Wisdom and Commission

Wisdom, and the knowledge of faith, are somewhat undervalued in today’s Christianity. With that, I also believe that we undervalue living life separate from the world and how that impacts the people in our lives, and even those who are not part of our lives.

Many Christians today live far too much like the culture we find ourselves in. With the exception of some standouts, so many of us live as a part of the world five or six days a week and only turn to God on Sundays and Wednesdays. But people talk about that all the time. I’m just going to give you an example of what happens when you don’t.

If you’ve ever read 1 or 2 Kings, you’d know the current king of Israel had a huge impact on whether or not his people followed God or turned to idolatry. Solomon was no different. In 1 Kings 10, a foreign queen appeared in Solomon’s court after hearing about his fame and wisdom in connection with God. When she arrived, she tested him with numerous, difficult questions about his faith, and she found answers to all the questions she had. It was so different and amazing that the Bible says it took her breath away.

In our faith, we do not get to specialize. We cannot allow ourselves to only be consistent and good at one part of our walk with Christ. You have to be able to walk separate from the world just as well as you can speak about the gospel. You have to be able to defend against questions just as easily as you can recite John 3:16 from memory. Why? For situations such as the one Solomon found himself in. It’s an integral part of the Great Commission.

1 Kings 10:1 says, “The queen of Sheba heard about Solomon’s fame connected with the name of the Lord and came to test him with difficult questions.”

Here’s the first part of the equation to having a well-rounded walk with Christ. Solomon was doing something so different that a queen who lived roughly 3,000 KM away from him heard about his wisdom and kingdom and its connection to God and traveled the entire distance with a massive retinue just to speak with him. Even by camel, it would’ve taken her roughly 75 days just to travel that distance as the crow flies—it might have been longer depending on travel routes.

Verse 2 says, “So Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too difficult for the king to explain to her.”

This is pretty impressive. The last part of verse 2 says that the queen asked Solomon about everything that was on her mind. Solomon could’ve been answering questions as complicated as space travel, how God exists outside of time and the connection of that to free will, quantum physics, or more. Okay, some of those could be a little exaggerated, but the point is that no matter what she asked about, Solomon had a satisfactory answer.

Now, you’re not expected to know everything about every subject; none of us come close to the wisdom of Solomon. But you are expected to know as much as possible about the Bible. We are supposed to read, understand, know, and use the knowledge and Wisdom God gives to us. Not just the NT or the OT. Not just the gospels or Paul’s letters. ALL of it.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

It even says why: so you may be equipped for every good work. So you can be prepared for any situation God presents you with. If you follow step 1 and live your life separate from the world, at some point, you will have to defend your faith, so make sure you’re prepared to do so.

Step 3 is to provide for those whom you lead. Our faith is not one that can be lived and practiced in isolation. Where it exists in you, it must also flow out to others.

Verses 8-9 say, “How happy are your men. How happy are these servants of yours, who always stand in your presence hearing your wisdom. May the Lord your God be praised! He delighted in you and put you on the throne of Israel, because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel. He has made you king to carry out justice and righteousness.” Verses and 4 and 5 also touch on Solomon’s care for the kingdom of Israel.

See, by virtue of Solomon’s faith and life lived for God extending beyond himself, it became evident that this wasn’t something that only Solomon could have. Solomon had the wisdom, but he was not the only one who had the love and providence of God. And because all the people of Israel had the love, joy, and providence of God, the queen of Sheba recognized this was something she could have as well.

Now whether the queen converted or not, the Bible is not fully clear. The verses seem to indicate that she could have, but we know for sure that she recognized God as a divine power because of Solomon’s life, wisdom, and actions towards the people of Israel.

The Great Commission says to go and make disciples, so go and make disciples. But how much more effective could you be in spreading the kingdom if, in addition to going to make disciples, you lived a life so clearly for God that you made people come to you just to see how you do it?

Israel is located near the town Gaza, while the queen of Sheba’s country is labeled “Saba.”)

Bring Your Best

Many times, God calls us Christians to give Him our best in all that we do for Him because He doesn’t want anything less.

A couple examples: the difference between a good sacrifice and a bad sacrifice for Cain and Abel wasn’t meat versus plants, but it was the spirit in which it was given. Abel gave the best of his flock, whereas Cain gave only some of his produce.

The woman who gave two copper coins for her offering was considered as giving the better offering because she gave all that she had. It didn’t have anything to do with her offering being less valuable and the offerings of the wealthy being more valuable monetarily. It had everything to do with the position she was in.

I think we often get it in our head that what we give to God has to be equal to what other give, that our lives and abilities for the kingdom must be compared with others. I’ve already touched on this in another article, but it bears mentioning again. The life of a Christian is not meant to be one of synonymous walks with Christ. It’s meant to be one of uniqueness. Your walk, and your best, is different than every other person’s.

