In this episode, Johnathan Arnold continues discussing the relationship between wisdom and holiness with Dr. Philip Brown.
Highlights from Philip Brown:
To fear Yahweh is to do two things: to obey him by turning aside from evil and doing what is right, and secondly, to worship him.
The word righteous in the Book of Proverbs refers to someone who is both in right relationship with God and living in accordance with his will.
There is no part of life—from human sexuality, to finances, to interpersonal relationships, to the use of the tongue, to the interior life, to government—that Yahweh's way of thinking does not touch, and so Proverbs branches out like the many-branching roots of a tree into "every good path" to give God's people direction in how to live life God's way.
Any time that Scripture talks about how we ought to live so that we are like God, it's talking about holiness. There is no part of Scripture that addresses human moral obligation that is not talking about holiness, though it often doesn't use that language. So the book of Proverbs is actually a manual on holiness on the mind, first, and then holiness of life, second.
It is the interior life—the life of the mind—that is the ultimate location of battle.
Many Old Testament theologians seem to think that a Christian reading of the Old Testament is an imposition of an alien thought framework. And sadly, that has been pretty characteristic of evangelical Old Testament scholarship. I believe that such an approach is flatly wrong. It's missing the way in which the New Testament, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, appropriates and reads the Old Testament.
When we appropriate Proverbs as believers, we are following the direction of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament by reading Proverbs as directly addressing God's children at any age or stage of life.
The contrast between the righteous and the wicked is not a contrast between the especially good and the especially bad, but between those who are in harmony with God's word and those who are not in harmony with God's word.
Within the broad category of wicked, there is a gradation from the naive to the fool to the scoffer or scorner.
The essential feature of the simple is that they are not able to perceive what lies below the surface of things. They are not able to penetrate beyond appearances. They tend, therefore, to operate on the moment and how they feel.
The heart of folly is self-centeredness. Folly is bound up in the heart of every child, and I would identify that folly as what is essentially wrong with us. We're own-way people.
Many people who have learned to live by rules—they can check all the boxes—but they have not learned to think like Yahweh, to think like Jesus.
We tend to have clouded perception when we suffer. Suffering tends to turn us in-ward rather than God-ward, because of our fallenness.
Everything that I have comes from God, is on loan from God, and God can take away and not be doing me wrong in any sense.
The questions you ask yourself determine your focus. If we're asking, "Why this? Why me? Why now?" we're asking the wrong questions. But if we're asking, "God, what good are you planning? God, how can I reflect who you are in the midst of my suffering?" then we are focusing where God wants us to.
You're not supposed to be looking for permanence in this life as a means fo judging meaning and significance, because there's nothing permanent in this life. Even when we work for God in the kingdom, we're not looking at permanence as the ground of our significance. This is a profoundly counter-cultural way of thinking.
You will not find meaning or satisfaction in any of life's components, but only in life's Creator.
A person cannot be wise without being rightly related to Yahweh. To fear Yahweh is to do two things. To obey Him by turning aside from evil and doing what is right. Secondly, to worship Him.
SPEAKER_01
You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, a discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_02
Stepping back to the books that are often identified as wisdom literature, um, when when we do uh come to these books in our Bible reading plan, there is something about them that's unique. Um there's there's a more explicit emphasis on wisdom. The word wisdom shows up so many more times in uh in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and so many biblical theologies uh will treat these books together. Sometimes the Psalms are not included, sometimes Song of Solomon is not included there, depending on where you kind of draw those boundaries. Um if you if you were to do that, and maybe you wouldn't, but if you were somebody who who did that, what would be the maybe the the other side of the equation? What is it about these books that that leads them to be treated in this way so often?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think they they're they're treated as a separate category because they address a different set of questions than we find addressed in either Torah or the writings or the prophets, and that is they address large scale human questions, you know, Job, the problem of suffering, Proverbs, how how does one live a wise life and be a wise person? Ecclesiastes, where is meaning and satisfaction to be found under the sun? Uh and these questions are clearly not uh parochial, that is, they're they're not narrowly tailored to a limited group of people, they are relevant to every time and every culture. And perhaps uh it's just a way of saying on the surface of these books they are universal in nature, whereas other books are less obviously universal, and there you have to do more work to see how they are.
