Proverbs 26: 4-5
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes.”
On the surface of things, this looks like a contradiction. It’s not. The idea – and this gets at the heart of everything we’re doing as Christians – is to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, to regard Him as preeminent in all our thoughts. He is either the Lord and foundation of all truth or He is not. There’s no middle ground and we should know this above all else.
We aren’t to answer a fool according to his folly. This means that we aren’t to accept people’s premises, which are, naturally, unbiblical. The natural man is at enmity with God (Romans 8:7) and, indeed, hates Him. People will play at this thing in life. They’ll profess to be “open-minded” and reasonable, but this is all a façade. The natural man is hostile to God’s authority and wants it, that is, the power to determine right and wrong, for himself. This is the default setting of the sinful mind and is the root of sin; it’s the essence of pride. This is what the Bible calls folly. It’s the determination that thinking about life can be done rightly and naturally without reference to God and His revelation. This, be sure, is the danger. If we neglect this truth and consider the world as the fool does, without God as the final reference point, then we’ll be like him. What the Scripture means is that we aren’t to accept the premise of the ungodly, which is the myth of neutrality. Man isn’t neutral. He’s a pretender to the throne of God.
To not walk in the counsel of the ungodly means to challenge in one’s mind the premise behind every utterance of the world. There isn’t a single fact in the universe over which the Lord Jesus Christ isn’t sovereign, and no Christian should be confused on this point. The danger is that a saved person blunders off into the world, unaware of their intellectual conformity to the principle of neutrality. Indeed, to attempt to be neutral toward ideas is spiritual adultery as it ascribes equal ultimacy to the world and the Lord.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.”
By speculations the Bible means thoughts, ideas, reasonings, philosophies, and false religions are the ideological fortresses that men barricade themselves against God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. These barricades are worthless shambles, easily torn down by the simplest of questions should the Christian dare ask them. There is no wisdom from the world that one should fear for the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they’re useless (1 Corinthians 3:20).
We don’t avoid being foolish with our speech by following some external code, or by avoiding certain topics that might be controversial. No, we escape folly by replacing the speculations and myth of neutrality with a mind that’s set on the Spirit. In so doing we become free of the folly of using our own mind (or the mind of another fallen human being) as the final arbiter of truth. In doing this, we become a servant of all to set them free from the bondage to the lie at the heart of unbelief. What’s that exactly? It’s the insistence on judging the world by our own capricious and senseless standards. “Did God really say?” That’s the battle cry of unbelief. To not answer a fool in his folly is to challenge his arbitrary truth claims, which are based on human reasonings alone rather than God’s word (“…so that you will have an answer for those who take pride in appearance and not in heart. 2 Corinthians 5:12)
This isn’t, however, a permission to be argumentative or abusive. On the contrary, the Christian speaks truth with the love that’s aimed at showing others the glory of Christ. Our speech is seasoned with salt because (2 Corinthians 5:14-15: for the love of Christ controls us…and He died so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf) the goal of that speech is the glory of God, not ourselves.
Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh. Being ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), as though God were literally making an appeal through us, we beg sinners on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God.
Ah, the humility of that word – beg! The Christian, you and me, is given the royal and unspeakable privilege of being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ as ambassadors for Him. We make His appeal to sinners. When we remember this divine privilege, this heavenly seal upon us, and the love that constrains it, guides it, directs it, we will avoid useless controversy. Only then can we, in the Lord, “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” Romans 12:14.
When we remember always the glories of Christ and the high privilege we’ve attained through His grace, not that any of us should boast, we cease to be offense-givers because no one can offend us. What can a man say to me that I have not said or thought in my heart to the Lord?
2 Corinthians 6:3-7 – “giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left.
So, now, let’s get back to the fool. We know that in Genesis 3:1 the serpent questions God’s word. In doing so, he insinuates to Eve that God isn’t truly good since he prohibits part of the garden’s fruit. He’s asking, “Is God good? Is He kind?”
He says take and eat – establish your intellectual/moral independence and judge good and evil on your own terms. In this way, the tempter reasons, you’ll be like God. And then in verse 6 we see that the tree was, indeed, good for food, and a delight to behold, and that it was desirable to make one wise. Eve was seduced into thinking the serpent was right. Adam ate in open rebellion.
But then God comes and asks, “where are you?” He knows their geographical location, of course. He’s asking so that they might consider the shame, guilt, remorse, fear and confusion they now experienced. Isn’t that marvelous? Everything that’s wrong with us is explained right here.
Anyway, the God on the left side of the Bible isn’t a big meanie, is He? He comes to them like this, with compassion, and clothes them and promises Christ.
Okay. Okay. So, we see now that the fool in Proverbs is the sinner. And the sinner is a sinner because he’s basing all his predication on the lie of human autonomy. The fool speaks of good and evil without reference to the Word of God and, therefore, we find ourselves in a clash of competing authorities. We need to see that man’s insistence upon the myth of neutrality is the central lie that’s trapped us in death, judgment and sin.
This is why we must never answer a fool according to his folly. We must make him “put his flag down” and identify his authority. He generally won’t, because he can’t because he dares not to do it. At the bottom of it all is human autonomy and he doesn’t want to say, “I’m God…I’m the final authority of good and evil.”
This is why man claims to be wise but is a fool. And this is why “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.”
This is how Christ makes us a new man – He reverses the exchange of the truth for a lie and the Christian now sees reality, and issues of good and evil, from God’s authoritative perspective rather than his own. This is the renewed mind of the born-again believer.
The tactic is to listen to the fool, then rephrase what he’s said to him. Answer him “as his folly deserves” makes him stand on his flawed premise. Smoke out his false neutrality by gently but confidently challenging his claims of moral knowledge. For instance, watch how often so-called agnostics or atheists make staggering moral claims. They may say, “everyone knows such and such is wrong” or “candidate X is full of greed or corruption.” Since this is God’s world and His law is written on everyone’s heart, the sin-damaged conscience is always accusing others of immorality and error while exempting itself (Romans 2:14-15). The trick to calling this out is first to recognize it. It’s an astonishing fact of life! The vast majority of men and women proclaim that there’s no such thing as absolute moral truth/authority while constantly claiming it for themselves. Then, ask them the simple question: “by what standard do you judge?” This is answering the fool according to his folly because it’s the Godly way of confronting his great and resounding moral pride. This simple tactic is an epic shockwave to the sinner’s philosophical moralizing. In this way you can bring him to the knowledge of Christ because it will confirm that he’s aware of the reality of moral truth and is claiming it for himself.
In all, never forget that all Christian interactions with non-believers are a clash of ultimate authorities. Understanding this keeps us from fruitless arguments over minor issues and brings us to the centrality of the gospel. It keeps us from accepting the premise of the fool, which is the folly of neutrality, while also answering him with the truth of God.
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