So, with that said, what does it mean to give your best? I have two parts of scripture to discuss to get at that answer. The first is Malachi 1:8. “‘When you present a blind animal for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present a lame or sick animal, is it not wrong? Bring it to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor?’ asks the Lord of Hosts.”

The important thing to learn here is that your best requires a sacrifice on your part. Giving something to God doesn’t hold any meaning if it’s something you didn’t want in the first place. See, sacrifices must be something of value, and what value is an animal that is blind, lame, or sick? These animals were not valuable. They could not serve as good breeding stock, nor could they take care of themselves. They only used up resources the farmers could use for other purposes, so giving them up wasn’t a sacrifice at all.

Similarly, we must give our best to God. The best of our time; the best of our energy; the best of our skills. If you only give time to God when you have it spare, what good is it as a sacrifice to God? It isn’t any good because you didn’t have to give up anything. It was useless to you, and thus it is a useless sacrifice to God. This is part of the reason why we’re encouraged to give the first part of our morning to God because, for many people, it’s far more of a sacrifice to wake up 10 minutes early than to stay up 10 minutes later.

Your skills and energy are the same way, too. God doesn’t want you to say, “I’ll serve you in this way, but I’ll keep my career to myself.” Your career is part of your best, and thus, it’s part of giving yourself up to God.

But why should you give your best? Because you made a promise that you would when you accepted the gift of salvation and gave your life to Christ. Malachi 1:14 tells this to the priests who were accepting bad sacrifices, but this isn’t just an Old Testament thing. When you pronounced Jesus as Lord of your life, you gave a vow that He could use you as He wished to accomplish God’s will.

It says, “The deceiver is cursed who has an acceptable male in his flock and makes a vow but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord.” Even now, you are hurting yourself by giving a valueless part of your life as a sacrifice to God. You’re holding yourself back from potential blessings, and you’re breaking the promise you made to God.

Here’s the final note about bringing your best and your relationship with Christ. For this, I’m taking you to Revelation 3: 15-16, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth.” This actually says that you are better off being unsaved than being a “lukewarm Christian.” See, being a “lukewarm Christian” means that you’re deceiving yourself into believing you’re a follower of Christ and will be receiving the rewards that follow that when you’re actually not.

There is no such thing as a “lukewarm Christian.” You’re either with God or not with God. You’re either filled with God’s righteousness, with the Holy Spirit, or you’re stuck in your sin nature. You have the gift of salvation or you don’t. There’s no in-between. You can’t choose to accept salvation and then give up nothing.

So, you have to bring your best because doing anything less is indicative of a life lived as an unsaved individual. It sounds harsh, but there is always the reminder that bringing your best is not something you can succeed at all the time. God’s grace allows for us to fail at that. While there is no in-between saved and unsaved, there is an allowance for our imperfectness, thankfully. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be giving God your everything, though. That’s how you become a “lukewarm Christian.”

Building Godly Character

We have an extremely clear process we are to follow to grow in our faith and build Godly character. Peter was kind enough to write it down in the first chapter of his second letter in a step-by-step list of character traits you should have. This list provides us with the process to grow closer to God and the necessary characteristics we need to be encouraging in other believers.

Firstly, Peter affirms that we have been given everything we need. It’s the spiritual equivalent of the promise God made to satisfy our physical needs. He has done this by granting us His own righteousness and nature so that we can escape the grasp of sin.

2 Peter 1: 3-5 says, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He had given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.”

Notice that verse three says God has provided us everything that is required for two things: life and godliness. Not only has He given us the key to escaping sin and pursuing Him and His character, He has also granted us all we will need to get through this life on Earth.

2 Peter 1: 5-7 says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

That’s the process. It all begins with faith in Jesus Christ’s death, resurrection, and the salvation of sinners who accept the free gift. But, we must build on our faith, first with goodness. Let the faith that you have in Christ manifest itself in your actions so that you do genuinely good things. The first step is to be good like God is good.

The second step is to supplement that goodness with knowledge. You must know why you are to be good. To know why you are to be good, you must know why God is good. And to know why God is good, you must understand God’s character. This knowledge, then, should spur you on to greater acts of good for the kingdom of God. Those greater acts of good will add to your faith in Christ as you see what good He does in you and through you.

The third step is self-control. This is both control of your own actions and words, and the control needed to hand over control to God to handle our lives. It’s a step that goes against our very nature, which is one wherein we desire to choose for ourselves what we do. So, let your self-control supplement your knowledge of God by choosing to hand over control to Him because you know you can’t do it on your own.

The fourth step is endurance. The race we run is one of endurance, not of speed. Especially when it comes to self-control, it’s not a one and done thing. You must consistently hand over control of your life to God. To do this requires the will and the strength to continually make decisions that are against the sin nature that is prevalent all around us.

