinthians, and for all Christians, Paul says: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches” (1 Cor. 7:17). Paul does not mean that some aspects of our assignments never change (more on that below), but he cautions us against overlooking or minimizing the posts where God has stationed us at this moment. So what are the various identities and stations He assigns?
Humanly speaking, our first identities are those into which we are born, in our homes and families. We are born either male or female, a son or a daughter. Also, many of us were born as brothers or sisters or cousins. Then, while still growing up, we acquired other secondary identities: student, congregant, teammate, employee, voting citizen. Later came leaving mother and father and cleaving in marriage to establish a new home and family—and so we become husband or wife, and then father or mother. With age and maturity come other identities as well: teacher, employer, governor, coach.
Among these various subordinate identities are peer relationships, such as brother, sister, cousin, teammate, fellow student, and fellow worker. But other identities are ordered, or we might say complementary, even hierarchical: wife to husband, child to parent, student to teacher, employee to employer, player to coach. So, too, in church life we find both symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships: fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in the faith (1 Tim. 5:1–2).
Many of us today are quite comfortable with peer relationships. We have learned a leveling, democratic instinct, and we expect profound (though not perfect) equality. At least in principle, we understand and appreciate largely symmetrical relationships among friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, and teammates, even as we acknowledge that among these, various small asymmetries are inevitable, depending on age, maturity, and other factors.
But many today struggle with the ordered, complementary, and asymmetrical identities. We have learned the leveling impulse so well. Our noses have been trained to sniff out inequalities in the more ordered and hierarchical relationships. These can make us uncomfortable, and in doing so, they reveal particular places in Scripture where we might freshly recalibrate our minds to be faithful to our callings.
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