The Renewed Mind and How to Have It & Get Wisdom, Part 1-8, Complete Edition

The Renewed Mind and How to Have It & Get Wisdom, Part 1-8, Complete Edition

Are You Worthy of Jesus?

I want to talk about the educational implications of the Biblical call to walk worthily of the Lord. Earlier this week there was an article I wrote at Desiring God called “Are You Worthy of Jesus?” This message is an effort to take the biblical truths in that article and apply them to Bethlehem College and Seminary. What are the implications for the way we do education in the biblical command that we live in a way that is worthy of God?

The Relevance of This Topic

There are at least two prominent reasons why I am drawn to talk about this. One is that the implications for how we teach, and how we structure the priorities of our life together in an educational community, are profound. Teaching people to walk worthily of the Lord makes a huge difference in how we think about the task of education.

The other reason I’m drawn to this topic is because the controversies the doctrine of sanctification in our day have enormous implications for how you will think about the Christian life, and how you pursue it, and how you will teach others to pursue it. Does the doctrine of justification by faith alone (which I believe and love with all my heart) impede moral effort toward purity and holiness Christ-likeness? Or does it release and empower moral effort?

Is the spirit of our time such that we should minimize or highlight biblical commands like

“Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24).

“If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

“In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:4).

“Pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29).

So I am drawn to this topic both because it sheds light on this controversy, and because it profoundly shapes the way we think about education.

So first we will try to get the biblical teaching before us, then explain what it means, and then draw out three implications for our educational life together.

The Biblical Teaching

In the book of Revelation Jesus says in the letter to Sardis, “Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy (Revelation 3:4). This is not hypothetical. It’s not even a command. It’s a statement of fact. These people at Sardis will walk with Jesus in the age to come because they are worthy. This is not the worthiness of justification; this is the worthiness of not soiling our garments.

In Matthew 10:37-38 Jesus says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

This is the same as when he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26–27). Which means that not to be worthy of Jesus is not to be his disciple.

This is not a standard held up to show that no one can reach it. This is a straightforward demand and expectation from Jesus: love me more than you love anyone, or you are not my disciple; and you are not worthy of me

The apostle Paul picked up this language and said,

“Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Ephesians 4:1).

“Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27).

“Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Colossians 1:10).

“Walk in a manner worthy of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:12).

“May God make you worthy of his calling and fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11).

“Your suffering is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering” (2 Thessalonians 1:5).

The point of all these texts in Paul is not to tell that there is an impossible standard we can never meet. But to tell us what normal Christianity looks like. It is a life worthy of our calling, worthy of the gospel, worthy of the Lord, worthy of God, worthy of the kingdom.

Twenty two years ago I asked Tom Steller if he would write a chapter for the new book, Let the Nations Be Glad. He was overseeing missions at the time. Tom chose to write on an Afterword based on 3 John 1:6 which says, “You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.” (3 John 1:6). Tom drew a beautiful connection between the worth of God and the worthiness of senders.

We could add to Jesus and Paul and John the witness of John the Baptist who said to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance” (Matthew 3:7–8).

What Does It Mean?

So what does it mean to be worthy of Jesus, to walk worthily of the gospel, and our calling, and the Lord, and the kingdom? In all these passages being “worthy” is something expected and necessary in the Christian life. It’s not the imputed righteousness of justification. It is not an unreachable ideal held up simply to make see we can’t be worthy.

But what complicates matters, and indirectly helps us grasp what this means, is that there are other passages which remind us how unworthy we are.

When the Centurion said, “‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. . .’ Jesus said, ‘Not even in Israel have I found such faith’” (Luke 7:6, 9).

And later Jesus describes a servant who comes in from the field and then prepares dinner for the master: “Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (Luke 17:9-10).

And John the Baptist said of Jesus, “He who comes after me, the strap of his sandal I am not worthy to untie” (John 1:27).

So how shall we understand the worthiness of unworthy Christians? For we have all sinned. And we continue to sin. And anyone who says he is without sin “deceives himself, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 1:8). In this age we will never perform works of righteousness good enough to earn acceptance with God. “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

Worthy of Repentance

The key that unlocks this mystery is found in the phrase, from both John the Baptist (Matthew 3:8) and Paul (Acts 26:20), “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” This cannot mean “Bear fruit that deserves repentance.” The repentance is already there. It comes first: “Repent and turn to God, performing deeds in worthy of repentance” (Acts 26:20). The repentance is the tree; the worthy deeds are the fruit. Fruit does not earn, or merit, or deserve its appearance on the tree.

“Worthy of repentance” means: repentance itself has such worth that the fruit it produces shares in that worth and corresponds to that worth. “Fruit worthy of repentance” means that there is a suitable correspondence between the beauty of the repentance and the beauty of its fruit. The health of the fruit corresponds to the health of the tree.

What is repentance? Repentance is the turning to God as supremely valuable away from all else as supremely valuable. Repentance is the change of mind and heart that results in valuing God above all other things and all other persons. That turning. That change. That repentance is beautiful. This is what humans were made for. This is worthy. That is, it is a suitable, fitting, appropriate correspondence to God’s supreme worth.

Then this inner treasuring of God above all things bears fruit in thoughts and emotions and deeds. And these deeds — this fruit — point to the supreme worth of God. And so they too, in all their imperfection, are worthy. They are suitable, fitting, appropriate expressions of the beauty of repentance, which is a suitable, fitting, appropriate response to God’s infinite worth.

So being worthy of repentance does not mean “being deserving of repentance” as if we earned it or merited it. It means an appropriate, suitable, fitting response to the worth of repentance. Hence the ESV translation: “Performing deeds in keeping with repentance” (Acts 26:20).

This struck me more clearly years ago when I thought about President Nixon’s resignation. What does it mean, I asked, to say he failed to be worthy of the Presidency. He did not walk worthily of his presidential calling? It means not that he failed to earn the Presidency. He already had it. But he failed to see and feel the awesome worth of the office. His behavior was not commensurate with the worth of the office of President of the United states. His unworthiness was his acting as though the office was unworthy.

Our Passionate Preference

Now let’s take this understanding and apply to Jesus’ words, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). This does not mean that we should deserve Jesus, or merit Jesus, or earn Jesus. Nothing we do puts him in a position of being indebted to us.

When Jesus says we are not worthy of him if we treasure our parents or children or life more than him, he means that he has infinite worth — like the presidency, far above parents and children and life — and the only suitable, commensurate, (worthy!) response from us is to see that infinite worth, and savor it, and prefer him, above all things, as our supreme treasure.

Which means that our passionate preference for his worth is our worth. To be worthy of the infinite worth of Jesus is to see and savor and prefer him as infinitely worthy. This is not earning or meriting or deserving him.

In fact, one aspect of his beauty that we cherish supremely is his free and sovereign grace toward sinners like us. Being “worthy” of a gracious Savior includes a sense of unworthiness similar to the confessions of the Centurion (Luke 7:6) and John the Baptist (John 1:27).

You become “worthy” of grace (a suitable beneficiary of grace) when you see your need for grace, and when you embrace the infinite value of the Gracious One. In this sense if you love mother or father or son or daughter or your own life more than Jesus, you are not worthy of him. Your worthiness is your desperate preference for his gracious worthiness over all things.

This is confirmed in the story of the wedding feast. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast” (Matthew 22:3-4). Come, freely. Without money without price. Without merit. Come and glut yourself on the supreme pleasures at my Son’s wedding feast.

But they would not come. They “went off, one to his farm, another to his business” (v. 5). So the king throws open the doors to everyone who will come and sends messengers to invite them all (v. 9). But before he does this, he says, “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy” (v. 8).

This is identical to the situation where Jesus said, “Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Only here he is saying, “Whoever loves farm or business more than me is not worthy of me.”

The principle is the same. Worthiness of the wedding feast is not earning or deserving or meriting it. Worthiness of the feast means preferring the feast over business and farm. Your worthiness consists in seeing and savoring and preferring the worth of the feast.

If we had time we could apply this principle with great fruitfulness to the commands to be worthy of our calling (Ephesians 4:1), and worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27), and worthy of the Lord (Colossians 1:10) and worthy of God (1 Thessalonians 2:12), and worthy of the kingdom (2 Thessalonians 1:5).

In every case, our worthiness is not our deserving or meriting or earning, but rather our seeing and savoring something of infinite worth, and our preferring that worth above all things.

Implications for Our Educational Life Together

So we turn in closing to three implications of this for our educational life together.

1. We must teach not only what is, but the value of what is. No. We must say it more carefully: We must not only teach what is, but must teach and awaken suitable affections for the value of what is.

Why? Because you can’t be worthy of a God, a kingdom, or a calling whose worth you do not know and feel. Why is that? Because being worthy means an intellectual, emotional, behavioral life suitable to, commensurate with, the worth of what you know, and feel as worthy. That’s what we have found the biblical meaning to be. You cannot walk worthily of God if do not know and feel the worth of God. You cannot walk worthily of his kingdom if you do not know and feel the worth of his kingdom. You cannot walk worthily of his calling if you not know and feel the worth of his calling.

Therefore, we do not achieve our goals for our students, if we do not teach what is, and the value of what is.

Jesus said, “Teach them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). He didn’t say, “Teach them to know all that I commanded you.” But to observe. To keep. To do. One of his commands was “be worthy of me,” that is, to prefer him over all things. This is what it is to be worthy of Jesus. And this is what we aim at in our teaching. Therefore we must teach and awaken suitable affections to the value of what is.

2. Therefore, the highest aims of our education are impossible for humans to achieve without the intervention of divine power. And we should cry out for that forever regularly in prayer as a learning community.

When the rich young ruler walked away because he preferred his money over Jesus, Jesus said, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a man to prefer God over great wealth. And when the disciples said, “Who then can be saved,” Jesus said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).

If it is possible with God that we, blind, dead sinners, should come to prefer Jesus over everything, then we should ask for this. And this community should permeated by a spirit of desperate prayer for the sovereign work of God in opening our eyes to see what is really valuable.

3. Since walking worthily of God and his kingdom and calling means seeing and savoring and preferring and showing his supreme worth, this educational institution should be a community of corporate worship.

The essence of worship is a passionate preferring of the worth of God over all things, and the act of worship is giving expression to that passionate preference for the worth of God.

Therefore, a community that would walk worthily of her God, his kingdom, and his calling will be worshiping community.