SPEAKER_02
That's a helpful way to think about them. Let's just go through these books uh because they're so familiar when when discussing wisdom, and uh just look at look at three Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. You spent, uh, at least from what I've been able to discern, you spent the most time thinking about Proverbs. Uh, how can the wisdom of Proverbs help us to be holy? Um, and uh as as I read Proverbs, I know I read uh so often hear the word righteous. So maybe it would even help to clarify the relationship between holiness and righteousness, uh, and then why wisdom is necessary to live a righteous life.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so um Solomon is explicitly grounds wisdom in the fear of Yahweh. So a person cannot be wise without being rightly related to Yahweh. And to fear Yahweh is to do two things to obey him by turning aside from evil and doing what is right, and secondly, to worship him. The book of Psalms focuses on the worship, reverence, awe dimension of the fear of the Lord. The book of Proverbs focuses on the turning aside from evil and doing what is right side of the fear of the Lord. Um wisdom in Proverbs, in Proverbs chapter two, verses five and six, explicitly is stated as that it comes from Yahweh. Yahweh gives it. So not only do we have to be rightly related to God in this relationship, we have to seek Yahweh to learn how to think like Yahweh. And specifically, the first nine chapters of uh of Proverbs focus on learning to think like Yahweh about two sets of dangerous people, uh, evil men and evil women. And those nine chapters shuttle back and forth between those two groups, primarily in guiding the immature, regardless of their age, into rightly thinking about, relating to, and avoiding evil men and women. Then starting in chapters ten through twelve, the book of Proverbs shifts into focusing on righteousness, justice, and equity. And I understand the word righteous in the book of Proverbs to refer to someone who is both in right relationship with God and living in accordance with his will. So to put this in New Testament, or to let me put it in Genesis 15 verse 6 terms, that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. The righteous person in Proverbs is a person who has first believed Yahweh, so he trusts in Yahweh with all of his heart, and has thereby been justified, and then he lives out that faith justification in faith's obedience by conforming to living his life according to Yahweh's directions. Chapters 10 to 12 contrasts the righteous and the wicked, that's the highest and heaviest concentration of those two terms in the book of Proverbs. And then starting in chapters 13 through the end of the book, uh you get a profusion of individual or couplets or three or four verse Proverbs that address what Proverbs chapter 2, verse 9 describes as every good way. Wisdom, there's no part of life from human sexuality to finances to interpersonal relationships to the use of the tongue to the interior life to government. There's no part of life that Yahweh's way of thinking does not touch. And so Proverbs then branches out like the uh the many branching roots of a tree into all of the every good path to give God's people direction in how to live life God's way.
SPEAKER_02
You mentioned that there's no part of human life that that God's wisdom doesn't touch. And uh you mentioned human sexuality. That's such a major theme, especially in the opening chapters there. How do we avoid evil um men and evil women? And uh, you know, we know we're familiar with the verse that this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. So we know that that is a command uh to be holy in human sexuality. But the question is, how do we do that? Because that's not that's not easy. We live in a very sexually charged world. It's it's challenging to be a man in the 21st century. You can't go to the grocery store without uh facing, you know, temptations and sights that you have to turn your eyes away from. And so uh, you know, what I hear you saying is that Proverbs is giving us um wisdom to be able to navigate the challenges that come with actually living out God's way of behaving in the world, God's way that uh for us to act in our actions, our attitudes, and and giving us the wisdom to actually live out the things that we know we ought to be doing as God's holy people.
