"Wise In God's Eyes"

James spells out two paths from which humans must choose that determine the direction of our lives: worldly wisdom, and wisdom from God above. Christ embodies wisdom from above. James assures us that when we ask rightly for God to fill us with that kind of wisdom, the spirit of Christ, God will generously grant our request.

There’s a story about a pastor who was meeting with the church board about how to retire a sizable debt the church owed. Suddenly, an angel appeared, and announced that God wanted to reward the minister for his service. “What do you want God to give you: infinite wealth or infinite wisdom?” the angel asked.

Without blinking, the pastor asked for wisdom. “Granted!” said the angel, and vanished. After a stunned pause, the chairman of the board leaned over and asked the pastor what wisdom he could offer them now.

The pastor looked at them rather sheepishly and replied, “I should have asked for infinite wealth.”1

How would you have answered the angel in that situation? We might think it would be wiser to pick riches to make life a little easier.

The lure of worldly wisdom has tantalized humans from the beginning of time. The serpent tempted the woman with fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, saying it would make her wise. Instead of trusting the wisdom of her creator, she decided to follow her own path.

When judges governed the people of Israel, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes,”2 the Bible says. The same tendency was repeated in the nation’s history later, as the prophet Isaiah noted when he said: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way.”3

We like to think we are smarter than our ancestors, but are we really? So much of popular culture suggests that is not the case.

On an episode of National Public Radio’s program This American Life4 a few years ago, John Hodgman asked people if they would rather have the ability to fly or the power of invisibility. Then he asked them what they would do with such a power. All the interviewees described using their new power for selfish purposes: to sneak into movies, steal cashmere sweaters, fly to Paris and so on. No one wanted to use their superpower to help others.

So do we want to be wise guys or wise in God’s eyes?

Paul asked the believers in Corinth, “Where is the one who is wise?”5 and here in James 3, the biblical writer asks a similar question: “Who is wise and knowledgeable among you?”

Two kinds of wisdom

James tells us there are two kinds of wisdom. The first is earthly, unspiritual and devilish. Paul calls it “the wisdom of the world,” which is characterized by envy, selfishness, rivalry, arrogance and lying. These qualities often lead to fights and violence when we can’t get what we want. According to Charles Henrickson,6 the wisdom of this world tells us to put ourselves “at the center of the universe and make ‘Me, Myself and I’ into the new three persons of [our] own personal Trinity.”

James says the second kind of wisdom comes from above. It comes from God. God’s wisdom is not like human intelligence. God doesn’t think the way we think. God says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”7

Some years ago, Karen Cheng, a straight-A high school senior from Fremont, California, achieved perfect scores on both sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and on the University of California acceptance index. No one had ever done that before. But when a reporter asked her, “What is the meaning of life?” She replied, “I have no idea. I would like to know myself.”8

In all of human history, we still haven’t been able to solve the world’s most intractable problems of war, poverty, hunger, injustice and more. We have greater access than ever before to huge amounts of data, but in many respects, we seem to be getting dumber and dumber about the things that really matter.

James tells us that God’s wisdom isn’t about knowing lots of stuff, but about living the way God wants us to live.

Christ the wisdom of God

Let’s take a look at the wisdom that comes from above.

The first thing to note is that the wisdom from above is not just some book of wise sayings or proverbs, but it is Jesus himself. God’s wisdom is embodied in Christ. The Bible tells us that Jesus came from above.

Speaking about Jesus, John the Baptist said, “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all.”9 And Jesus told the religious leaders of his day, “You are from below, I am from above; you are from this world, I am not from this world.”10 Paul says that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”11

Now let’s look at a few of the characteristics of this wisdom from above, as they are seen in the person of Christ.

James tells us that the wisdom from above is first, pure, or guiltless. Scripture says that Jesus was “without sin.”12

Then James says the wisdom from above is peaceable. Paul writes that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”13

The wisdom from above is also gentle. Jesus was so strong in his sense of self that he didn’t feel the need to prove his worth by throwing his weight around. He was able to care for the weak and weary, precisely because he was “gentle and humble in heart.”14

The next characteristic of wisdom from above that we see embodied in Christ is mercy. During his earthly ministry, Jesus showed mercy to many people. One is the way he responded when the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery. Her accusers shamed her publicly, referring to Moses, the great lawgiver, for support to stone her. They asked Jesus for his opinion, hoping that he would say something that would give them cause to charge him as a lawbreaker. But Jesus answered them with merciful wisdom that first showed that none of her accusers were fit to judge her, since they also were sinners. He didn’t deny that her adultery was wrong, and held her accountable for her actions, but he refused to condemn her, showing her mercy.

James also says that wisdom produces good fruit. An examination of Jesus’ life provides ample proof of the fruit of the Spirit in his own life. And that is the kind of fruit that should be visible in the lives of those who follow Jesus.

Wisdom from above also doesn’t show favoritism or act hypocritically, James says. Even Jesus’ enemies said of him that he was sincere, that he taught the way of God in accordance with truth, showed deference to no one and treated people impartially.15

Of course, the world has known other wise men and women. The Bible tells us that “God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore, so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than anyone else, ... People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.”16 But Jesus, referring to his teachings, asserted, “something greater than Solomon is here!”17 Jesus is God’s wisdom personified.

Prayer for wisdom from above

Have you ever asked God for wisdom? Earlier in the book of James, he wrote, “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.”18 Which type of wisdom do you suppose God will give in response to prayer? Surely not worldly wisdom, to help us indulge our selfish desires. But if we ask for the wisdom from above, God will give that kind of wisdom to us generously and ungrudgingly.

What we need to understand is that when we ask God for wisdom from above, we are really asking for more of Jesus’ spirit, attitudes and values.

John wrote: “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”19

When we pray according to God’s will, God will hear us and grant our requests.

Surely it is God’s will to fill us with the wisdom from above, with more of Jesus. We can’t go wrong when we ask God for that kind of wisdom.

1 From an anecdote told by Philip Chircop.

2 Judges 21:25.

3 Isaiah 53:6.

4 “178: Superpowers,” This American Life, February 23, 2001, www.thisamericanlife.org/178/transcript.

5 1 Corinthians 1:20.

6 “The Wisdom of Humble Servanthood,” Steadfast, September 23, 2012, https://steadfastlutherans.org/blog/2012/09/the-wisdom-of-humble-servanthood-sermon-on-james-313-410-and-mark-930-37-by-pr-charles-henrickson/.

7 Isaiah 55:9.

8 James Dobson, monthly newsletter, May 1996.

9 John 3:31.

10 John 8:23.