May God use Bethlehem College and Seminary to awaken and instruct students in the supreme worth of God and his kingdom and his calling so that through you thousands upon thousands of people would walk worthily of the Lord.

Ruth: Strategic Righteousness

Chapter 1 hit us with the bitter providence of God in the life of Naomi as she left her land, and lost her husband, her sons, and one of her daughters-in-law. But there was sweet providence as well. The famine broke in Judah and Naomi could go home. Ruth committed herself to care for Naomi. And all the while a kinsman named Boaz was preserved as a husband for Ruth to raise up an heir for the family name and property. But the chapter ends with Naomi overwhelmed with her losses: "The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me."

In chapter 2 the mercy of God breaks through bright enough for even Naomi to see it. We meet Boaz, a man of wealth, a man of God, and a relative of Naomi's husband. We see Ruth taking refuge under the wings of God in a foreign land and being led mercifully by God to the field of Boaz to glean. And we see Naomi recover from her long night of despondency as she exults in God (2:20): "The Lord's kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!" Chapter 2 overflows with hope. Boaz is a God-saturated man in his business and personal relations (vv. 4, 10–13). Ruth is a God-dependent woman under the wings of God. Naomi is now a God-exalting woman under the sovereignty of God. All the darkness of chapter 1 is gone. God has turned her mourning into dancing. "The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me" (1:20) has given way to "His kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead" (2:20). The lesson of chapters 1 and 2 is surely at least this:

You fearful saints fresh courage take:

The clouds you so much dread

Are big with mercy and will break

In blessings on your head.

Seek refuge under the wings of God even when they seem to be all shadows, and at just the right time God will let you look out from his Eagle's nest onto some spectacular ravine.

The Strategies of the Righteous

Now for chapter 3. The phrase I want you to keep in your mind as we ponder chapter 3 is "strategic righteousness." The question which chapter 3 answers is, What does a God-saturated man, a God-dependent young woman, and a God-exalting older woman do when they are filled with hope in the sovereign goodness of God? And the answer is that they manifest a "strategic righteousness." By righteousness I mean a zeal for doing what is good and right—a zeal for doing what is appropriate when God is taken into account as sovereign and merciful. By strategic I mean that there is intention, purposefulness, planning. There is a passive righteousness which simply avoids evil when it presents itself. But strategic righteousness takes the initiative and dreams of how to make things right.

One of the lessons I learn from Ruth chapter 3 is that hope helps us dream. Hope helps us think up ways to do good. Hope helps us pursue our ventures with virtue and integrity. It's hopelessness that makes people think they have to lie and steal and seize illicit pleasures for the moment. But hope, based on the confidence that a sovereign God is for us, gives us a thrilling impulse which I call strategic righteousness. We see it in Naomi in 3:1–5, in Ruth in 3:6–9, and in Boaz in 3:10–15. And the chapter closes again with Naomi full of confidence in the power and goodness of God.

Naomi's Strategy

Two things stand out in Naomi's strategy in verses 1–5. One is that she has a strategy; and the other is what that strategy is. The sheer fact that Naomi has a strategy teaches us something. People who feel like victims don't make plans. As long as Naomi was oppressed; as long as she could only say, "The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me," she conceived no strategy for the future.

One of the terrible effects of depression is the inability to move purposefully and hopefully into the future. Strategies of righteousness are the overflow of hope. When Naomi awakens in 2:20 to the kindness of God, her hope comes alive and the overflow is strategic righteousness. She is concerned about finding Ruth a place of care and security, and she makes a plan. One of the reasons we must help each other "hope in God" (Psalm 42:5) is that only hopeful churches plan and strategize. Churches that feel no hope develop a maintenance mentality and just go through the motions year in and year out. But when a church feels the sovereign kindness of God hovering overhead and moving, hope starts to thrive and righteousness ceases to be simply the avoidance of evil and becomes active and strategic.

The Oddness of It

Naomi took the initiative to find a husband for Ruth. But the strategy she comes up with is odd, to say the least. She says in verse 2 that Boaz is a kinsman. Therefore he is the likely candidate for being Ruth's husband. That way the family name and family inheritance will stay in the family, according to Hebrew custom. So Naomi's aim is clear: to win for Ruth a godly husband and a secure future, and preserve the family line. So she tells Ruth to make herself as clean and attractive as possible, go to the threshing floor of Boaz, and after he has lain down for the evening, sneak in, lift up his cloak, and lie down at his feet. Everybody, including Ruth, must respond by thinking, "And just where do you suppose that will lead?" To which Naomi gives the extraordinary answer in verse 4, "He will tell you what to do."

What Was Naomi's Motive?

One thing is clear here and one thing is not. It's clear that this is Naomi's way of trying to get Boaz to marry Ruth. It is not clear why she should go about it like this. Why not a conversation with Boaz instead of this highly suggestive and risky midnight maneuver? Was Naomi indifferent to the possibility that Boaz might drive Ruth away in moral indignation, or that he might give in to the temptation to have sexual relations with her? Did Naomi want that to happen? Or was Naomi so sure of Boaz and Ruth that she knew they would treat each other with perfect purity—that Boaz would be deeply moved by this outright offer of Ruth in marriage and would avoid sexual relations until all was duly solemnized by the city elders?

The author doesn't come right out and tell us why Naomi chose this sexually tempting strategy to win Boaz for Ruth. There will be a clue later, but for now the writer seems to want us to feel suspense and ambiguity. Just where did Ruth lie down? The Hebrew is just as ambiguous as the English. What would Boaz tell her to do? Whatever Naomi's motive was, the situation is one that could lead us into a passionate and illicit scene of sexual intercourse or into a stunning scene of purity, integrity, and self-control.

Ruth's Strategy

Next we see Ruth's strategic righteousness in verses 6–9. In verse 5 she had said that she would follow all of Naomi's instructions. But Ruth does more. Naomi had said that Boaz would tell Ruth what to do. But before that happens, Ruth tells Boaz why she has come. She is lying at his feet under his cloak. He awakes and says, "Who are you?" She answers with words unprompted by Naomi, "I am Ruth, your maidservant; spread your skirt over your maidservant, for you are next of kin."

Ruth is not merely Naomi's pawn. She has gone willingly and now she takes the initiative to make clear to Boaz why she is there. "You are next of kin." Or literally, "You are the redeemer: the one who can redeem our inheritance and our family name from being lost. I want you to fill that role for me. I want to be your wife." She doesn't say it outright. In fact, she is less direct and more enticing. She says, "Spread your skirt over me." Now whether Boaz takes this to be an offer of outright sexual relations or something more subtle and profound will depend on his estimate of Ruth's character. Fornication was wrong in the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:29; Deuteronomy 21:13–21) just as in the New Testament (Matthew 15:19).

"Spread Your Skirt over Me"

There are two things, besides Ruth's character, which suggest something subtle and profound is in fact going on here. One is this: the only other place I could find in the Old Testament where the phrase "spreading the skirt" occurs in relation to lovers is found in Ezekiel 16:8. God is talking and he is describing Israel as a young maiden that he took for his wife. "When I passed by you again and looked upon you, behold, you were at the age for love; and I spread my skirt over you, and covered your nakedness; yea, I plighted my troth to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord, and you became mine." If this is any indication of what Ruth wanted from Boaz the request went far beyond sexual relations. She was saying in effect, "I would like to be the one to whom you pledge your faithfulness and with whom you make a marriage covenant."

"Under the Wings of God"

But I think there is more to it than that; and this is the second indication of subtlety and depth here. When Ruth said, "spread your skirt over me," the word for skirt is the Hebrew word for wing (also in Ezekiel 16:8). This word is used only one other place in Ruth—namely, in the key verse from last week, 2:12, where Boaz says to Ruth, "The Lord recompense you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under those wings you have come to take refuge." But what we saw last week was that Boaz was God's agent to reward Ruth. He gave her free access to his field, and protection from the young men and water from the well. Ruth had said to Boaz, "Why have I found favor in your eyes?" And Boaz answered, "Because you have come to take refuge under the wings of God."

A Subtle and Pure Romance

So here's what I think is going on in chapter 3. Ruth has told Naomi about these words of Boaz. And the more they ponder them the more they become convinced that they are laden with subtle loving intentions. What Boaz really means is, "Because you take refuge under the wings of God, you are the kind of woman I want to cover with my wings." It is not easy for an older man to express love to a younger woman. Boaz did it with deeds of kindness and subtle words of admiration. He said he admired her for coming under God's wings. He acted as though she were under his and he waited. And in the course of time Naomi and Ruth hit upon a response just as subtle, just as profound. Ruth will come to him in his sleep, in the grain field where he has taken her under his care, and she will say yes. But she will say it with an action just as subtle and profound as the action and words of Boaz. She puts herself under his wing, so to speak, and when he wakes everything hangs on one sentence and whether Ruth has interpreted Boaz correctly.

Imagine how fast her pulse was racing when Boaz awoke. Then the all important words: "I am Ruth . . . spread your wing over your maidservant." There had to have been an immense silence for a moment while Boaz let himself believe that this magnificent woman had really understood—had so profoundly and sensitively understood. A middle-aged man in love with a young widow whom he discretely calls "my daughter," uncertain whether her heart might be going after the younger men, communicating the best he can that he wants to be God's wings for her. And a young widow gradually reading between the lines and finally ready to risk an interpretation by coming in the middle of the night to take refuge under the wing of his garment. That's powerful stuff!! Anybody who thinks that a loose woman and a finagling mother-in-law are at work her are on another planet. All is subtle. All is righteous. All is strategic.

Boaz's Strategy

Now comes the strategic righteousness of Boaz in verses 10–15. To hear what he says in the right way, you have to remember it is midnight, they are under the stars, and he is looking down into the face of the woman he loves covered with his own cloak.

May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter; you have made this last kindness greater than the first, in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear, for I will do for you all that you ask; for all my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of worth.

And then comes a word of magnificent righteousness and self-control. He says, "According to custom, Ruth, there is another who has prior claim to you and I won't be able to proceed until all things are duly settled with him." The stars are beautiful overhead, it is midnight, he loves her, she loves him, they are alone, she is under his cloak . . . and he stops it for the sake of righteousness, and does not touch her. What a man! What a woman!

