The Principal Thing – Part 3 – Wisdom: Provenance and Purpose

We are considering the teaching of Scripture which insists that, of all the things we might earnestly seek in life—success, happiness, power, things—the main thing to seek is wisdom. Wisdom can be succinctly defined as God’s ways in all things. The thrust of the Wisdom Literature of Scripture—the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon—is to show us what wisdom looks like, stir us up to seek it, warn against neglecting it, and bring us to the Fount from which we may drink of the Wisdom of God.

Wisdom provides a template for anything and everything we might do. And, as we have seen, when we heed the call of Wisdom, personified in our Lord Jesus Christ, the goodness and blessings and promises and glory of God attend to every aspect of our lives.

But we have just made a claim about Wisdom that we should justify before going on. We said that Wisdom is “personified in our Lord Jesus Christ”. That is, Jesus embodies the Wisdom of God, so when He calls us to follow Him, He is leading us in the path of Wisdom, and Wisdom is the principal thing. Let’s return to Proverbs 8 to see how Solomon conceived of the Wisdom of God. We’ll see that Wisdom not only points to, but actually resides in, our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, as Paul put it, Jesus is the very Treasury of knowledge and wisdom.

Consider Solomon’s teaching about the provenance of Wisdom:

“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.” Proverbs 8.22-24

Wisdom is the speaker here. Wisdom claims to have been “possessed” by God from everlasting. Wisdom was with God in “the beginning”, before anything was created. And yet, this eternal Wisdom, “brought forth” eternally from God, was possessed and begotten of Him from before everlasting past.

Wisdom was with God as He called the creation into being (vv. 25-29), and Wisdom “was beside Him as a master craftsman”, sharing in the work of bringing all things into being. Or, as the apostle John put it, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (Jn. 1.2, 3).

This description of Wisdom’s provenance equals, in Old Testament language, John’s description of Jesus, the Word of God. The two are the same. Jesus is the very Wisdom of God.

And what does Wisdom promise? Again, Solomon:

“Now therefore, listen to me, my children,
For blessed are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
And do not disdain it.
Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the LORD;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death.” Proverbs 8.32-36

The promise of Wisdom is that all who listen to Him and follow in His ways will know fullness of life and the favor of God, while those who ignore or reject Wisdom’s call wrong their own souls and love death. Again, we hear Jesus neatly summarizing such teaching as this when He says, in John 14.6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Jesus readily embraced the idea of His being the Wisdom of God, and the apostles agreed. To seek Wisdom is to seek Jesus. To get Jesus is to get Wisdom, at least the potential of it for every area of our lives.

The wisdom books of the Old Testament, with all their rich and varied instruction about how to be wise, and all their close observations concerning Wisdom from the world around us, encourage us to see all these examples and metaphors as pointing to Jesus. And thus Jesus is infinitely rich in the Wisdom of God. The more we know Jesus, the more Jesus increases in us and we are being shaped into His likeness, and the more the power of Jesus comes to expression in us, the more Wisdom, the principal thing, will be just who we are.

Get Jesus and you get Wisdom. And even more important than that, live in the Wisdom of Jesus and you contribute to a powerful and effective apologetic for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as we shall see in our next installment.

For now, ask yourself: How eager am I to see Jesus? How earnest, consistent, and diligent am I in seeking to know, love, and serve Jesus? We cannot go around Jesus to get Wisdom. Wisdom is not the thing behind Jesus, it is Jesus. And Wisdom is the principal thing. What will you do today to focus and accelerate the focus of your pursuit of Wisdom?