The Virtues of Wisdom

Proverbs 1:8-9

“Hear my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.”

In chapter 1-9 of Proverbs we find the Lord “selling” us on the virtues of Godly thinking. The Lord doesn’t have to do this, of course. He’s God, after all, and a simple command is sufficient. He makes a demand, and we need to obey; He has that authority and we have that duty. But though this is indubitably true, we find that He condescends to us in humility and softness. We do well to contemplate the nature of this. The sovereign Lord of the universe calls us to listen to reason, exhorting, beseeching and warning at every turn. All of nature cries out (Psalm 19) and His voice goes out through all the earth in a multitude of ways – extolling the virtues of repentance and Godly living while also warning against folly.

The biblical model is on full display. The Lord comes to us and tells us to listen to instruction not merely to avoid trouble and judgment, which are certainly true, but so that our lives will be things of resplendent beauty, not tattered and torn upon the jagged edges of sin’s consequences. Indeed, the Lord says that wisdom will be like fine jewelry upon you, transforming you, your thoughts and actions, and your very heart and soul, into something inestimable. This is the way of our Heavenly Father. Yes, we are warned against the ruins of sin and told to stay off that dead-end path. But we are not merely warned against the wrong way – we’re shown and sold the right way.

The biblical model of parenting and leadership is clear. To speak only of God’s judgment and severity of sin – which we must – absent of God’s beauty is a gross error. Sin is, after all, a perversion of that which is good. Sin is moral insanity. It’s the act of choosing good apart from the will and counsel of God, which is to say that God is not good. In this way, sin is a horrific insult against the character of God. Since He is the source of all good things, of beauty, excellence, joy and love – the attempt to achieve these things opposite His will is to call Him evil. the Bible’s approach in these verses is, therefore, the correct manner of living. The fear of the Lord – that is, knowing that He is God, truly awesome and wonderful and full of every beauty imaginable – is the only correct foundation of life. And when we build our lives on this foundation, therefore, we gain the exquisite pleasures only God’s blessing can bring.

That is what this verse and, in fact, the opening nine chapters of Proverbs are about. The are God’s wondrous instructions about how to build not just a good life, but a gorgeous one. And how does He do this? Certainly not by our character, infected as it is with sin, but by the supernatural love and grace poured into our hearts through Jesus Christ. Beautiful living isn’t done by dead legalism, but by holy living inspired by gratitude to God for salvation through faith alone. God’s splendor fills our heart and His wisdom renews our mind so that His instruction paves the way to holy living. And a life built upon His word is, be sure, the only path to love and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs as a sales book of wisdom will continue this pattern of extolling the virtues of Godliness over against the heartbreak and calamity that is folly. And folly is building one’s life not on God’s instruction but on anything else.