Listen, the mood of American life today is, if it feels good, do it, and to hell with your guilt-producing, puritanical principles of chastity and faithfulness. But I say to you, if the stars are shining in their beauty and your blood is thudding like a hammer and you are safe in the privacy of your place, stop . . . for the sake of righteousness. Let the morning dawn on your purity. Don't be like the world. Be like Boaz. Be like Ruth. Profoundly in love. Subtle and perceptive in communication. Powerful in self-control. Committed to righteousness.

The Wisdom We Speak

Last week our text was 1 Corinthians 2:1–5, and the main point was that we should make it our aim to base our own and other's faith not on the wisdom of men but on the power of God. I came down really hard on the "wisdom of men" or as Paul calls it in 1:20, "the wisdom of the world."

One of our visitors last week was a former student and a friend of mine, Paul Widen, and his wife, JoLane. As they walked out after the service I asked him what he was doing now after seminary and he said he was studying philosophy at the university. Later in the week when we sent out letters to our guests I added the note: "I really do believe in philosophy, in spite of all I said about the 'wisdom of men.' Come back this week and get the other side of the coin."

Lovers and Seekers of Wisdom

As most of you know the word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." Christians would be hard put to oppose philosophy in principle since the next verse after last week's text, 1 Corinthians 2:6, says, "Yet we do speak wisdom!" There is a wisdom which we are commanded to seek and which we should cherish and which we speak. In that sense all Christians should be amateur philosophers—lovers and seekers of wisdom.

My son, if you will receive my sayings,

and treasure my commandments within you,

make your ear attentive to wisdom,

incline your heart to understanding;

for if you cry for discernment,

lift your voice for understanding;

if you seek her as silver,

and search for her as for hidden treasures;

then you will discern the fear of the Lord,

and discover the knowledge of God.

For the Lord gives wisdom. (Proverbs 2:1–6)

Of course, there always have been and are today philosophers who have taught utter nonsense. So the university faculties don't enjoy a very high esteem among ordinary folk. But let me give this one caution. Probably for every university philosopher who teaches irrelevant or unchristian things, there are a hundred ordinary folk whose view of life is just as godless and destructive. The difference is, the ordinary American pagan only corrupts his children and acquaintances, while the teacher has a much larger audience.

The point is: watch out lest Satan deceive us into thinking that the "wisdom of men" or the "wisdom of the world" is only found in the ivory towers of our universities. Brothers and sisters, it is everywhere, and we must be on guard against it even in our own minds. It was to Christians that Paul said, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

You recall I argued from 1 Corinthians 2:1–5 that there can be no saving faith that rests on the wisdom of men, because the wisdom of men considers salvation through a crucified Christ to be foolishness, and the reason it does is because, on the one hand, the death of Christ is a severe indictment of our hopeless, sinful condition, and utter insufficiency, but, on the other hand, the wisdom of the world is devoted 100% to achieving and maintaining its own self-sufficiency and ground for boasting. It should be evident from this that:

No group of people has a corner on this sort of wisdom: it is the mark of poor and rich, educated and uneducated, old and young, and every race. Apart from the work of God's Spirit we all (whether consciously or unconsciously) are bent on using our minds to show off or at least to save face—to preserve a semblance of cool self-sufficiency.

A second thing that should be evident from this understanding of "the wisdom of men" is that it is not the use of the mind per se that is evil but what the mind is used for, what it comes up with, what it is motivated by. Which means that the alternative to a proud use of the mind should not be no use but rather a humble use. The alternative to proud competence is not incompetence but humble competence.

The Bible may condemn the wisdom of men but it will not surrender wisdom to the enemy. The Bible may claim that man's mind is darkened but its remedy is not mindlessness; it is light. That's why Paul goes on to 1 Corinthians 2:6–13 after leveling his guns against the wisdom of men in 1:18–2:5. And that's why we must go on and not leave things where they were last Sunday. Let's look together at 1 Corinthians 2:6ff.

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written,

'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him,' God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. (RSV)

As I pondered over this text it seemed to me that Paul was answering at least four questions about "the wisdom we speak," which I would like to answer with him. I think it would be helpful to answer them in this order:

Who cannot receive or know this wisdom?

Who can receive and know it?

How is it imparted from God to this group?

What is it?

To these I add my own at the end: So what? What difference does it make to me or you if we know this wisdom or not?

Who Cannot Receive the Wisdom of God?

First then, Who cannot receive or know this wisdom which Paul speaks? Two times in our text Paul refers to the "rulers of this age." The wisdom we speak is not "of the rulers of this age" (v.6). And none of the rulers of this age knew it (grasped it) for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (v.8). Why this special interest here in the rulers who put Jesus to death? Why not refer to the Athenian philosophers that laughed him to scorn earlier at the Areopagus?

Probably for two reasons.

1) The Corinthian church was being misled by false teachers who had caused them to be caught up with not only wisdom but also power—the stuff that rulers have. You can see this in 1:26, 27, "Not many of you were powerful . . . God chose what is weak in the world to shame the powerful." You can also see it in 1 Corinthians 4:8 where Paul puts in his own words what they are claiming for themselves: "Already you are filled! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings (rulers)!" In other words, you claim to experience in this age already things that God has reserved for the age to come! So with biting irony he says, "And would that you did reign as kings so that we might reign with you!" In other words, Paul knows that he surely has not attained the status of a ruler, and in ironically wishing that they had, he implies that they had not yet attained it either, no matter how powerful or wise they thought they were. So Paul refers to the rulers of this age to show that the wisdom that can get one into power will not get you to God. That's the first reason for focusing on rulers of this age.

2) The second reason for focusing on rulers of this age is because the rulers who put Jesus to death are probably the most vivid example of the fact that you can measure a person's true wisdom by whether they recognize Jesus as the Lord of glory: "If they had known the wisdom of God they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." You can tell whether a person's mind is dominated by the wisdom of the world or the wisdom of God by whether he acknowledges the crucified Christ to be not a criminal but the Lord of glory.

In answer to our first question then (Who cannot receive or know the wisdom of God which Paul speaks?) our answer would be: people who are so enamored by the wisdom that leads to power and acclaim that they do not recognize Jesus as the Lord of glory—these cannot receive God's wisdom. It is not simply being in a position of power that closes one off to this wisdom—God has chosen to save powerful people and to give some of his people earthly power. It is not having power but hunger for power that blinds a person to the glory of God in the suffering Messiah. It is not having acclaim among men but hungering for that acclaim that makes Jesus as he is unbelievable.

We can see this if we go back and look at how some of the rulers of the people related to Jesus. For example, in John 5:42–44 Jesus exposed why the Jewish leaders could not believe him: "I know that you have not the love of God within you; I have come in my Father's name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name him you will receive. How can you believe who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" Or to put it another way, you can't believe on Jesus as the Lord of glory when you are more eager to maintain your own glory than you are to seek and find God's.

Another example of why the rulers were blind to the divine authority and glory of Jesus is in Mark 11:27–33.

And they came again to Jerusalem. And as He was walking in the temple, the chief priests, and scribes, and elders came to Him, and began saying to Him, "By what authority are You doing these things, or who gave You this authority to do these things?" And Jesus said to them, "I will ask you one question, and you answer Me, and then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven, or from men? Answer Me." And they began reasoning with one another, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say, 'Then why did you not believe him?' But shall we say, 'From men?"'—they were afraid of the multitude, for all considered John to have been a prophet indeed. And answering Jesus, they said, "We do not know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things." (NASB)

The amazing characteristic of these priests, scribes, and elders is an utter indifference to the truth and a desire to maintain their image. Jesus asked them a question and instead of asking themselves, What is the true answer? they asked themselves, How can we avoid being thought inconsistent? (For if we say John's authority is from heaven, then to be consistent we should believe him); and they asked themselves, How can we avoid being hurt? (For if we say John's authority was only human we might be stoned). Pride on the one hand, fear on the other, but no love for the truth. They were more interested in being thought wise by men than in seeking true wisdom from Jesus! And so Jesus says, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things." In other words, it is possible to be so enamored by the wisdom that leads to power and acclaim that all access to the wisdom of God in the Lord of glory is cut off. Like Jesus said in Matthew 11:25, "I thank Thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes." So in Matthew 16:17 when Peter, unlike the Jewish rulers, confessed Jesus to be the Son of God, or we could say the Lord of glory, Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven."

In answer to our first question then: no one can receive the wisdom we speak who loves power and acclaim so much that they do not see that the suffering Jesus is really the Lord of glory.

Who Can Receive the Wisdom of God?

The second question Paul answers in this text (1 Corinthians 2) about the wisdom we speak is, Who can receive it? Or, who can understand it in such a way that it is welcomed and affirmed, not rejected as foolish?

In verse 6 Paul says, "We do speak a wisdom among the mature." The King James Version says, "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect." In our day that is a very misleading translation because perfection implies flawlessness and sinlessness, but that is surely not what Paul meant because then he would have no one to talk to. The RSV, NIV, and NASB are right to render the Greek teleios as "mature." These are the ones who grasp and welcome the wisdom we speak. Who are they?

I think verse 13 gives the answer, but there is a translation problem here. The Revised Standard Version says, "We impart this (divine wisdom) in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit," or more literally "to those who are spiritual." If this is correct then the "mature" of verse 6 are explained as the "spiritual" of verse 13. We speak a wisdom among the mature, that is, we interpret the wisdom revealed by the Spirit to spiritual people.

But the footnote in the RSV as well as the texts of other versions show that verse 13 can be translated differently. Instead of "interpreting spiritual truths to spiritual people," the last line can be translated "comparing spiritual things with spiritual." The problem is not two different Greek texts. The problem is that the same Greek words really can mean both things and so only context can decide.

I think the correct translation is that Paul is communicating spiritual truths to spiritual people and that these spiritual people are the same as the mature of verse 6. These are the ones who can grasp and receive divine wisdom. The reason I think this is that the verses immediately following verse 13, namely 14–16, talk not about comparing spiritual things with spiritual but rather talk about what sort of people will receive the spiritual things Paul has to say. "The natural man will not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him" (v. 14). This is why in v. 13 Paul says he can only interpret spiritual things to spiritual people—they are the opposite of natural people.

A second reason I think v. 13 refers to spiritual people who are the same as the mature in v. 6 who receive God's wisdom, is that in 3:1 "spiritual people" are contrasted with babes in Christ. "And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as to fleshly (or carnal), as to babes in Christ." It is clear that being a babe is the opposite of being "mature." But in 3:1 the opposite of being a babe is being "spiritual." Therefore being mature and being spiritual are probably the same. So one answer to the question, Who can receive the wisdom of God which we speak? is the mature, that is, the spiritual.