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I am saying that, you know, I I would want our listeners to hear me say that anytime scripture talks about how we ought to live so that we are like God, it's talking about holiness. There actually there is actually no part of scripture that addresses uh human moral obligation that is not talking about holiness, though it often doesn't use that language. Um the book of Proverbs is actually a manual on holiness of the mind first and holiness of life second. So, you know, to pick up on the illustration you just used, Proverbs recognizes the danger of red light districts, but it says to the young man, do not desire the adulteress's beauty in your heart. So, Matthew 5 28, when Jesus says, He who looks upon a woman for the purpose of lusting has committed adultery, Jesus is not actually extending the law or deepening the law. He is merely reflecting in his own teaching what Proverbs 625 had already said, that it's the interior life, the life of the mind, that is the ultimate location of battle, and that teaching our eight, nine, and ten-year-old children not to take into one's heart pictures of beauty, and Proverbs is uh unabashedly affirming that the adulteress is beautiful, but that we are not to desire that beauty in our heart. Therefore, Proverbs 4 24, you must guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the the outgoings of life. And I, you know, as a as a teenager whose mother sent me on the path of reading a chapter of Proverbs every day, I remember uh riding my bicycle to school, thinking to myself, you know, the battle for the soul is actually in the mind. And it's not about what I'm looking at on billboards or magazines externally, it's first of all what I'm doing with my mind on the inside. And that was really getting at the heart of wisdom, which is thinking like Yahweh does.
SPEAKER_02
And including the way that Yahweh sees the world. You know, we love God. We we talk about holiness as loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, strength, body. Um, and so loving God with our mind, being holy in our mind, it it requires great wisdom. Um so in Proverbs, one of the things that uh I find interesting is that the unrighteous are characterized as often as simple or foolish, and uh we often think of the unrighteous as maybe wicked or perverse or evil, but simple, um, simplicity doesn't always come to mind. And then that the righteous are characterized by wisdom, discernment, um, understanding. Um, how is wisdom fundamental? And we've touched on this some, but how is wisdom really fundamental to um the life of a believer and and in that way sets him apart from the world and sets him apart to God?
SPEAKER_00
Let me um put on my biblical theologian hat here just for a minute before I answer that question, and note that uh many Old Testament theologians seem to think that a Christian reading of the Old Testament is an imposition upon the Old Testament of an alien thought framework. And uh sadly, that has actually been pretty characteristic of evangelical Old Testament scholarship. I I believe that such an approach is uh just flatly wrong, it it's missing the way in which the New Testament, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, appropriates and reads the Old Testament. And since the Holy Spirit is the author of all scripture, when the Holy Spirit says in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5, you have forgotten the admonition which speaks to you, a first century audience, as to sons, and then quotes Proverbs chapter 3, verses eleven and twelve. Do not despise the chastening of the Lord, neither weary when you are reproved of him, for whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. The Hebrew writer is reflecting the Holy Spirit's perspective that Proverbs speaks to all of God's children at all times, teaching them how to think about God's reproof. And then the Hebrew writer goes on to explicate that in terms of holiness, right? God reproves us for our good, that we may be partakers of his holiness, right? That is to share in the likeness of his character. So when we talk about appropriating Proverbs as believers, I want uh I want it to be clear that we are actually following the direction of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament by reading Proverbs as directly addressing God's children at any age or stage of life, whether it's old covenant, new covenant, and for that matter, uh new the uh the millennium. Uh I fully expect his wisdom to be uh guidance in that stage as well. Now, let me come back to your question, and that is uh how how does this relate to us growing in holiness as believers? How does this uh is am I rephrasing your question properly?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, in what way is it is it so fundamental to our identity so that uh being wise people actually sets us apart as as the righteous? I just find it interesting how in Proverbs the unrighteous are characterized as the simple, um, the righteous are characterized by their discernment, their understanding. And those are characterizations that we often don't use to describe righteous and unrighteous people. And sadly, we know a lot of God-fearing people that they just really don't seem that wise. And so it makes you wonder how what does this say about our fundamental identity as the church?