The fifth step is godliness. Endurance is useless if you put your will towards the wrong beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. You must endure consistently against trials that seek to turn you away from God. The only way you can do that is to be filled with godliness through the character and righteousness of Christ.

The sixth step is brotherly affection, and this is less of a build-up on the first five steps and more of a manifestation of the character that should be filling you at this point in the process, though it does still supplement godliness. Brotherly affection is the love you have for your family in Christ. It builds upon godliness as a manifestation of Christ’s character. To exemplify godliness, you must love your brothers and sisters in Christ, and to love your brothers and sisters in Christ as God loves us, you must have His character.

The seventh step is the culmination of all the steps. It is the most important of all. Out of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love. The greatest commandment is to love. We are only capable of love because Christ first loved us. So, we must have the first six qualities to love fully as we should. And in addition, we are better able to love others through our faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, and brotherly affection as we love like Christ. Love is the last step because God is love.

The most important thing, though, Peter emphasizes after listing these qualities in verse 8. “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Note that Peter doesn’t say that moving from step one to step two means you no longer have to work on step 1. In fact, once you have these qualities, you must ensure they are always increasing. To do otherwise would be to fall away from God.

In verse 9, Peter says, “The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins.”

The best way to explain this verse is to compare it to the parable of the sower. Those who lack these qualities are like the seed on rocky soil. It bursts up quickly but dies out just as quickly because it doesn’t have the right nutrients to grow.

Verse 10 says, “Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble.” I feel it’s prudent to mention here that no one will ever achieve the perfection of Godly character required to not stumble in your walk with Christ. Though, if you could avoid stumbling perfectly, this would be the process by which to reach that point in your relationship with God.

In verse 11, which says, “For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you,” Peter confirms that this is a checking process for salvation. We know that we can only be gifted salvation through the grace of God, so verse 11 isn’t saying that you’ll get into Heaven by loving others or following this guide. It’s saying that this is a way we Christians can check ourselves for our own salvation, to make sure our hearts are in the right place.

I’m sure a number of us have worried about whether our salvation is real, and this checklist can answer that question for you by presenting you with, and then answering, this question: Have you chosen to follow God and give up your life to Him by chasing after His character?

So, if you’re chasing after God because you want a relationship with the one who saved you, then you’re on the right track. This list just shows you where the track is.

Log vs. Speck

One of the great things about studying the Bible is that we get a chance to see the same verses from different perspectives as we grow in our faith and our lives progress into different times and situations. Some verses that I’ve been seeing a little different lately are Matthew 7:3-5.

“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? 5 Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Every time I’ve heard someone mention this verse, they use it to tell people to stop judging others. And that is 100% the way it was intended. The context says it’s so. But, I want to take this slightly out of context to talk about it not as judging, but as helping out a brother or sister in Christ.

Think about how weird it is to not notice a giant log in your eye, obscuring your vision, and yet, despite that log, you can somehow see a tiny speck of dirt in someone else’s eyes. How do you see that speck? Well, first of all, you have to be close to that person to see something so small in their eye. And second, you can’t be looking through the eye that has a log in it. You have to be looking from a different perspective.

Different perspectives are important because they allow us to see different things. Especially in humans, it allows us to cover blind spots in our vision. Did you know that you actually have blind spots in your eyes? They’re infinitesimally small at a close distance, but the farther away you look, the larger that spot gets. The cool thing about how God made us is that the right eye is just far enough away from the left eye to cover the left eye’s blind spot. And the perspective of the left eye is just different enough to cover the right eye’s blind spot.

Now Matthew 7:3 talks about our enormous spiritual blind spot: our own sins. Our perspective of ourselves prevents us from easily seeing the things we do wrong. Our behavior is so close to us that we find it difficult to point out those things we do that are unbiblical behavior.

Think about it. How many times has someone mentioned how easily you get angry or jealous or do any other sinful behavior? And how often do you say, “I don’t do that,” right afterward? Yet, if you took the time to really analyze your own behavior from the perspective of someone else, you’d find that you do actually do those things.

That’s because, for them, it’s easy to see. They’re not blinded by the fact it’s their own behavior. And now we get to my alternate view of this verse. While we are not supposed to judge others for their sinful behavior, what we are supposed to do is spot it and point it out to our brothers and sisters. There are a ton of verses about helping other believers be accountable to Christ, including: Matthew 18:15-18, James 5:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15, and Hebrews 3:13.

In these ways, when we see other believers acting in persistent sin, we are called to let them know and help them correct their behavior. That’s one of the reasons we have fellowship with one another. That’s why many Christians urge you to have one, or more, accountability partner(s). Someone you trust who will be the one to point out the speck in your eye you can’t see.

Now, I want to talk briefly about verse 6: “Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.” This verse is incredibly important to the context I’m looking at here because it’s a warning to be careful with how you handle accountability.