But now what is it that characterizes this group and enables them to embrace the wisdom we speak? When Paul speaks of a "spiritual" person he does not mean an especially religious person, or a person who spends much time in prayer and Bible reading. He means a person who is led by the Spirit of God and bears the fruit of the Spirit. We know this from Galatians 5:16–6:1 where Paul calls believers to walk by the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, and to bear the fruit of the Spirit, and then in 6:1 says, "If anyone is overtaken in a trespass you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of meekness." In other words, the spiritual people are the people in whom God is at work producing the fruit of meekness, love, joy, peace, kindness, and the rest.

It is helpful to see here too that in Galatians 5:19 and following the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit is the works of the flesh, like enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, etc. So the opposite of the spiritual person who is bearing the fruit of the Spirit is the fleshly (or carnal) person who is doing the works of the flesh. One is being transformed by the Spirit of God, the other is enslaved to his old, self-sufficient nature called the flesh.

This is helpful because when we come back now to 1 Corinthians 3:1 we see exactly this sort of contrast: "I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as spiritual but as fleshly." Here is the same contrast as in Galatians 5. The upshot of this contrast is that we can now see in more detail what it is that characterizes the people who do receive the wisdom of God, namely, the mature or the spiritual. They are the people who are characterized by the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

This was a surprising discovery for me, namely, that the prerequisite for grasping the wisdom of God is not a certain level of intelligence, or education, or experience. The prerequisite is moral, not intellectual. It has as much to do with what you love as with what you think. Not education but sanctification is what makes one receptive to the wisdom we speak. Not natural ability but spiritual humility opens a person to the wisdom of God.

Notice how Paul develops this in 1 Corinthians 3:2, 3. "I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, because you were not able, but neither still now are you able, for still you are fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and walking as mere men?" In other words, the only people who are going to be able to receive the solid food of the wisdom we speak are the people who by the power of God's Spirit have overcome jealousy and strife.

In God's order of things you cannot separate the holiness of your life from the depth of your understanding. God has revealed his very wisdom, but he has chosen to do so only among the mature, that is, the spiritual—not a religious elite or a pious clique—but any and all who by resting in God's promises are becoming loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, meek, and self-controlled. This is the person who will have a heart for God's wisdom rather than man's.

There is a remarkable confirmation of this in the book of James (3:13–17). Look how in this text the wisdom of God is described in moral terms.

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

Therefore, in answer to our second question, the people who can receive the wisdom we speak are the people in whom the Holy Spirit is at work overcoming jealousy and envy and strife and selfishness and replacing them with the fruit of love and meekness and patience and goodness. These are the mature, the spiritual—the ones who see Christ in all his suffering and meekness as the Lord of glory.

How Is the Wisdom of God Imparted?

But now how is it that a human being, even a spiritual one, can know the wisdom of God? This is the third question Paul answers in 1 Corinthians 2. How can a person make such a high and exalted claim as to know the very mind of God?

Verses 9 and 10 of 1 Corinthians 2 give the answer: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit." The answer is revelation. The wisdom of God would have never been discovered by man on his own. It would have never occurred to him. For as verse 7 says, it is a "secret and hidden wisdom," or it is a wisdom "in a mystery and concealed." So the only way for a mere man to know it is for God to reveal it. Revelation is the act of God whereby what once was concealed from men is now made known to them.

Paul tells us something about this process in verses 10–13. He uses an analogy: among men a person's thoughts and concerns are only known to the spirit of that person. And only if he wills can another person become privy to what those thoughts and concerns are. If he desires he can reveal his thoughts. So it is with God: no one knows his mind except his own Spirit. But God has willed to impart his wisdom by his Spirit. Verse 12: "We did not receive the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God in order that we might know the things graciously given to us by God."

There are two ways to understand who the we is in that verse. Some think it means all Christians, i.e., people indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Others think the we is the persons that God inspired in the days of the apostles, who then taught the rest of the believers with authority and wrote the New Testament books. It may not be possible to decide with complete certainty but I think the second view is correct because of how verse 13 continues the thought of verse 12. The flow of thought seems to go like this: God gave us the Holy Spirit to reveal to us apostles things no one ever imagined and now in turn as God's inspired and authoritative spokesmen we speak in words taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.

So the way we come to know the wisdom of God is that God revealed it to the apostles by the Spirit and they taught it to others who were prepared to receive it by that same Spirit. In our day the teaching of the apostles and the wisdom of God is thus given to us through their writings in the New Testament. That is the answer to our third question, How we come to know the wisdom of God.

What Is the Wisdom of God?

The final question, which shows the importance of all the others is, What is the wisdom of God? I think it will take an eternity to answer that question. We will never exhaust the wisdom of God, no matter how much we discover. But from verses 7 and 9 we can say something—something very encouraging and full of hope. Verse 7: "We speak a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory!" Whatever else the wisdom of God is, it is surely this: it is the exercise of the infinite, eternal mind of God devising for his people a glorious future. Christ was meek and lowly, despised and wounded for our transgression, but he was the Lord of glory! So it is with those who love him: they may be despised and rejected and suffer now but they are the children of glory. As Paul said in Romans 8:18, "I consider that the sufferings of this present age are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

Imagine a father—a tremendously brilliant father, whose son is coming home. And all the brilliance and insight of this father is in the sway of his love so that every fiber of his wisdom will be employed to make his son gloriously happy. By his wisdom he knows every inclination and desire and preference of his son, he knows the joys that will go down deepest and last longest. He has all the power he needs to shape everything to his son's delight. If you can imagine what such a homecoming might be, you have a little inkling of what the wisdom of God has foreordained and prepared for his children. "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor ever even entered our farthest imagination, God has prepared for those who love Him!"

So What?

Finally, remember this: the rulers of this age who did not receive the wisdom of God, who did not see in Jesus the Lord of glory and the hope of glory, are coming to nothing (v. 6). They are doomed to pass away. It is not for such that the wisdom of God has promised and prepared a glorious future. Rather it is for those who love him, for those who cherish Christ precisely in his suffering, as the Lord of glory. These are the ones who have ears to hear the wisdom of God and who will be glorified by it in the age to come. So let us make every effort to lay aside all hunger for power and all jealousy and strife and in meekness open ourselves to the wisdom of God.

Get Wisdom

I believe all men have this in common: that they want to be happy. They do not all agree on what brings the greatest happiness, but they do all long to have it. And this longing is not bad. It is good. Evil consists in trying to find happiness in ways that displease and dishonor God. Goodness consists in finding happiness in ways that please and honor God. We can conceive of a world in which we might be called upon to do right at the expense of our ultimate happiness. But that is not the world in which we live. God has established this world in such a way that doing good through faith in Christ always leads to greater happiness eventually. We do not live in a world where we must choose between our eternal happiness and God's glory! God has created this world and its moral laws in such a way that the more we choose to glorify God, the happier we will be.

God Made Us to Be Eternally Happy

Of course this does not mean that there is no discipline, no self-denial. "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:34, 35). But it is clear from Jesus' words that self-denial is a means to saving our lives. This means simply that we must stop seeking our happiness in one way and start seeking it in another. Therefore what sets Christians off from the world is not that we have given up on the universal quest for happiness, but that we now seek our happiness from a different source and in different ways. We have learned from Jesus, who "for the joy set before him endured the cross" (Hebrews 12:2), that the joy we seek may require that we choose to suffer for Christ's sake. Yet we must never become self-pitying because "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18). Nor can we ever become proud since we know that "suffering produces patience, and patience produces approvedness, and approvedness produces hope" (Romans 5:3, 4)—hope that God will restore our happiness one hundredfold (Mark 10:30). So you can't boast in your sufferings since they are all bringing about our greater happiness in God.

So I take it to be a great and wonderful and liberating truth that God made us to be eternally happy. And I find great help in viewing the Bible as God's guidebook to joy. We ought to view the Bible as a divine prescription for how to be cured of all unhappiness. The medicine it prescribes is not always sweet, but the cure it brings is infinite and eternal joy at God's right hand (Psalm 16:11).

The point of my message this morning is that we should "get wisdom." We should bend all our efforts to become wiser tomorrow than we are today. And I speak not just to students and graduates, but to us all. Graduation today at Bethel gives me an occasion to say something that applies to us all, namely, that formal education is only one stage in the process of becoming a wise person. So much of life has been professionalized and institutionalized that we easily slip into the notion that it is the responsibility of some profession or some institution to impart to us wisdom. You can see this tendency in the fact that continuing education in many spheres is thought of entirely in terms of taking courses from professionals in institutions.

The implication seems to be that wisdom and understanding are something you purchase with tuition and class fees, rather than being a daily, lifelong process of growth. But what I want to stress this morning is that we should never be content with the wisdom we attained through formal education, and we should not think that the only way to grow in our understanding is by taking more courses. When the wise man says in Proverbs 4:5, "Get wisdom, get insight," he does not mean, "Go to school, take more courses." That might be part of God's plan for you. But for most of us it is not. Yet the command comes to us all: "Get wisdom!" What does this mean? How shall we do it? And why is it so important?

What Is the Importance of Getting Wisdom?

Let's begin by asking why is it so important? We have already seen that all men seek happiness, and that this is not bad but good. Now the reason that getting wisdom is important is that it is the practical knowledge by which we gain this true and lasting happiness. Proverbs 3:13 says, "Happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gets understanding." Proverbs 24:13–14 says, "My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off."

In other words, by means of wisdom you can make your way into a hope-filled future. It is the key to lasting happiness. Proverbs 19:8 says, "He who gets wisdom loves himself." In other words, do yourself a favor: Get wisdom! Get wisdom! Proverbs 8:32–36 sums it all up beautifully. Here wisdom herself is speaking and she says, "And now, my sons, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways . . . Happy is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death." If we do not make it our aim to "get wisdom," we will suffer injury and finally death. Therefore, the command, "Get wisdom; get insight," is very important. As Proverbs 16:16 puts it, "To get wisdom is better than gold; to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver." It is a matter of life and death. The ultimate, eternal happiness that all people long for will only be found by those who first "get wisdom."

