It is God’s goal for us to reach the end of the sanctification road and gain righteousness. In order to do that, we need wisdom to get us there. This daily devotional looks at how fearing God in our hearts and submitting to His corrections lead to righteousness.
Nuggets
- God is all about giving us an orderly life based on His ways.
- We need to use reflection and evaluation to determine where our hearts are at on the sanctification road — leading us to righteousness.
- Sometimes, on the sanctification road, God has to correct us.
- When we are navigating the sanctification road, we are doing what God wants us to do.
Wisdom and righteousness both come from God. There is a correlation. We’ve discussed this before.
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Let’s see what we can add to that.
Let's Put It into Context
Wisdom is knowledge, discernment, and good sense that leads to goodness and virtue, which can be applied to life.
So far, Solomon has told us
• It isn’t enough to just have the wisdom — head knowledge isn’t enough.
• We get to where God wants us to be by using wisdom to reason out what He is wanting us to understand as we seek Him.
• The result of wisdom is a closer relationship with God (righteousness), which is to be prized above religion.
• Our wisdom has to align with God’s if we are going to flourish in the world.
• We are righteous because we are free from sin by following God’s moral laws.
• God judge us daily because He hates sin, which causes all of the strife that is in the world today.
• Sometimes, we try to equate simple with sensible, but it isn’t always.
• God is allowing people free will at the present time, but that isn’t always going to be the case.
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Fear of the Lord Leads to Righteousness
“The fear of the Lord is what wisdom teaches, and humility comes before honor” (Prov. 15: 33 CSB) Better a little with righteousness than great income with injustice” (Prov. 16: 8 CSB)
If you’ve read my devotions before, you know I start out with making sure that I remember what all of the words really mean in the Scriptures. We’ve got several here that we’ve talked about and defined before.
- The fear of the Lord means awe, reverence and love, not terror.
- Humility is a character trait that diminishes pride and places dependence on God while holding a modest view of our importance with respect to others.
- Honor means to esteem and respect another because of a good reputation.
- Righteousness is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments. It is more the right principles under which we live.
I know we’ve talked about justice before, but my fuzzy brain this morning isn’t pulling out the definition or if we’ve even discussed injustice. So, we are going to take a minute to look at that.
According to the Holman Bible Dictionary, justice is “the order God seeks to reestablish in His creation where all people receive the benefits of life with Him.” Justice is the central theme in the Old Testament.
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Ooo, baby. That is totally different than the worldview definition. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines justice as “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.”
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The way I read that is God is all about giving us an orderly life based on His ways. The worldview just wants to make sure everyone gets the good things they think should be coming to them. (Face it, these days merit doesn’t mean what it used to mean.)
What worldview people haven’t figured out yet is that God’s way is the best way. He only deals with us through love.
Oh, yes. When God corrects us and punishes us, that is done through love. “For the LORD corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights” (Prov. 3: 12 NLT).
So, let’s see if I can get this straight.
- Reverencing and loving God is what knowledge, discernment, and good sense teaches, and diminished pride and dependence on God comes before esteem and respect (Prov. 15: 33).
- It is better to have a little with a solid relationship with God than great income without the order and benefits of life with Him (Prov. 16: 8).
God will give us that wisdom if we ask. “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (Jas. 1: 5 NIV).
Muir noted that this passage is written referring to wisdom as a person. Actually, that should be Person. “God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin” (I Cor. 1: 30 NLT).
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We get wisdom by asking Jesus into our lives. Yes, we have to ask. God doesn’t force Himself on us.
Our Hearts Lead to Righteousness
“The reflections of the heart belong to mankind, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Prov. 16: 1 CSB)
“The Lord has prepared everything for his purpose — even the wicked for the day of disaster. Everyone with a proud heart is detestable to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Prov. 16: 4-5 CSB)
“A person’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps” (Prov. 16: 9 CSB)
Our hearts are important in our journey as a disciple of Christ. We need to use reflection and evaluation to determine where our hearts are at on the sanctification road — leading us to righteousness.
I really liked the word reflections in verse 1. God wants us to stop and seriously consider where we are in the sanctification road. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul beginning with regeneration and ending with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
Two word immediately popped into my mind when I read that. They were meditation and evaluation. We’ve talked about both before.
Meditation, according to the Holman Bible Dictionary, is “the act of calling to mind some supposition, pondering upon it, and correlating it to one’s own life.”