Accountability is incredibly important, but just as important as the act is the person you choose to help you stay accountable to Christ. Accountability is a good, God-given thing for believers to stay strong in the faith. It’s like an incredibly valuable string of pearls. But it only works if you give that string of pearls to someone who is capable of appraising it properly.

If you allow a nonbeliever or someone who isn’t yet strong enough in the faith to hold your faith accountable, it will turn into judgment and tear down your walk with Christ. It’s like, as verse 6 says, handing pearls to pigs. They won’t know what to do with it.

But if you find someone who is close enough to you to see the speck in your eye, the flaws in your walk with Christ, and strong enough in the faith to know how to handle correction with love and care, then you become like iron sharpening iron. Together, you will only grow stronger in your walk with Christ. There won’t be judgment involved, just believers working together to raise their value.

So, find someone who can see your speck and speaks in love and correction, and you will find a good thing. Your walk with Christ will be better than before because of it.

Faith Needs Works

Now, before you assume anything, make sure to stick around, because I promise that I’m not writing things that are unbiblical when I say this, even though it sounds controversial.

We all know that we are saved by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life on Earth, and sacrificed himself on the cross so that we could be free of sin. The Bible is pretty clear on that. And let me be clear: works cannot save you. But what I’m getting at is how our faith should manifest itself in the everyday lives we have.

We often talk about Christians showing good fruit, and how Christians who aren’t showing the good fruit of the Spirit need to check their lives and relationship with Christ because something’s gone wrong in their faith, and that’s very much the truth, but having good works is just as important as being patient, kind, gentle, having self control, etc. See, after we’ve accepted the gift of salvation given to us, we don’t get to just relax in our little bubble of Christians where we practice patience and goodness and peace. We have an obligation to God to do as He calls us to do.

James challenges his readers to change the way they thought about their faith. James 2: 14-17 says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.”

Based on verses 15-16, I presume that the people James wrote to had the same problem a lot of us have today: they liked to pray about everything, but never do anything about it. Think about it. How many of us pray about the homeless person we see walking down the street every day, but never stop to give him food? How many of us hear from a neighbor who’s struggling to pay their bills but don’t think about loaning or giving him some of our spare cash until he can find a new job?

I think some of this faulty faith we have stems from our belief that God will step in and take care of things deus ex machina style. We tend to run straight toward asking God to provide via a miraculous divine intervention, but we often forget that we are God’s representatives on Earth. We are His deus ex machina. We are called to be an unexpected power to save others from a potentially hopeless situation. Think about this: if God just did everything by His divine intervention, what reason would we have to be on Earth?

That’s why we are called to have faith with works. It’s really easy to say you believe in God and you believe that he will take care of you, but I think we can all agree it’s a lot harder to act that out. It’s difficult when you see someone unable to afford the groceries they need, and you feel God telling you to step in and pay for them, but you know that you don’t have any money to spare for the month. That’s why we have phrases like “put your money where your mouth is,” and “actions speak louder than words.”

The good news is twofold. The first part is that God comes through when we exercise our faith. Remember Abraham? I hope so because James certainly did in James 2: 20-23, “Foolish man! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was perfected. So the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.”

In Genesis 22, after Abraham proves he is willing to sacrifice his only son for God, God promises that the descendants of Abraham will be numerous and a blessing to the world, and man oh man did he come through with that promise. And, in fact, one of Abraham’s descendants became the greatest blessing the world has ever seen: Jesus.

The second part of the good news about faith is that it works like a muscle: the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. Exercising your faith is like the trust we have in all things, but I’ll adapt the age-old chair example. You can’t know a chair will hold you up until you sit on it, but once you do, you’re quicker to believe it will hold you each subsequent time you sit down.

When we give away our last bit of money to help someone in need and see that God takes care of our needs afterwards, we become quicker to do something similar the next time, and quicker again the next because we have experienced God following through on His promises.

That’s what works is, and that’s why it’s important. Since we’re called to be God’s representatives on Earth, it’s so very important that we exercise our faith via works because that’s how the faithless see God. It helps set us apart so that we can show who God is, how He works, and that He truly does take care of those who believe in Him. When we don’t exercise our faith through works, all we’re doing is spouting hot air.

Finally, just to get you thinking a little bit, let’s go back to the chair. See, a lot of us are really quick to say we believe the chair will hold us. And we’re free to do that as much as we want. But the fact of the matter is, you don’t really believe the chair will hold you up if you refuse to sit on it. In the same way, we must question our faith: If you say that you have faith in God until you’re blue in the face but refuse to step out and exercise your faith, do you really have faith in God? And since we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, the question then becomes: are you truly saved?

Finally, if you want a song reference for what I’m getting at, check out these two down below! These guys are great artists and they tell a wonderful message.

We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.