I say that ultimate and eternal happiness is what wisdom will bring, because I want to emphasize that not all happiness comes from true wisdom. Proverbs 15:21 says, "Folly is a joy to him who has no sense." Our thirst for happiness is insatiable in this world, and if we do not have the wisdom to seek it in God, then we will find whatever substitutes we can in the world. Terrorists may find it in shooting presidents and popes. Executives may find it in climbing the corporate ladder. Athletes in breaking world records. Scholars in publishing books. Gamblers may find it in Reno. Musicians in selling a million records. The sources where people seek happiness apart from God are countless: drink, drugs, sex, suntans, television, tubing, eating, talking, walking, etc., etc. But the happiness that these things bring is not true and lasting. It is not ultimate and eternal. It is not the joy for which we were made. And, therefore, it leaves us unsatisfied, frustrated, incomplete, knowing that there must be something more. But that ultimate and eternal happiness that we crave is only found by wisdom. Therefore it is supremely important that we "get wisdom."

What Is Wisdom?

Now what is it? What are the characteristics of the person who has it? The first characteristic you all know: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight" (Proverbs 9:10). The wisdom that leads to life and ultimate joy begins with knowing and fearing God. You may recall from two weeks ago in the message, "A Woman Who Fears the Lord Is to Be Praised," that fearing the Lord means fearing to run away from him. It means fearing to seek refuge, and joy, and hope anywhere other than in God. It means keeping before our eyes what a fearful prospect it is to stop trusting and depending on God to meet our needs. The fear of the Lord is, therefore, the beginning of wisdom not only in the sense that it is the first step in a wise way to live, but also in the sense that all the later characteristics of wisdom flow from the fear of the Lord like a river flows from a spring.

Let's look at some examples. Proverbs 11:2 says, "When pride comes, then comes disgrace; but with the humble is wisdom." The wise person is characterized by humility. The person who is proud does not fear the Lord, who hates a haughty spirit, and therefore can't get to first base in wisdom. But the person who fears the Lord is humble, because he depends on God for everything and fears to take credit himself for what God does. Humility, in turn, is foundational for the other aspects of godly wisdom because humility is teachable and open to change and growth. The proud person does not like to admit his errors and his need for growth. But the humble person is open to counsel and reason, and ready to be corrected and follow truth.

Humility, unlike pride, does not recoil when commanded to do something. And this is essential for the advancement of wisdom, because Moses taught us that wisdom consists in knowing and doing the commandments of God. Deuteronomy 4:5–6, "Behold I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do them . . . Keep them and do them; for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples." And Jesus said the same thing about his own words, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock" (Matthew 7:24). A good definition of godly wisdom, therefore, would be: hearing and doing God's Word. God's Word is a divine prescription for how to be finally cured of all unhappiness. Wisdom is the practical knowledge of how to attain that happiness. Therefore, wisdom is hearing and doing the Word of God. But the only people who will do this are the people who are humbly relying on God for help and who fear to seek happiness anywhere but in him. Therefore, the fear of the Lord is the beginning and spring of all true wisdom.

But something more has to be said about the nature of this wisdom. It is not enough to say it is a humble hearing and doing of God's Word, because God's Word does not address itself specifically to every human dilemma. A famous example from Solomon's life will illustrate (1 Kings 3:16–28). One day two prostitutes came to King Solomon. One of them said, "My lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and we each gave birth to a son last week. And one night while she was asleep, she rolled over on her son and smothered it. So she got up at midnight and took my living son from me while I slept and left me with her dead son. When I woke in the morning and looked closely, I could tell it was not my son." But the other woman said, "No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours." And so they argued before the king.

Then the king said, "You both say the living child is yours. I will settle the matter; bring me a sword." So a sword was brought and the king said, "Divide the living child in two and give half to the one woman and half to the other." But the woman whose son was alive yearned for her son and said, "No, my lord, give her the child and by no means slay it." And the other said: "It shall be neither mine nor yours, divide it." Then the king said, "Give the living child to the first woman. She is its mother." The story concludes with this observation: "And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered; and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to render justice" (1 Kings 3:28).

There was no biblical command to tell Solomon what to do when two harlots claim the same baby. Therefore, wisdom must go beyond knowing and doing the Word of God. Wisdom must include a sensitive, mature judgment or discernment of how the fear of the Lord should work itself out in all the circumstances not specifically dealt with in the Bible. There has to be what Paul calls in Romans 12:2 a "renewing of the mind" which is then able to examine and approve the will of God. He calls this a "spiritual wisdom" in Colossians 1:9, "We have not ceased to pray for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." Of course the wisdom which follows God's Word and the wisdom which discerns the way to act when there is no clear word from God are not separate. It is precisely by saturating our minds and hearts with God's Word that we gain the spiritual wisdom to guide us in all situations.

So in summary, when the Bible says, "Get wisdom," it is referring to that practical knowledge of how to attain true and lasting happiness. It begins with the fear of the Lord and consists in humbly hearing and doing God's will perceived both in Scripture and in the unique circumstances of the moment. Such wisdom is essential because the person who has it finds life and joy, but the person who doesn't finds death and misery. Therefore, "Get wisdom! Get wisdom!"

How Can We Get Wisdom?

Now finally I want to mention five biblical instructions for how to get this wisdom. First, desire wisdom with all your might. Proverbs 4:8 says, "Prize her highly and she will exalt you; she will honor you for your embrace." These are not cheap words. To prize something and to embrace someone are signs of intense desire and love. Wisdom must be valuable for us. We must be willing to sell all in order to buy it: "Seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasure" (Proverbs 2:4). Blessed is the graduate who walks through the commencement line more hungry for wisdom than when he entered school, for he shall be satisfied.

Second, since wisdom is found in the Word of God, we must apply ourselves in study and meditation to know the Word and do it. "The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." (Psalm 19:7). Therefore, we must devote ourselves to know and understand the testimonies of the Lord. And here I commend not only faithful Bible study, but also regular reading of great books on theology and biblical interpretation, books that distill the wisdom of the greatest students of the word over the past 1900 years.

Now, I know what you are thinking: I don't have the time or the ability to get anywhere in books like that. So I want to show you something really encouraging. When this was shown to me about four years ago by my pastor, it changed my life. Most of us don't aspire very high in our reading because we don't feel like there is any hope. But listen to this. Suppose you read about 250 words a minute and that you resolve to devote just 15 minutes a day to serious theological reading to deepen your grasp of biblical truth. In one year (365 days) you would read for 5,475 minutes. Multiply that times 250 words per minute and you get 1,368,750 words per year. Now most books have between 300 and 400 words per page. So if we take 350 words per page and divide that into 1,368,750 words per year, we get 3,910 pages per year. This means that at 250 words a minute, 15 minutes a day, you could read about 20 average sized books a year!

When I heard that, I went home, analyzed my day, and set aside the 15 minutes just before supper to read Jonathan Edwards' big book, Original Sin. And I did it in a couple of months. Then I turned to something else. I was absolutely elated: reading that I thought never could get done was now getting done in a 15 minute slot that would have been wasted anyway. Therefore, I encourage you, there is hope. Choose some classics that you've always wanted to read (St. Augustine's Confessions, or City of God; John Calvin's Institutes; Martin Luther's Commentary on Galatians, or Bondage of the Will; John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections; etc.), and set aside 15 minutes, maybe just before you go to sleep, to read. You will not be the same person next year at this time. Your mind will be stretched, your heart enlarged, your zeal more fervent. Above all, you will have grown in wisdom. And it may not be long until someone says of you: "The words of his mouth are as deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a gushing spring" (Proverbs 18:4).

The third thing we should do to get wisdom is pray. Solomon was not born a wise man. He prayed for wisdom and God said, "Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold now I do according to your word" (1 Kings 3:11). And Daniel admitted that in himself he had no wisdom (Daniel 2:30), but he said, "To thee, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for thou hast given me wisdom and strength, and hast made known to me what we asked of thee" (2:23). And we have seen how Paul prayed that the churches might be given "spiritual wisdom" (Colossians 1:9) and that they might have "a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of God" (Ephesians 1:17). And finally, James puts it as clearly as we could wish: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God" (James 1:5). The wisdom that leads to true and lasting happiness is not natural or inborn. It is supernatural. It is a gift of God. Therefore, if we would "get wisdom," we must pray.

The fourth biblical instruction for how to get wisdom is to think frequently of your death. Or to put it another way, think of the shortness of this life and the infinite length of the next. Psalm 90:12 says, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." There is scarcely any thought that will purge our priorities of vain and worldly perceptions like the thought of our imminent death. O how cleansing it is to ponder the kind of life we would like to look back on when we come to die. There is great wisdom in such meditation. Therefore, think often of your dying.

Finally, there is one last, absolutely essential thing to do if you would "get wisdom": you must come to Jesus. He said to the people of his day, "The queen of the south will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold something greater than Solomon is here" (Matthew 12:42). What an understatement. Greater than Solomon indeed! Solomon spoke God's wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30). Others had spoken truth; he is the truth. Others had pointed the way to life; he is the way and the life (John 14:6). Others had given promises, but "all the promises of God find their yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20). Others had offered God's forgiveness; Jesus bought it by his death. Therefore, in him are "hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). To know and love and follow this Jesus is to own the treasure of ultimate and eternal happiness. Therefore, the command, "Get wisdom," means first and foremost "Come to Jesus! Come to Jesus!" in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom.

The Renewed Mind and How to Have It

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As I have thought and prayed about these verses, it seems to me that there are two more very large issues we should deal with before moving on to verse 3. I would like to give a week to each of them.

“The Will of God”

One, which I hope to deal with next week, is the meaning of the term “the will of God.” Verse 2 says that we are to discern what is “the will of God.” It’s a very common phrase and I think that sometimes, when we use it, we may not know what we are talking about. That is not spiritually healthy. If you get into the habit of using religious language without knowing what you mean by it, you will increasingly become an empty shell. And many alien affections move into empty religious minds which have language but little or wrong content.

The term “the will of God” has at least two and possibly three biblical meanings. First, there is the sovereign will of God, that always comes to pass without fail. Second, there is the revealed will of God in the Bible — do not steal, do not lie, do not kill, do not covet — and this will of God often does not come to pass. And third, there is the path of wisdom and spontaneous godliness — wisdom where we consciously apply the word of God with our renewed minds to complex moral circumstances, and spontaneous godliness where we live most of our lives without conscious reflection on the hundreds of things we say and do all day. Next week we need to sort this out and ask what Paul is referring to in Romans 12:2.