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To me, that is an awful lot like evaluation. But if we look at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it says evaluation is “determination of the value, nature, character, or quality of something or someone.”
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Okay. I see. Let’s take the Honor the Sabbath Day commandment as our example. We meditate and think about what it means and how it applies to us. Then, we evaluate it to see how it adds value to our lives.
But it has to be more than a head thing. We can think about it and think about it — and it will come to nothing.
We have to get it down to our hearts. Yep, we’ve talked about this before.
Glossary
But read verse 1 again. “The reflections of the heart belong to mankind, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Prov. 16: 1 CSB).
What does the tongue have to do with it? Wardlaw explained this verse by writing that “The meaning appears to be, that whatever thoughts and purposes are in a man’s mind — whatever sentiments it may be his intention to utter, if they are such as are likely to have any influence, or to produce effects of any consequence — they are all under supreme control.”
Wardlaw used Balaam as an example. Remember when Balak wanted Balaam to curse the Israelites? Balaam wanted to — but God wouldn’t let him.
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God is preparing everything for His purposes. Everything happens for a reason — “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecc. 3: 1 ESV).
No, God is not forcing us to do anything. We still have free will. Free will is the ability within us to make decisions, which determine actions that produce character.
But God is all-seeing and all-knowing. He knows every decision we are ever going to make — knew this before we were even born. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you …” (Jer. 1: 5 ESV).
To me, that means God is stepping us along the sanctification road to righteousness. Unfortunately, we will take scenic routes and head off the exit ramp, but God will get us back on track. “Everyone with a proud heart is detestable to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Prov. 16: 5 CSB).
Sparrow took that a different way, though. He believed the everything for its purpose meant “… that eventually the use and condition of every person and thing in the universe will be found to correspond with its character.”
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In today’s vernacular, we would say that we will grow into the person we are meant to be. I see that, too.
Do those concepts have to be mutually exclusive? I don’t think so.
God’s Just Correction Leads to Righteousness
“God’s verdict is on the lips of a king; his mouth should not give an unfair judgment. Honest balances and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his concern” (Prov. 16: 10-11 CSB)
Sometimes, on the sanctification road, God has to correct us. He is always just when He does that.
This version translates it as honest balances and scales (NIV, NKJV, CSB, HSCB). Others do just (ESV, NASB, KJV). One says accurate (NLT).
Let’s go with just for a second. If just is guided by justice, what does that make just balances and scales?
A just balance and scale would be based on God’s desire to reestablish us in His kingdom. The kingdom of God is a spiritual kingdom that describes His sovereign reign.
That tells me that God is going to fairly discipline us when we sin. He does this to change our character to be more like His.
Non-believers may think that God doesn’t care about them and just ignores them. Horton told us that this is not true. He wrote, “It is a part of the Lord’s watchful activity and direct connection with all the affairs of human life that He is interested in our business and trade.”
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Disciples can even get into that mindset. I worked in education for 34 years. That wasn’t my mission or anything — like writing these devotions.
But it was. We have to look at it as — whatever we are doing — is ordained by God. “A person’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps” (Prov. 16: 9 CSB). God has us where we will benefit His kingdom the most.
Loyalty and Faithfulness Lead to Righteousness
“Iniquity is atoned for by loyalty and faithfulness, and one turns from evil by the fear of the Lord. When a person’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16: 6-7 CSB)
When we are navigating the sanctification road, we are doing what God wants us to do. That means we are being loyal and faithful to Him.
We know that iniquity is another name for sin. Sin is actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
When we ABCD, we repent. Repentance is expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
That means we have experienced regeneration. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive. That also started us on the sanctification road.
We stay on the sanctification road by being loyal and faithful. By following God’s laws and commandments and doing what He tells us to do, we progress to righteousness.
Making the Connections
The bottom line is that God will reward us when we submit to Him and follow His ways. He will correct us when we don’t.
How Do We Apply This?
Furse gave us a really important reminder. He wrote, “We must allow no habits of mind to grow upon us which shall unfit us for making the best opportunities of life when they come.”
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It is our choice as to where we are going to let our mind wander. If we keep letting it wander somewhere it shouldn’t, we have formed a habit.
We have to make sure we remain loyal and faithful. We do that by keeping our heart right. When we need corrected, we need to learn from it.
The rewards will be phenomenal.
Father. We want our hearts to be right with You. We want to be navigating the sanctification road so that we are gaining righteousness. Help us to live for you. Amen.
What do you think?
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