“Some people work wisely with knowledge and skill, then must leave the fruit of their efforts to someone who hasn’t worked for it. This, too, is meaningless, a great tragedy. So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief; even at night their minds cannot rest. It is all meaningless.”
Ecclesiastes 2:21-23 NLT
Pursue the Lord and be blessed. Pursue our own happiness, even while naming the name of Christ, and be miserable. The choice is clear; the path is narrow or wide. Narrow is that road upon which a man travels in which God’s glory is his highest good; wide and well marked with humanistic signs, all lit and aglow, is that highway to literal misery and hell. This is our Father’s world and the easiest way to make a mess of things is to live as though it’s not. And the easiest way to do that is to work as though the goal is our personal happiness rather than holiness.
The Bible is about God. That’s something that seems plain enough – at least, it should be. But we’re often tempted to think it’s not. We read something like “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path…” (Psalm 119:105) and see metaphor, not concrete advice. “Yes…sure…but what about this situation over here?” That, unfortunately, and sometimes tragically, is the default condition of the Christian mind. In short, it’s the product of the mind that’s set on the flesh – conformed to this world. For to have the mind of the Spirit of life is to say with the Psalmist, “Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold.” (Psalm 119:127-28). The Christian mind, as we’ve discussed, is to be renewed daily through the study of, meditation upon, and application of God’s wonderful word.
This whole business of being confused and not sure what to do about daily affairs is addressed in Scripture. The thing is, though, with the wrong attitude, the wisdom is missed because what it’s saying isn’t being received. And it isn’t received because there are too many of us that, though we name the name of Christ, don’t understand His word, nor believe Him when He tells us what the problem truly is and, importantly, how to fix it. You see, the answers we think we seek are right there in Scripture and not shrouded in mystery, vagueness, or dense theology. Sure…there are plenty of deep things in Scripture that will amaze and confound even the greatest theological minds. For who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been his counselor? But the Lord is not being mysterious when He says plainly that God’s will is for his people to believe on Christ and then be sanctified – that is, made progressively more holy in practical living. That’s God’s will. Pure and simple.
Believe on Jesus Christ and be saved. Then, freed from the life of intellectual futility and sin, be sanctified. How are we to be sanctified? Do we need to pray facing Mecca, wear certain clothes, speak a specified way, follow strict codes and diets and make pilgrimages? Thanks be to God, no! We are, as Jesus prayed in John 17, to be sanctified in the truth. But what truth is that? Is it existentialism or scientific rationalism? Is it logical positivism or relativism? What is truth? Again, we’re given a plain and sure answer. John 17:17 states God’s case. God’s word is truth. The more truth we believe – truly believe – the more sanctified we will be. And the more righteous we are, the happier we will be.
This means, naturally, that God’s will is for us to be saved through faith in Christ alone and then to grow progressively like Christ through the study and application of his word, the truth. Alas, it’s a simple formula – simple, but not easy. Obedience is not – repeat, not – required for saving faith; obedience flows from faith. Think about it: repentance of sin is a changing of one’s mind about and toward sin…it sees sin as the moral insanity that it is. How then can saving faith not lead to progressive obedience?
Therefore, to read that one’s response to the glories of the gospel is to present themselves to God as a living sacrifice takes a specific context. That sacrifice is to be an informed one, not blindly driven by emotion or whim but by the guiding Spirit illuminating the word in our hearts. The renewed mind is the mind not set on the world, following the old course of thinking that used one’s own mind as the final reference point for all things, but submissive to God’s word/law in the Bible. If the modern man is to wonder what the good life is, he should know unequivocally that it’s the blessed life of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ and, as a gracious consequence, grows increasingly Christ-like himself. After all, “blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.” This is to say that the goal of Christian life, in a manner of speaking, is the blessedness that comes from personal conformity to God’s will. This can’t happen when one is enamored and still playing around with the very premises that are in and of themselves the reason for mankind’s fall.