Transformation by the Renewal of Your Mind

But today I want to focus on the phrase in Romans 12:2, “by the renewal of your mind.” Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are perfectly useless as Christ-exalting Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us. And the key to not wasting our lives with this kind of success and prosperity, Paul says, is being transformed. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

That word is used one time in all the gospels, namely, about Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration (the mountain of “transformation” — same word, metemorphõthë): “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2).

The Transformation Is Not Just External

I point this out for one reason: to make the point that the nonconformity to the world does not primarily mean the external avoidance of worldly behaviors. That’s included. But you can avoid all kinds of worldly behaviors and not be transformed. “His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became white as light!” Something like that happens to us spiritually and morally. Mentally, first on the inside, and then, later at the resurrection on the outside. So Jesus says of us, at the resurrection: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).

Transformation is not switching from the to-do list of the flesh to the to-do list of the law. When Paul replaces the list — the works — of the flesh, he does not replace it with the works of the law, but the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19–22). The Christian alternative to immoral behaviors is not a new list of moral behaviors. It is the triumphant power and transformation of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ — our Savior, our Lord, our Treasure. “[God] has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). So transformation is a profound, blood-bought, Spirit-wrought change from the inside out.

The Freedom of Being Enslaved to Christ

This is why the Christian life — though it is utterly submitted (Romans 8:7; 10:3), even enslaved (Romans 6:18, 22) to the revealed will of God — is described in the New Testament as radically free. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”(2 Corinthians 3:17). “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). You are free in Christ, because when you do from the inside what you love to do, you are free — if what you love to do is what you ought to do. And that’s what transformation means: When you are transformed in Christ you love to do what you ought to do. That’s freedom.

An Essential Means of Transformation: The Renewal of Your Mind

And in Romans 12:2 Paul now focuses on one essential means of transformation — “the renewal of your mind.” “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Oh, how crucial this is!

If you long to break loose from conformity to the world,

if you long to be transformed and new from the inside out,

if you long to be free from mere duty-driven Christianity and do what you love to do because what you love to do is what you ought to do,

if you long to offer up your body as a living sacrifice so that your whole life becomes a spiritual act of worship and displays the worth of Christ above the worth of the world,

then give yourself with all your might to pursuing this — the renewal of your mind. Because the Bible says, this is the key to transformation. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

What’s wrong with the human mind? Why does our mind need renewing? And what does this renewal look like? And how can we pursue and enjoy this renewal?

The Problem with Our Minds

There are many who think that the only problem with the human mind is that it doesn’t have access to all the knowledge it needs. So education becomes the great instrument of redemption — personal and social. If people just got more education they would not use their minds to invent elaborate scams, and sophisticated terrorist plots, and complex schemes for embezzling, and fast-talking, mentally nimble radio rudeness. If people just got more education!

The Bible has a far more profound analysis of the problem. In Ephesians 4:23 Paul uses a striking phrase to parallel Romans 12:2. He says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Now what in the world is that? “The spirit of your mind.” It means at least this: The human mind is not a sophisticated computer managing data, which it then faithfully presents to the heart for appropriate emotional responses. The mind has a “spirit.” In other words, our mind has what we call a “mindset.” It doesn’t just have a view, it has a viewpoint. It doesn’t just have the power to perceive and detect; it also has a posture, a demeanor, a bearing, an attitude, a bent. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

The problem with our minds is not merely that we are finite, and don’t have all the information. The problem is that our minds are fallen. They have a spirit, a bent, a mindset that is hostile to the absolute supremacy of God. Our minds are bent on not seeing God as infinitely more worthy of praise than we are, or the things we make or achieve.

This is what we saw last week in Romans 1:28, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.” This is who we are by nature. We do not want to see God as worthy of knowing well and treasuring above all things. You know this is true about yourself because of how little effort you expend to know him, and because of how much effort it takes to make your mind spend any time getting to know God better. The Bible says we have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Romans 1:23). And the image in the mirror is the mortal image we worship most.

The Relationship Between Verses 1 and 2

That’s what’s wrong with our minds. This illumines the relationship between verses 1 and 2 of Romans 12. Verse 1 says that we should present our bodies — that is, our whole active life — as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual service of worship. So the aim of all life is worship. That is, we are to use our bodies — our whole lives — to display the worth of God and all that he is for us in Christ. Now it makes perfect sense when verse 2 says that, in order for that to happen, our minds must be renewed. Why? Because our minds are not by nature God-worshiping minds. They are by nature self-worshiping minds. That is the spirit of our minds.

Two Other Biblical Diagnoses of the Problem

Now before I turn to the remedy and how we find the renewal of mind God demands, consider two other biblical diagnoses of the problem. Consider the way Peter describes our mind-problem in 1 Peter 1:13–14, “Prepar[e]. . . your minds for action. . . . Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.” There is an ignorance of God — a willful suppression of the truth of God (Romans 1:18) — that makes us slaves to many passions and desires that would lose their power if we knew God as we ought (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:5). “The passions of your former ignorance.” Paul calls these passions, “desires of deceit” (Ephesians 4:22). They are life-ruining, worship-destroying desires, and they get their life and their power from the deceit of our minds. There is a kind of knowledge of God — a renewal of mind — that transforms us because it liberates us from the deceit and the power of alien passions.

The other biblical diagnosis is in Ephesians 4:17–18, “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Paul takes us deeper than Peter here. He penetrates beneath the “futile mind” and the “darkened understanding” and the willful “ignorance” and says that it is all rooted in “the hardness of their heart.” Here is the deepest disease, infecting everything else. Our mental suppression of liberating truth is rooted in our hardness of heart. Our hard hearts will not submit to the supremacy of Christ, and therefore our blind minds cannot see the supremacy of Christ (cf. John 7:17).

The Holy Spirit Renews the Mind

Which brings us finally to the remedy and how we obey Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind.” First, before we can do anything, a double action of the Holy Spirit is required. And then we join him in these two actions. The reason I say the Holy Spirit is required is because this word “renewal” in Romans 12:2 is only used one other place in all the Greek Bible, namely, Titus 3:5 where Paul says this: “[God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” There’s the word “renewal” which we’ve seen is so necessary. And it is renewal “of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit renews the mind. It is first and decisively his work. We are radically dependent on him. Our efforts follow his initiatives and enablings.

The Double Work of the Holy Spirit

Now what is the double work that he must do to renew our minds so that all of life becomes worship? 2 Corinthians 3:18 sets the stage for the answer: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” What does the Spirit do to “transform” us into the image of the God-exalting Son of God? He enables us to “behold the glory of the Lord.” This is how the mind is renewed — by steadfastly gazing at the glories of Christ for what they really are.

But to enable us to do that, the Spirit must do a double work. He must work in two directions: from the outside in and from the inside out. He must work from the outside in by exposing the mind to Christ-exalting truth. That is, he must lead us to hear the gospel, to read the Bible, to study Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men, and to meditate on the perfections of Christ. This is exactly what our great enemy does not want us to do according to 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Because to see that for what it really is, Paul says, will renew the mind and transform the life and produce unending worship.

And the Spirit must work from the inside out, breaking the hard heart that blinds and corrupts the mind. The Spirit must work from the outside in, through Christ-exalting truth, and from the inside out, through truth-embracing humility. If he only worked from the outside in, by presenting Christ-exalting truth to our minds but not breaking the hard heart and making it humble, then the truth would be despised and rejected. And if he only humbled the hard heart, but put no Christ-exalting truth before the mind, there would be no Christ to embrace and no worship would happen.

What Then Shall We Do?

What then do we do in obedience to Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind”? We join the Holy Spirit in his precious and all-important work. We pursue Christ-exalting truth and we pray for truth-embracing humility.

Listen to rich expositions of the “gospel of the glory of Christ.” Read your Bible from cover to cover always in search of the revelation of the glory of Christ. Read and ponder the Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men and women. And form the habit of meditating on the perfections of Christ. And in it all pray, pray, pray that the Holy Spirit will renew your mind, that you may desire and approve the will of God, so that all of life will become worship to the glory of Christ.

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,

Live in me from day to day,

By His love and power controlling

All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly

In my heart from hour to hour,

So that all may see I triumph

Only through His power.

May the peace of God my Father

Rule my life in everything,

That I may be calm to comfort

Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me

As the waters fill the sea;

Him exalting, self abasing,

This is victory.

May I run the race before me,

Strong and brave to face the foe,

Looking only unto Jesus

As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me,

As I seek the lost to win,

And may they forget the channel,

Seeing only Him.

May the Mind of Christ, My Savior

Kate Wilkenson

The Lips of Knowledge Are a Precious Jewel

I think I inherited from my mother a love for the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. They were well marked on the india pages of her Bible, and she quoted them to me often. I think probably they loomed large in her life, because I was her only son and there is no other book in the Bible that speaks of sons and mothers as much as Proverbs. Proverbs 1:8: "Hear, my son, your father's instruction and reject not your mother's teaching." Proverbs 10:1: "A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother." Proverbs 23:22: "Hearken to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old." Verse 25: "Let your father and mother be glad, let her who bore you rejoice." Proverbs 29:15: "The rod of reproof gives wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother."

My father was away from home most of the time, so my mother bore the unbelievable burden of rearing my sister and me alone, as mother and father as it were. So she schooled herself in this most practical of all biblical books and worked incessantly for my good. So when I spoke at her funeral I read these words from her book: "She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed." (Proverbs 31:26–28).

So I have a special place in my heart for Proverbs, and I suppose I read them with a bit more intensity, because somebody I loved very much loved them so much. Perhaps you will find me coming back to them again and again on special occasions. The special occasion today is the concluding service of our Celebration of Education on the 200th birthday of the Sunday School. And the proverb I want to think about with you is Proverbs 20:15, "There is gold and abundance of costly stones; but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel."

More Precious Than Jewels

If you took the words, "the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel," by themselves, you might conclude from this proverb that the reason knowledge is as valuable as jewels is because when you have knowledge you can get rich more easily. That's true. You can. Proverbs 24:3–6 says:

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. A wise man is mightier than a strong man, and a man of knowledge than he who has strength; for by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.

In other words, brains are better than brawn when it comes to winning wars and filling a house with riches. That's a fact of life and so the proverbs say it. But saying it is a fact of life is not the same as saying we should devote ourselves to filling our house with riches. There may be other reasons that the "lips of knowledge" are a precious jewel than that knowledge can be used to get rich.