SPEAKER_00
So um Proverbs has a gradation of wickedness. Let me start with the word wickedness. Wickedness in the Old Testament is an antonym or the an opposite term to the word righteousness. Righteousness is measuring up to the standard of God's word. Wickedness is failing to measure up to the standard of God's word. So in Hebrew, uh, anybody who's not measuring up to the standard of God's word is wicked to that degree, whereas in English, the word wicked uh conveys some kind of a heightened or specially bad sense. So uh, you know, this is one of the things that English struggles to convey when we're translating Proverbs, is that the contrast between the right, righteous and the wicked is not a contrast between the especially good and the especially bad, but between those who are in harmony with God's word and those who are not in harmony with God's word. And then within that broad category of wicked, there is uh this uh gradation from the naive to the fool to the scoffer or scorner. The word simple or simpleton is a synonym for naive. And the the essential feature of the simple is that they do not uh they are not able to perceive what lies below the surface of things. They're not able to penetrate beyond appearances. And uh they tend therefore to operate primarily on on the moment and on how they feel. The fool, so you know, this is clear in in uh Proverbs 7, where the simpleton walks down the street that Solomon knows is the street that leads to the harlot's house, to the prostitute's uh to the adulteress's house, and yet when she comes up and grabs him by the coat and says, Oh, I've been looking for you, and uh you've what I've always wanted, and come let us take our fill of love for the night, he can't see past uh the upfront glitz to the dart, the poison that is about to pierce him and ultimately destroy him. The fool is in a little worse state than the naive. They are there he the fool is the one who, although there's hope for him, there's not much hope for him, because he's wise in his own eyes, and he uh rejects God's way of doing things. And uh the heart of folly is self-centeredness. Uh, there's there's folly bound up in the heart of every child, and uh I would identify that folly as what's essentially wrong with us, that is, we're own way, people, and that can be driven from us through painful discipline. At the far end of the spectrum is the scorner or the scoffer who uh for whom Proverbs offers no hope, but instead mocks at sin, who um works to seduce righteous people into walking off of the path of righteousness. So within that, you know, I I posted to Facebook uh maybe a year or two ago, have you seen a fool recently? And and that was my byline. And then I went through Proverbs and describing uh all of the ways in which Proverbs describes the fool. And I was interested that one of the first comments I got on social media was, Oh, you shouldn't talk like that. Jesus said, Whoever calls somebody a fool is in danger of hellfire. And I thought the comment itself was evidence of great naivete, a failure to penetrate past the immediate appearance to see that Jesus himself uses the word fool in relation to his disciples, oh fools and slow of heart, to believe all the prophets have said. Right. Uh, and that Proverbs is the inspired word of God calling people fool. So uh what what we're getting at here is that I think many people who have learned to live by rules, uh to they they they can check all the boxes, but they have not learned to think like Yahweh, to think like Jesus. And and that's why Proverbs 12.2 is such an important follow-up to Proverbs 12.1. You know, we we hear this preaching of full consecration in 12.1 all the time, but Paul immediately says what needs to happen now that you've presented yourself as a living sacrifice is your mind needs to be transformed. Right. And that's that is the life of progressive sanctification, progressive growth in thinking like and therefore living like Jesus. And Proverbs is essential to that.
SPEAKER_02
Right, because from years of living in the world, our thought patterns, our ways of seeing the world, they're not God centered. And so our whole person can come into single minded devotion and consecration to God, but then there's this whole life to live to life of wisdom, correcting all the folly and beginning to see things in God's way. Living out in our life, our attitudes, uh a way that is consistent with what God has done in Christ and the glory that's been revealed to us. Right. For sake of time, let's just spend a few minutes on Job and Ecclesiastes. Um Job is a book that I just recently uh read through again, and um and we might we might say that um Job gives us wisdom for suffering. Uh how does Job uh give us wisdom to help us to be holy?
