Growth in our faith must be built on wisdom. This daily devotion looks at how wisdom brings us righteousness.
Nuggets
- The characteristics of God’s wisdom describe godliness.
- The result of wisdom is righteousness.
Devotions in Living Out Our Faith series
We talk about wisdom, but what we consider wisdom is earthly wisdom. That is the devil’s wisdom, which we talked about in the last devotion.
The wisdom that is from above, according to Lupton, is another name for true religion. Hannam agreed. He wrote, “True spiritual wisdom is no other than the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, which God commands to shine in the hearts of men.”
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Wisdom respects that which is divine and good. Let’s look how James described it.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Let's Put It into Context #2
Wisdom is an enlightened acceptance of God’s principles, gained through knowledge, fear, discernment, and good sense, that is put into practice through salvation, increasing our goodness and virtue.
- Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
- Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sins are 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.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- God’s goodness is His holy, pure, and righteous behavior.
- God’s holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- God’s purity stems from the fact that He cannot sin.
- God’s righteousness is the result of His being pure.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
Characteristics of God’s Wisdom
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (Jas. 3: 17 ESV)
The characteristics of God’s wisdom describe godliness.
James listed several characteristics that make up wisdom. Stowell told us that what James was really describing was godliness. It gives us characteristics that are in the new creation we become.
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Pure
God’s wisdom is spiritually pure, as He is. There is no error in principle.
The wisdom leads to worship of Him. We can worship God because wisdom purifies our hearts from sin.
When it purifies our heart, it purifies our lives and conversations.
We keep away from false doctrine. When we keep away from doubts and double mindedness, the wisdom leads straight to God.
Mather said that this is also talking about priority. Wisdom makes God our top priority.
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I think James might have done a disservice by saying we must first be pure. We know that, even though we have accepted Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer, we will still have the capacity to sin.
This doesn’t mean we have to be totally perfect before we can gain salvation. It means we must gain salvation before the rest of the list can happen.
Peaceable
When wisdom is pure, it is peaceable. That is because it is based on love and unity.
Peaceable means not contentious. This is the exact opposite of envy and strife that James had been talking about, which we covered in the last devotion.
The best part is that we are at peace with ourselves. It is both an inward and outward peace.
Gentle
Many think gentleness is equated with weakness. It isn’t.
Gentleness is, instead, a fruit of the Spirit. It is both a characteristic of God and a reward for us.
Deems believe gentleness is a product of reason. He argued that it was produced by strength.
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Instead, gentle is not harsh or cruel.
Open to Reason
Wisdom, while it believes in its convictions, isn’t stubborn and unwilling to listen to other sides.
Deems was talking about the condition of our souls. He wrote, “‘reasonable’ indicates the condition of the wise man’s soul when he is striving to convince others, so this ‘persuadable’ seems to indicate the posture of his soul when others are striving to convince him.
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We can take this another way. We must be docile – willing to learn. We don’t stubbornly cling to the worldview.
Full of Mercy and Good Fruits
James had already talked about mercy. “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jas. 2: 13 ESV).
Wisdom breeds compassion, which leads to mercy. It is full of forgiveness.
We show mercy to those who are having hard times. We show them we love them through our deeds.
But it is more than that. We show compassion the most by witnessing to them. We want them to have what we have.
Impartial and Sincere
Don’t read impartial to mean indifference. Instead, it mean unprejudiced. It means all we do is through love.
We are impartial because we accept all of God’s laws and commandments. We don’t think we can pick and choose what we believe.
It also means that we do not look on outward appearances. “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” (I Samuel 16: 7 ESV).
Deems noted that being impartial meant that we don’t condemn others. Instead, we respect people.
In other words, wisdom makes us genuine.
The Resulting Righteousness
“And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (Jas. 3: 18 ESV)
The result of wisdom is righteousness.
I know. This verse is kind of circular. But let’s process it.
The King James Version translated harvest of righteousness as fruit of righteousness. The fruits of righteousness means the rewards for doing God’s will and growing closer to Him. The rewards are eternal life, peace, access to Him, and hope.
Glossary
Wasn’t that what we were just saying? Wisdom is really the gospel message.
When we follow God’s wisdom, we become righteous. That is because we are becoming more like Him.
We gain peace when we accept the Prince of Peace. What “… sown in peace by those who make peace” (Jas. 3: 18 ESV) means is those who ABCD.
Making the Connections
So, pop quiz. What is wisdom? It is the revealed truth. God shows us who He is and what He wants for us.
God wants our relationships restored with Him so that He may live in us.
God offers this wisdom to all. Remember what James said? “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (Jas. 1: 5 ESV).
How Do We Apply This?
- Evaluate ourselves to make sure these characteristics are in us.
- If they aren’t, we ABCD.
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Father God. You give us Your wisdom generously. You want us to restore our relationships with You. You provided the way for us to do this – by sending Your Son to die on the cross so that our debt to sin may be paid. Lord, we want every one of those characteristics to grow in us: purity, peace, gentleness, reasonable, merciful, impartiality, and sincerity. We want to grow good fruits. Amen.
What do you think?
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