The Wisdom of God in a Confusing World

Every pilot learns about a danger more subtle than engine failure. Fly into thick cloud and your senses begin to lie to you. Your body insists you are climbing when you are actually banking toward the ground. So instructors drill one rule into student pilots until it becomes reflex: you have to be well trained to disregard what your senses are saying, look at your instruments, and fly by your instruments. You must force yourself to fly by your instruments, no matter what your senses are telling you.

Now let me ask you the question that matters. From whom, or from where, are you getting the knowledge on how to fly the plane of your life? Your marriage, your role as a parent, your work as a student or employee or business owner — who is telling you that this is the right way to live?

Because God says something startling about our instincts:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8–9 (NKJV)

The way that seems right

Proverbs 14:12 puts it bluntly: there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Notice it does not say the way that seems wrong. It says the way that seems right — sensible, reasonable, obvious — and still it ends in death.

Why? Because the wisdom of this world always produces two things: bitter envy, which is competition, and self-seeking. And once self-seeking is in charge, death follows. Sin, at its root, is whenever you do something because you have put yourself first.

That cuts deeper than we like. Some of us are committing sin when we pray, because we are putting ourselves first when we pray. Some of us are sinning when we come to church, because even church has become about us.

But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.

James 3:14–17 (NKJV)

Sensual there means exactly what it sounds like: it makes sense. The wisdom of men is persuasive precisely because it feels so reasonable. But wherever envy and self-seeking exist, only evil comes out of it. Let me show you two areas where these two wisdoms collide.

Two ways to have things

The wisdom of men says the way to have is by grabbing and getting for yourself. Secure the bag — for yourself. So when we work hard, we work for ourselves. When we start a business, we start it for ourselves. Even when we give, we give so we can get. Everything is for ourselves. It is sensual, it is earthly, and — James says — it is demonic.

Jesus flies by a different instrument:

Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.

Luke 12:15 (NKJV)

Then He told the story of a rich man whose ground yielded plentifully, who pulled down his barns to build greater ones and told his soul to take its ease. God’s verdict: “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be?” Your life does not consist in the things you possess — it consists in what possesses you. And if you are possessed by your possessions, you have handed yourself over to the wrong master.

But if your life is owned by God — possessed by God — you come to see that your possessions are not yours at all, and neither do they own you. They all belong to Him. Jesus said not to seek anxiously what the nations of the world seek after; your Father knows what you need. Seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So do you still work hard to secure the bag? Yes — but no longer for yourself. You work for the One who is your Master. And can you see what happens? Your motives become pure. You become gentle, you walk in peace instead of fighting and cheating, you become willing to yield and full of mercy — exactly the marks James listed.

Two ways to fight for rights

The wisdom of men says: stand up for your right! Fight for your right. Don’t allow people to take advantage of you. Being a Christian does not mean you are a fool. Defend yourself.

But think it through. If I fight for my right, and you fight for your right, and she fights for her right — who is left to give us the rights we are all fighting for? We resort to bitter envying, manipulation, competition, and tearing down the other person to advance ourselves. This is why even in church, among Christians, we have quarrels and fights: we are flying the planes of our lives by our human senses rather than trusting the word of God.

The wisdom of God says: give up your rights for the least of these. God is not against fighting for rights — but fight for the rights of those who cannot fight for their own. Fight for the weakest among you. Defend the vulnerable. Give your advantage to the disadvantaged.

Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.

Matthew 25:40 (NKJV)

We usually focus on what people do. But in that parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus holds people accountable for what they did not do — especially for the least, the most vulnerable, the nobodies. How you treat a person who means little or nothing to you says more about who you really are than almost anything else.

When the disciples asked Jesus who was greatest in the kingdom, He did not name a pastor, an apostle, or a bishop. He set a little child in the midst of them. And in Matthew 18 He points to two kinds of “least” we must fight for: the little child — the new believer just beginning to abandon their own ways for God’s ways, whose place in the kingdom we must protect so they are not offended and turned away — and the lost sheep, the one who has wandered back to their own ways, for whom we must mount a rescue operation and leave the ninety-nine.

Jesus says these are the first, the most important — the ones we would call least, last, lowest. And can you see how fighting for their wellbeing makes you willing to yield, gentle, peaceable, full of mercy? Upside down to the world. Right side up to heaven.

You grow wise by doing, not by knowing

So how do we get this wisdom of God, and drop the wisdom of men? Here is the key: wisdom is knowledge put into practice. It is not what we know that makes us wise. It is what we do based on what we already know.

I once heard a prominent church leader sadly quip, “Christians have been taught way beyond their obedience.” A regrettable but true statement, especially next to the Great Commission, where Jesus asks us to make disciples — apprentices of Jesus — “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). Not merely teaching them everything. Teaching them to obey.

Yes, newborn baby Christians grow by learning, by the sincere milk of the word (1 Peter 2:2). But God has made it so that in the kingdom, after some time, it is not new revelation or heavily loaded exegesis that grows you. It is what you do that grows you. Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me” (John 4:34). Our food is in doing — because doing is wisdom.

• We may never understand love, or become wise in it, until we actually love our enemies.
• We may never become wise about giving until we begin to give even when we don’t seem to have.
• We may never understand purity and holiness until we actually battle our sinful desires.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Hebrews 5:13–14 (NKJV)

By reason of use. In the kingdom, what we don’t use, we lose. We live in an upside-down world battling the right-side-up kingdom, which is why Paul warns us in Romans 12 not to become so well-adjusted to our culture that we fit into it without even thinking, but to fix our attention on God and be changed from the inside out.

Foolishness that turns out to be power

What happens if we learn to fly — not by our senses, not by what the world considers wise, but by what God considers wise? Paul says the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. He deliberately refused persuasive words of human wisdom so that our faith “should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5).

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1 Corinthians 1:25 (NKJV)

The wisdom of God is not the wisdom of men — and the wisdom of God is the power of God. If you want to be strong, choose to be weak. If you want to live, choose to die. Love those who do not love you. This is upside-down living: foolishness to the world, but the power of God to a glorious life.

And if it all seems upside down to you, the Bible is clear about why: it is because you have been flying upside down all along, and right side up looks strange from where you sit. So here is the invitation. Pick one area — your money, your rights, your treatment of the person who can do nothing for you — and simply obey what you already know. Ask God for the grace to trust His instruments over your senses. That is where wisdom begins.