SPEAKER_00
Well, um so I again wisdom is uh skill in perceiving and navigating life in harmony with Yahweh's design. And uh we often have a clouded perception when we suffer. Uh suffering tends to turn us inward rather than Godward because of our fallenness. And Job uh teaches us at least three key principles of wisdom that uh if we embrace will shape our minds in a holy fashion. The first is the principle of ownership, uh, and that is Job says uh the Lord gave, the Lord take away, took away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Everything that I have comes from God, is on loan from God, and God can take away and not be doing me wrong in any sense. The second is the principle of rights. Job says, Shall we receive good from the hand of God and not calamity? We as uh as blood-bought sons of God who are nonetheless not fully like Christ, have no right, we don't have any merit that we've earned of a good cush life from God's hand. And so many people, I've heard this, well, I've served God for 40 years, why is he letting this happen to me? As though somehow serving him merits a pain-free, calamity-free life. That's not true. Uh, if we got what we really merited, we would all be in hell. The fact that we've been redeemed from hell and have only 70 to 80 years of relatively limited suffering and an eternity of unending pleasure before us shows how uh misguided that kind of thinking is. And God's response to Job is to ask four chapters worth of questions that are unanswerable by Job and his current state to highlight the principle that the questions you ask yourself determine your focus. And if we're asking why this, why me, and why now, we're asking the wrong questions. But if we're asking God, what good are you planning? God, how can I reflect who you are in the midst of my suffering, then we are focusing where God wants us to. So, three principles the principle of ownership, all we have comes from God, the principle of rights, I don't deserve anything, and all that I have is more than I deserve. The principle of focus, the questions that we ask ourselves ultimately determine our focus, whether it's God focused or self-focused. Job is a powerful book whose center, chapter 28, is about the acquisition of wisdom, seeing life from God's perspective.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and Job goes on this journey of discovering the depths, you know, more of the depths of the wisdom. I I love uh where Job says that these are but the outskirts of his ways, you know, he looks at God's wisdom and creation. Um, these are just the outskirts of what God has done, and how small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand? And so it comes back to this perspective issue. Uh, you know, we we assume that we we understand a situation, uh, but wisdom humbles us in the light of God's infinite wisdom. We're humbled, and then we're able to trust him and uh live out uh a life of trust that pleases him, and that's a holy life. That's a life that's that's devoted to God.
SPEAKER_00
And that's why wisdom is not wise in its own eyes.
SPEAKER_02
Right.
SPEAKER_00
A wise man recognizes that uh he he will always be limited no matter how wise he is, therefore, full hearted trust in Yahweh is uh the only appropriate response in any situation.
SPEAKER_02
Aaron Powell Yeah, I think at Thomas Aquinas it's something like the one who got knows God best is the one who first knows that he knows so little or something to that extent. You know, it the fear of the Lord begins with this just like humble admission that God is incomprehensible and his ways are unsearchable. And uh, and that's really where it all begins. Let's just say a few words about Ecclesiastes. Um on a personal note, Ecclesiastes was actually really formative in my coming to the knowledge of God and Christ. I was a very miserable uh teenager. I was kind of uh at a loss with the world, feeling like everything was just meaningless and uh purposeless and vain. And then I read Ecclesiastes and it told me, yes, it is. That's really that's exactly how the world is, uh, apart from God. And I found that uh it's really all comes down to fearing God, keeping his commandments. And that's when we find our meaning and our satisfaction in him. So, in some ways, my whole journey in holiness began with Ecclesiastes, but uh, how what do you see in Ecclesiastes and as far as the wisdom that enables us and helps us to live holy lives?