In fact, Proverbs 20:15 can't have this meaning. Notice the contrast in the two verse halves: "There is gold and abundance of costly stones; but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel." If the wise man had wanted to say that the "lips of knowledge are valuable, because they help you get gold and gems," he would not have contrasted abundant gold with the value of knowledge. But in contrasting the two he is saying, there is a value and beauty in the "lips of knowledge" which surpasses the accumulation of gold and gems.

So Proverbs 20:15 fits into the category of what we learn from several other places in Proverbs. For example, Proverbs 3:13–18:

Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gets understanding, for the gain from it is better than gain from silver, and its profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

So the "lips of knowledge" are valuable not because they just multiply riches. There is a gain, but it is better than gold or silver.

(Parenthetically, I should caution against reading our contemporary distinction between wisdom and knowledge into the usage of these words in Proverbs. We say "knowledge" is an awareness of facts and "wisdom" the ability to use that knowledge for helpful ends. But I don't think that the Hebrew da'at and hokma have that distinction. They are often simply interchangeable. For example, Proverbs 1:7, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction." Cf. 9:10. So in my discussion of the "lips of knowledge" I am not making a distinction between knowledge and wisdom.)

Another example of how the value of knowledge contrasts with that of riches is in Proverbs 8:10, 11: "Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold; for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her." Therefore, when Proverbs 20:15 says, "There is gold and abundance of costly stones; but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel," I conclude that what is being taught is this: No matter how much gold or how many gems you have, the "lips of knowledge" are still more valuable. And since gold and gems surely represent the most valuable material things the wise man could think of, we may state the teaching like this: the lips of knowledge are more to be desired than all material things.

To feel the impact of that simple statement, we need to run before our mind's eye the things we desire, so that we can feel what sort of allurement they have. For example, I've desired very strongly lately to have a book, The Mystery of Providence, by John Flavel, published in 1687. Glen said last Wednesday he desires a new car. You may have your eyes on a pair of skis or a new fall fashion or a special meal at a restaurant. What we all should do with these and dozens of other desires is let them arise in our hearts and then ask ourselves honestly, Do I desire the "lips of knowledge" that much? Do I desire the "lips of knowledge" lots more than I desire to have my book or car or skis?

Probably what we find is that none of us is interested in our own happiness nearly as strongly as we should be. Our most vigorous desires go out after things that have no comparison in value to the "rare jewel" of the "lips of knowledge." "Nothing can compare with wisdom," the Bible says (Proverbs 8:11; 3:15). But do we seek her with an intensity worthy of her value? Isn't it astonishing how we Christians let the world determine what we desire and what we devote ourselves to obtaining? The "lips of knowledge" are more to be desired than all material things. I have prayed that God will use this message to cause that desire to well up inside us all and overtake all our desires for material things.

There are at least three ways in which the lips of knowledge can be valuable to me or desired by me. First, they can be valuable to me in that you have them and I want to listen to them. "The lips of knowledge are a precious jewel" implies that we should desire to be around people with wisdom. Incalculable benefit comes from finding a wise teacher and soaking up all you can from his "lips of knowledge." A second way the "lips of knowledge" can be valuable to me is if I have them. We should not only desire to listen to the lips of others but to become wise ourselves. But this second way to desire the "lips of knowledge" is really two ways: you can desire the joys of knowing, and you can desire the joys of telling your knowledge to others. So the three ways that the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel are 1) their value to listen to, 2) the value of having knowledge for one's private life, and 3) the value of speaking knowledge to others. Let's look at these one at a time.

Listening to Lips of Knowledge

First of all, "the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel" to me when I find them in another person, and so I seek to listen as much as I can. C.S. Lewis had the "lips of knowledge" and still speaks through his books. I have read almost all of his theological and fiction works, I think. And if you offered me ten million dollars right now in exchange for what I learned from C.S. Lewis, I wouldn't consider the offer ten seconds. I would reject the gold and keep what I have learned. Jonathan Edwards had the "lips of knowledge" and still speaks through his books and sermons. I can remember many Sunday evenings in Germany, sitting in our black rocker and savoring several pages of wisdom in his book on the Religious Affections. They taught me and they moved me. I came to feel ever more deeply that no possessions could compare to sitting at the feet of people who have the "lips of knowledge."

Someone may say, "The only teacher I need is God, the Holy Spirit. The words of man are vain. God's words are a precious jewel, but man's words are a rusty nail." People who talk like that, to use the words of Paul, have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge. According to Ephesians 4:11, when Christ ascended into heaven, he gave teachers to his church. As offensive as it may be to people who measure their devotion to God by how private it is, nevertheless God intends for his people to grow in knowledge by listening to human teachers who have the "lips of knowledge." The original example for all church life is given in Nehemiah 8:8, "And they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading." Human teachers are commissioned to take God's revelation and give the sense so others can understand it. It is a plain fact that we all have different skills in reading. One person reads and sees nothing very exciting. Another person reads and sees relationships and implications and insights. God intends for us to help each other see what we've seen.

I would let you cut off my hands and feet before I would let you take from me what I learned under the teaching of Daniel Fuller at Fuller Seminary. Not because I value the words of men, but because his words opened the Word for me like no one ever had. So the "lips of knowledge" are a precious jewel to us when we can listen to them or read what they spoke. So seek for them more than for silver or gold and search for them more than for hidden treasure (Proverbs 2:4). And when you find the "lips of knowledge," listen long and listen deep.

Having Lips of Knowledge

A second way that the "lips of knowledge" are more valuable than gold is when you have them yourself, and more specifically, first of all, because to have knowledge is so valuable, and then second, because to speak knowledge is so valuable. I may have given the impression that the only people who have the "lips of knowledge" are the profoundest teachers. That's not the meaning of the proverb. The book of Proverbs summons everyone to get knowledge and speak wisdom.

Knowledge is valuable to have, first of all, because life and death are at stake. God says through Hosea 4:6, "My people perish for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me." People perish for lack of knowledge. They stumble along in the darkness of their daily lives and wake up to find themselves rejected by God. Here's the way Jesus put it in his day, "Woe to you lawyers! for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering." People can be kept out of the kingdom of God because they lack knowledge. So it follows, doesn't it, that if the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man sells all he has to buy, then the knowledge which we need to enter that kingdom will also be worth more than all the material things in the world, which is what the proverb says. Life and death are at stake.

But not only that, knowledge is valuable to have secondly because just life is at stake. How we live depends in great measure on what we know, especially what we know about God. Paul prays for the Philippians like this (1:9f.):

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruits of righteousness.

In order to approve what is good and be pure in our lives, Paul says our love must be accompanied by lots of knowledge (cf. 2 Peter 1:5). You can't just have a zeal for God, you have to know God in order to please him. You have to know the way his mind works, what he values, and what he hates, and why. Paul prays for the Colossians like this (1:9–10):

We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him bearing fruit in every good work.

In order to please the Lord, you have to know his will. You have to get acquainted with his way of thinking. So knowledge is valuable, because you can't do God's will without it. Of course that assumes that you value doing God's will. You won't love and crave knowledge as a means to doing God's will, if you don't love and crave God's will. Isn't one of the marks of a Christian that he wants to be Christ-like? I think that means that a Christian will love to do God's will, because Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." Usually we think of needing spiritual nourishment in order to do God's will. And that's true. But Jesus also says doing God's will is spiritual nourishment.

You've all felt at times in your life, haven't you, the exhilaration at the end of a day when you overcame temptation and did God's will. It's encouraging and strengthening and life giving. It is food. When we discover that, the will of God ceases to be mere duty. Few of us consider eating a good meal a duty. Therefore the knowledge that you have to have in order to do God's will like that becomes tremendously valuable and desirable. It is a precious jewel.

I think I could easily be misunderstood here if I don't clarify how knowledge helps us do the will of God. It would be a misunderstanding if you think I mean only that when you stand at a fork in the road, you have to know which is God's prong and which is sin. That's true. But God's will doesn't always present itself as a fork in the road which we can think over and then choose. In fact, most of our behavior all day long isn't like that. Most of our behavior springs out of our heart and mind with little or no prior reflection. We respond to situations and people all day long immediately with whatever is welling up in our heart. Sometimes we respond sinfully (bitterness, grumbling, impatience, resentment, spite, arrogance), and sometimes we respond righteously (sweetness, thankfulness, patience, encouragement, forgiveness, wise counsel). How does knowledge help us do God's will, when we are acting so spontaneously?

In Colossians 3:9, 10, Paul says, "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." In order to bring forth from the mind and heart spontaneously attitudes and actions which accord with God's will, there has to be a renewal of the mind and heart. There have to be some deep changes of what we love and value and cherish and long for. Paul says this happens in or by knowledge. When the wonder and beauty of Christ and the gospel ceases to be a churchly platitude and explodes in our awareness with the radiance of the glory of God, we get changed. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being changed into his likeness." There is a knowledge which changes us. And it is "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Therefore, the "lips of knowledge" are a precious jewel because when you have the knowledge of God, you have the keys of the kingdom and the key to transformation into Christ-likeness.

Speaking with Lips of Knowledge

Now finally, "the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel" because while having knowledge opens the door to eternal life and the joy of holiness, speaking knowledge gives you the doubled joy of taking someone with you through that door. It is a nourishing joy to do God's will, but that joy is compounded when we can speak a word of knowledge to help another to God's will. "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

I think the "lips of knowledge" are a vast and largely untapped resource in the local church. If it is valuable to listen to the "lips of knowledge," and it is valuable to have knowledge, and if it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive, then how tremendously valuable, how powerfully desirable it is to speak with the "lips of knowledge." Paul wrote to the Roman church, "I am satisfied about you my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another" (15:14). And he wrote to the Colossians, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom."

Every one of us has the "lips of knowledge" on some occasions. God teaches us something for our good and for the good of our neighbor, colleague, friend, roommate, employee. There is a beautiful word in Isaiah 50:4 that every one of us can follow. And it is a good summary of much of what I have said. Isaiah says,

The Lord God has given me the tongue (or lips) of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

First, he has to listen to the "lips of knowledge," then he has knowledge, then he speaks with the "lips of knowledge" in order to sustain with a word him that is weary.