In all of this we see the great deceit that Satan uses on even Christians. When we think of happiness, following the course of this world, we think generally in material and autonomous terms. We think that happiness is the goal whereas the Bible speaks of blessedness. The former is the position sought by the autonomous man; the latter is the place occupied by the person who finds peace with God through Christ. The line of demarcation is clear. We need to get our heads around this critical point: lasting joy is blessedness, not empty, vain, and humanistic happiness. The sinner wants to be happy on his own terms and he resents God for imposing His will upon him. The sinner sees no right of God over him, no authority. This is the spirit of the age, the wisdom of the world. How many Christians fail to either identify or overcome this ruinous premise in their own mind and, consequently, spend their sanctification trying to get God to do what they want him to do instead of the other way around? In all, only the Christian can say to God, “not my will, but yours be done.” The sinner will always, at that critical junction, insist on their own way and demand that God go along with them. ThIs is why covetousness is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). If we truly want our own way rather than God’s, then it follows that our glory is the highest good in our mind rather than God’s. That sets us at the center of the universe. Do we see how insane that is? How can we be happy if we’ve defined life so upside down and backwards? To live with the philosophy that my happiness is the center of ethical considerations, the goal and core, is like taking a football to the basketball court and wondering why I’m having trouble dribbling.
Can it be any clearer now why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? A person who refuses to cede to God the authority that is God’s alone is incessantly on a collision course with the facts of reality. The autonomous rebel tries to manipulate God to do his (the sinner’s will) instead of realizing that deliverance from sin through faith in Christ is life’s critical issue. All else is lost, no matter what it is, if a man or woman fails on this point. Past that, to delight in the word/law of the Lord is the precondition of blessedness and peace and joy (Psalm 1:1, Psalm 19:7-11; Psalm 37:4). True inner peace cannot come except through blessedness, and this will not come except through the sanctifying work of the Spirit through the word of truth – Scripture. Blessedness cannot and will not ever be divorced from personal faithfulness.
The average Christian today might not understand these things due to the presence of the world within the church. Many adhere to a gospel of man rather than that of God – a gospel of wanting the gifts from God more than God himself. We can see this simply by one’s basic heart-commitment. Is our heart planted firmly in the Bible or someplace else? Do we realize that having the true and living word at our fingertips is greater than any other earthly good or do we continue to dabble in a myriad of covetous idolatries? To understand the difference is to have a renewed mind that’s not set on the flesh, which is, all told, the beginning of wisdom.
This brings us back to knowing the will of God in our lives. His revealed will is, as we’ve covered, abundantly clear. What then are we supposed to do in the practice of our daily living and sanctification? Simply put, we’re to live with wisdom and wisdom is choosing the highest ends and goals pertaining to our lives. It’s the setting off after the good, the true, and the beautiful in a wonderful life of service to God and his people through the talents God has bestowed upon us. Wisdom will assist us in finding the most effective paths and means to achieve these goals. Wisdom is knowing Scripture and applying its principles to the particulars of our life. Especially, it’s knowing that God’s secret will is his alone – for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. We’re not to try and apprehend knowledge of the future because that is God’s prerogative alone and to do so is to trespass on his sovereignty. No, wisdom is loving the word of the Lord more than any other thing on earth and then living practically according to the principles set forth in Scripture. Wisdom is knowing that faith is one’s highest goal in life – that is, trusting God, following Him in thought, word, and deed, and being led by His precepts. Blessedness is the goal, not hedonism; knowing God, rather than earthly success.
Blessedness is really meaning it when we say that “the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul…more to be desired than gold, even much fine gold.” Christians receive wisdom as a gift from God when our heart is turned to His holy and life-giving word. When we seek happiness on our own terms, we’re really seeking personally advantageous circumstances rather than blessedness. Wisdom knows the difference because wisdom flows from the complete surrender to the perfections that are the will of God. Wisdom results from accepting the reality that there is no way for anything to be in authority except for God and no way for anyone to know truth except through His word and counsel. Wisdom, in short, is the result of laying down one’s intellectual sword and bending the knee to Christ who is the wisdom of God. Blessedness is the faithful life lived in our Father’s world. It’s Corem Deo, not Carpe Diem.
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