SPEAKER_00
So uh I I identify Ecclesiastes as one of my favorite books in the Old Testament for the same reasons that uh brought you to faith. Ecclesiastes greatly strengthened my faith. Um I'm indebted to Jim Berg uh and his understanding of the book of Ecclesiastes. I think he hit the nail right on the head when he said that uh the theme of Ecclesiastes is meaning and satisfaction is not found in any of life's components, but only in life's creator. The book of Ecclesiastes was uh written by Solomon after he'd had it all and tried it all and despaired of it all, and came back and recognized that life under the sun, within the bounds of what is observable and knowable and certain with limited human understanding, it is um i it's vain. It's so the breath of breaths is the Hebrew metaphor for ultimately uh and quintessentially futile. Um when you add up all of the pluses and minuses of life the sum is zero, nothing's left when you're looking under the sun. But there are shafts of sunlight from beyond the sun, so to speak, beyond the frame that Solomon builds for this book, that tell us, like the verse that you quoted from the end, and that the whole duty of man is to fear and uh obey God. But other verses like uh rejoice, young man in your youth, let your heart cheer you, and know that for all these things you will be brought into judgment. You know, a very sobering uh juxtaposition between live it up and uh look at the judgment. Or verses that the there's a theme that runs through the book of Ecclesiastes, there's nothing better for a man than he should eat and drink and enjoy his labor, for this is the gift of God. Well, Jesus reflects that when he says, uh, take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Focus on enjoying what God has given you here today, and recognize that that's a gift of God. Don't look for meaning, do not look for satisfaction in this life. Uh you know, the most poignant illustration that I've encountered of this was I was in my third-year Hebrew class studying Ecclesiastes, writing Sunday school lessons on it, when I interviewed a pastor who was in his 60s for a paper I was writing for church history. Uh, this pastor had been part of uh the founding of Bible Methodism, and uh he made the comment that uh three of the churches that he'd pastored were no longer in existence, and he felt like his white life had been such a waste. And I uh I was too young to feel like it was appropriate for me to respond to him. But Ecclesiastes was shouting in the back of my mind, saying, You're not supposed to be looking at for permanence in this life as a means of judging meaning and significance because there's nothing permanent in this life. Right. So even when we work for God in the kingdom, we're not looking at permanence as the ground of our significance. We must always ground this in Yahweh. Now, this is a profoundly counter-cultural way of thinking, not just American culture or Western culture, but it even runs counter-culture to much of the way the church thinks. People wanting schools named after them or buildings named after them, or you know, various things. It's just like the the holy God thinks this way. Chasing after those things is like chasing after wind. You will not find meaning and satisfaction in any of life's components, but only in life's creator.
SPEAKER_02
Right. So many times um I have set out to do something and I've failed. And I've told my wife, you know, when that happens, I think of Ecclesiastes and I remember that I'm going to die and be buried like the animal, as Ecclesiastes says, and be remembered no more. Nothing that I do is gonna be remembered. Um, you know, the next generation is gonna forget me. I so few people even know who I am. And so for me to live and to my satisfaction to reside in that, that's a that's gonna be a very unhappy, unsatisfying way to live. But there's something so liberating about this just very honest way, a very realistic way of seeing things that just recognizes that the only things that count are the things that we do in service of the Lord and that the work that we do from a pure heart for him out of worship, those, those works will not be forgotten. You know, they're gonna they're gonna stand the testing of fire in the end. Uh, they're not gonna be burnt up like the stubble. Those are the works that matter. And it Ecclesiastes, some people read it as this book, and it's just like so dismal and discouraging and cynical, but I actually see it as so liberating. And it's it's one of the reasons why I think holiness and happiness, you know, though they go together so closely. It when you give up everything, you know, a preacher might say something like, you know, you need to give that car to God, you need to give your property to God, you need to give your relationships to God. Well, well, giving that up doesn't necessarily mean I literally physically get rid of it. Maybe I need to, but it it means that I dethrone that as a center of meaning and satisfaction in my life. And once I've done that, I actually can enjoy it as I ought. So we give it to God so that we can enjoy it in its right relation to Him. So Solomon isn't saying that all of these things are bad. And you picked up on that thread that I think is so overlooked that what Solomon keeps coming back to is because of this, you should enjoy the good gifts that God has has given you and enjoy them in their right relationship to God and be happy in him. And so it's a very liberating, satisfying um, you know, way to live. And it just brings us back to the real beauty of a holy life.
SPEAKER_01
Amen. Amen. Thank you for listening to the Holy Joys Podcast. Email your questions about theology and ministry practice to podcast at holyjoys.org. Our labors for a holy, happy church are supported by generous listeners like you. Please pray about partnering with us at holyjoys.org forward slash donate.