Let's be like Isaiah all the time. Let's go after the knowledge of God with more gusto than we go after all material things, and then let's unzip the "lips of knowledge" and speak to each other of these things and sustain each other on the phone, in the car, over meals, in the office, in the church halls. Because, "There is gold and abundance of costly stones, but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel."

Test the Spirits to See Whether They Are of God

And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already. Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater that he who is in the world. They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them. We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

The last part of 3:24 refers to the testimony of the Holy Spirit. It says, "And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us." According to this verse we gain assurance of God's presence in our lives ("he abides in us") by the Spirit he has given us. The Spirit testifies that we are God's children, as Paul says in Romans 8:16. But how does the Spirit do this? How does the Spirit's testimony express itself in your life?

Two Ways the Spirit Expresses Itself in Our Lives

The testimony of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer expresses itself in two ways.

1. Causing Us to Love

Last week Tom talked about one of the ways, namely, the expression of love. Love is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) and so love among Christians is one way the Holy Spirit testifies of his reality in our lives. When we love each other from the heart, in deed and truth and not just in word, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness that we are the children of God. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God in love are the children of God (Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18, 22).

Pause and think for a moment what we mean when we speak of the testimony of the Spirit. What is a testimony?

A testimony is the presentation of evidence that should help a jury decide the truth of a claim. A testimony is valuable to the degree that it can be counted as good evidence in deciding if a claim is true. The evidence that the Holy Spirit presents to our own spirits and to the community is first of all the evidence of love. The Spirit puts within us a humble heart of love and so gives evidence of his presence and power. His testimony is the love he produces. He bears witness to his presence by producing what he alone can produce—the overflow of joy in God that flows out to meet the needs of others.

That's what Tom and Steve have been talking about in the last couple weeks—the evidence of love in the life of a believer. It's the main burden of this letter.

2. Causing Us to Believe 

But there is a second burden of this letter and a second way that the testimony of the Spirit expresses itself in the lives of believers.

Last week Tom said that 3:23 is "a grand summary of the whole Bible." "And this is his commandment that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us." The one all-embracing commandment in this letter, and indeed in the whole Bible, is: Believe in Jesus and love each other. These two things are so united in John's mind that they are not two things but one thing, one commandment. Believe in Jesus and love each other.

So it is not surprising to learn that the second way the Holy Spirit testifies to his presence and power in our lives is not simply by causing us to love but also by causing us to believe. That is what this week's text is about.

The one all embracing commandment of this letter is that we believe and that we love. These are the foundation of our assurance because these are the evidence that God is at work within us. And since they are the evidence of God's work, they are the testimony of his Spirit. Last week we looked and the Spirit's testimony of love. This week we look at the Spirit's testimony of belief.

The Test of the Spirit's Indwelling

Let's read 4:1–3.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.

Verse 2 says, "By this you know the Spirit of God." In other words John is giving a test by which you can know if someone is being led by the Holy Spirit or by some other spirit. Is the person really of God and indwelt by the Spirit, or is the person of the world and misled by the spirit of this age? How can you tell? What is the test?

The answer of verse 2 is: "every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." In other words the Holy Spirit testifies to the reality of God in your life by causing you to own up to the truth about Jesus Christ. So when you give a genuine confession of Jesus Christ we can know that you are of God, you have the Holy Spirit.

What Does "Confess" Mean?

But this creates a problem for us. We know that there are people who can say true things about Jesus who are not in fact born of God or indwelt by the Holy Spirit. If we paid him enough, we could call someone off the street and get him to make any confession we wanted here in front of the whole church, and it would be no evidence at all of his belonging to God. And Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21). In other words, merely saying right things about Jesus is no sign of the Holy Spirit's presence.

So what does John mean when he says in verse 2 that "every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God"? The answer must lie in what John means by the word "confess."

Not Mere Words

In 1:9 John says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins." What does confess mean here? It does not mean merely mouthing the words, "I know I am a sinner." We all know that forgiveness and reconciliation do not happen when the words of an apology are glib and insincere.

If we say to one of our children, "Tell your brother you're sorry," and he says begrudgingly, "I'm sorry," it does not achieve reconciliation. The confession must be sincere. It must come from the heart. It must be more that mere words. There has to be a disposition corresponding to the offense committed. Real regret. Real contrition. Then forgiveness and reconciliation can happen.

So when John says in 4:2 that the evidence of divine spiritual reality is the "confession" that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, he probably does not mean that the mere words or thoughts are sufficient evidence. Just because people can say that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is no sure sign that they are of God.

Heartfelt Reverence, Conviction, and Submission

Instead John probably means that the sincere, genuine confession of Christ is evidence of the Spirit's work. If there is a disposition of heart corresponding to the tremendous truth that the Son of God has come in the flesh, then the confession is evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit. In other words mere doctrinal words, no matter how true, don't prove anything about the spirit or person behind them, unless the words come with reverence and heartfelt conviction and submission to Christ.

I asked the African chaplain of the Banso Baptist Hospital in Cameroon if he was able to make any spiritual impact on the patients. He said that the Christians were very open to his help, but that most of the Muslims and the followers of the tribal religions would simply agree with him as quickly as they could in order to get him to leave them alone. So what should we make of such agreement? Do such confessions prove that the person is of God, or that the spirit with which they speak is the Spirit of God?

Signs of the Spirit's Reality

My conclusion is that what verse 2 means is this: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which sincerely confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and which has a corresponding disposition of loving reverence and submission to Jesus Christ, is of God." So the sign of the Spirit's reality is not merely the truth of the words coming out of the mouth of a prophet, but also the disposition corresponding to that truth.

So the Holy Spirit bears witness to the genuineness of a believer or a prophet in two ways. One is by producing the fruit of love. And the other is by producing a genuine confession of doctrinal truth about Jesus Christ.

A heartfelt act of love and a heartfelt confession of truth are both owing to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Therefore the genuineness of our love and the genuineness of our belief about Christ are the evidence of God's work in our lives. They are the Holy Spirit's testimony that we are the children of God.

The Test of What People Hear

Verse 6 points us in this same direction. It answers the same question as verse 2: How can we recognize the spirit of error and the spirit of truth? The difference between verse 2 and verse 6 is that in verse 2 the test is what people say and in verse 6 the test is what people hear. Or another way to put it is that the test in verse 2 is whether people bring sincere and truthful words out of their heart, while the test in verse 6 is whether they will allow sincere and truthful words go into their heart.

Verse 6 says, "We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." So the test of whether you have the Spirit of truth is whether you listen when the apostles' teaching is given.

Mere Listening Proves Nothing

But the same question arises here that arose in verse 2: Does mere listening prove anything about a person's spiritual condition? No. No more than mere speaking proves anything in verse 2.

But the answer is the same in both verses: verse 2 is referring not to mere words but to words from the heart. And verse 6 is referring not to mere listening but to a listening that allows words to go into the heart. Not just any listening proves the presence of the Holy Spirit. But the humble listening that accepts the truth of Christ and submits gladly to it—that listening is a sign of the Spirit of truth at work in the heart.

So the testimony of the Spirit that assures us that we are the children of God is the work of the Spirit to make us listen to the gospel submissively (verse 6) and confess the Christ of the gospel heartily (verse 2).

The Great Assumption of This Text

The point of 4:1–6 is not merely to give us a doctrinal test for discerning false prophets. If it were, then verse 2 would not say, "By this we know the Spirit of God." Instead it would say, "By this we know the spirit of antichrist." The point of the verses is not merely to give a doctrinal test for recognizing false spirits. The point is to give a test also for recognizing the true Spirit. And therefore the test must be more than doctrinal, because true doctrine by itself is no sure sign of the work of the Spirit. Anybody can say true doctrines with his lips. But only the Spirit can make sinners really listen and really confess the truth of Jesus.

So the great lesson that lies just beneath the surface in this text is that none of us will listen to the message of Christ unless the mighty Holy Spirit overcomes our resistance and gives us ears to hear (Acts 16:14; Deuteronomy 29:4). And none of us will confess from the heart that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh unless the mighty Holy Spirit humbles us to accept the authority of Jesus implied in that confession (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3). John's great assumption lying just beneath verses 2 and 6 is that hearing the gospel with openness and confessing Christ with loyalty is the work and the gift of the Holy Spirit. If this listening and this confessing could be explained in any other way, they would not be a sure sign of the Spirit's presence and power. But they are a sign of his power. For John knows that no one hears and no one confesses apart from the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.

The Great Assumption Made Explicit

There is one place in our text where this great assumption comes up from beneath the surface. In verse 4 it shows itself in clear view for all to see. And the reason John lets it be seen so clearly is to encourage and humble his little children. "Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

The Christians to which John is writing have conquered the false prophets. They have conquered them in that they have not been swept away by their deception (2:14, 26). The prophets have attacked with their defective views of Christ, and the Christians have stood firm. They have not yielded. They have conquered. They have remained orthodox and loyal to the Son of God incarnate in the man Jesus Christ.

How? How did they conquer? The foe was not merely human. Satan himself, the god of this age, empowered the false prophets, and he is extraordinarily subtle and deceptive. How did they conquer? Not by their native intelligence, not by their own strength. They are but "little children." John says they conquered because he who was in them is greater than he was in the world. In other words they conquered by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So the great assumption of verses 2 and 6 is made explicit: The Holy Spirit is more powerful than the satanic forces of deception and blindness. And every believer owes his orthodoxy to the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. If we stand with Christ, listening receptively and confessing loyally, it is because the Holy Spirit is greater than all other forces in the world and has made us to conquer the blindness and hardness of our own hearts and the deception of the enemy.

Lessons for Believers and Unbelievers

There is a lesson in this for believers and unbelievers.

For Believers

For believers the lesson is twofold.

Do not take credit for your listening ear or your confessing heart or your correct view of Christ. Give credit to the Spirit who is in you, and give God the glory.

When you are threatened by any deception of the evil one—any temptation, or discouragement, or anxiety, or cowardice—remind yourself that "he who is in you is greater than he that is in the world." Almighty God abides within you. Trust him. For this is the victory that overcomes the world, your faith (5:4) in the sovereign indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

For Unbelievers

For unbelievers the lesson is this: Seek the power of the Holy Spirit. Admit that without him your ears will stay shut, your heart will remain hard, and you will not confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh. Pray that the Spirit of God would open your eyes. Plead with him to take away the hardness of your heart. And ask him to put within you the joyful confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God—your Savior and your Lord. AMEN.

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By John Piper