Most of us can remember a time when we felt our parents, pastors, and teachers were hopelessly behind the times. One of our children, at the ripe old age of fourteen, announced to us: “Your job is done. I am raised now. I can take care of myself.” Many of us never said that to our parents, but we harbored the same prideful belief that we had reached the point where we knew pretty much all our parents and elders had to teach us. I happened to be such a person. Most human beings reach a point in life when they temporarily lose the habit of trusting God for the answers to life’s questions—and a number of us never develop the habit.[1]
The Awesome Respect God Deserves
Most versions translate the motto of Proverbs as “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverbs 1:7, NIV [emphasis added]). Right away, contemporary people have a problem with this statement. The idea that we should be motivated by “fear” is not congenial to our way of thinking. We have the notion that a person ought to be motivated by love or admiration. It is, therefore, important for contemporary people to understand why and in what sense wisdom writers spoke as they did and the nature of the “fear” we ought to have for God.
In the ancient world, rulers were to be feared and respected. God, as the ultimate and supreme ruler of the entire universe, was to be feared and respected above all persons and powers (Colossians 6:10-12). To the ancient Jews, the Lord God of Israel was not just another god among many. The God of Israel was the supreme creator and ruler of all. The Lord God Almighty was not just a god but the only, all-powerful God. Jehovah God was not just a powerful force in the world but the most powerful and important force in the world. God was to be feared and respected—even worshiped—above anything or anyone else.
In the modern, democratic West, people do not consider “fear” an appropriate word to describe citizens’ relationship with their government. This is one reason I substituted the word “respect” in the paraphrase of Proverbs 1:7 at the beginning of this chapter. Unfortunately, “respect” does not fully capture the quality of our relationship with God, even for modern people. There is more to our relationship with God than simply “respecting” him for his status as the creator of the world. We respect the President for his status as the leader of our country. Elections, however, give citizens some degree of control over elected leaders. God, on the other hand, remains the uncontrollable source of all that is and will ever be, immeasurably beyond our control or direction. Therefore, the respect we must have for God is infinitely greater than the respect we have for people, however important.
The respect we owe to God is a deep reverence for Someone infinitely wiser and more powerful than ourselves. I remember when I was young, I once accidentally put my finger in a wall outlet. That experience taught me to respect the incredible power of electricity. Honestly, I still feel a bit wary of electricity today. Whenever I need to do some home repairs involving electrical work, I am extra cautious—I certainly don’t want to get shocked again. Friends who have watched a space shuttle launch describe the incredible amount of power needed for lift-off. Even from miles away, you can feel the ground shake from the force. The energy that propels a space shuttle is comparable to many large bombs, and if mishandled, it could cause serious damage. That’s why it’s so important to always respect such power.
Years ago, while working on a “tie gang” near Black Rock, Arkansas, I looked up and saw a freight train bearing down upon our small group of workers. Because of unusual circumstances, our foreman had not given the normal warning to get off the tracks. Faced with the oncoming power of that locomotive, all members of that tie gang finished what we were doing and ran to get safely off those tracks. The sheer energy and power of the train compelled us to work better and faster than we normally would have. We respected the power of that train. In a similar way, we should respect the silent, patient, loving, but uncompromising love of God.
The path of wisdom begins with respecting the One who is the ultimate power behind all the powers in and of the created universe. Christians confess that we believe in “God the Father Almighty, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth.” The word “Almighty” makes clear that, when we deal with God, we are dealing with One who is the ultimate source of power, including the power of wise living. Thus, the source and ground of all human wisdom lies beyond human wisdom—even beyond created reality. It is a power we cannot control. We can only respect it and live in awareness of its reality. The source and ground of wisdom is the Deep Light of the uncreated wisdom of an all-wise, all-loving, and all-powerful God.
Once we have a proper respect for God, something wonderful happens: we have a sense of our own limited understanding and power. We become humble and, in humility, we become teachable. This attitude is important in any kind of learning. To learn, we must respect our teachers, those who went before us in the field we are studying, the subject matter itself, and the reality it is intended to illuminate. To learn anything, we must understand that we do not know everything we need to know. Without a humble respect for teachers, for a tradition, and for a reality outside us, it is impossible to learn anything.
Wisdom literature teaches that the “Fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom; and humility comes before honor” (Proverbs 15:33, ESV). These two great qualities, respect for God and personal humility, are closely related and necessary for a wise life. Without a sense of our own finite, limited understanding, we cannot have the kind of humility that believes hopes and loves under the guidance of a loving God. Without a sense of the infinite wisdom and power of God, we will not trust and properly respect the source of wise living.
Respecting the Divine Lover
This brings us to a specifically Christian understanding of what it means to respect and reverence God. In the First Letter of John, we read the following:
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love (I John 4:16-18, ESV).
A Christian fear of God is a loving response of respect towards one who first loved us, who draws us into his community of love, who gave himself for us, and who now dwells within in love.
God is not a Cosmic Despot. God is the Divine Father who loves us enough to take on our humanity, suffer our human limitations, and die for our pervasive foolishness, error, and sin in order to heal our separation from the source of Divine Wisdom. Our relationship with God should not be characterized by fearful obedience, but by a loving response to God’s self-giving love. Thus, the “fear” of which wisdom literature speaks is actually a loving, reverent, respectful response to our Divine Parent who loves us and wishes us the best in life.
The wisdom imparted by God the Father is the source of both a natural and supernatural kind of living. It is natural in that it connects us with the world as God created it and human beings as they are. It is supernatural in that it is not finally grounded in the created order or in our own wisdom or experience. This wisdom is the wisdom of the creator God, the ground and source of all human existence.
This is why “the fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom. Without respect for God and trust in his faithful and orderly creation of the world and of human life, we have not taken the first step—a step that puts us into a proper relationship with the personal God who created and sustains all things by his wisdom, love, and power and who loves his creation, including the human race in general and us in particular.
Once we have deep respect for God, we develop an appropriate self-confidence based upon a relationship with God. A relationship with God is a fountain of life and a source of wisdom for our lives (Prov. 14:26-27). The wise person humbly seeks a Godly wisdom that is “pure, then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17, NIV). Such a person reacts wisely and without pride to the problems of life. Developing awe and respect for God does not result fearful, dependent lives. A life-giving relationship with God and others results in humble self-confidence. This kind of wisdom can only be gained in a personal relationship with the one who is the source of all wisdom.
The Unimaginable Wisdom God Reveals
This reverent respect for God, the One Who Is and Will Be, is the beginning place of our search for wisdom. Christians do not believe that we can be content with simple shrewdness in order to live wisely and well. The Deepest Wisdom, what I have elsewhere called “Deep Light,” is the uncreated wisdom of God. [2] This wisdom is reflected in the material order of the universe and the moral order of the world we human beings inhabit. However, as wonderful as practical and scientific understanding may be, as magnificent as the meditations of the great moral thinkers of the past may be, they point toward one who is the inexhaustible source and ground of wisdom and understanding. God’s wisdom is the deepest wisdom of all.
We cannot come to the end of God’s infinite wisdom. Throughout the Old Testament, God teaches his people that his wisdom is ultimately beyond human understanding. By the time of Isaiah, the prophets understood that the full nature of divine wisdom was beyond human understanding. God speaks through Isaiah saying,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “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, NIV).
It was the conviction of the Jews that, while human wisdom reflects God’s wisdom, God’s wisdom infinitely transcends human wisdom. The rationality of the universe and its moral and aesthetic character reflect and point to a greater wisdom by which and through which the world was created.
For Christians, the secret wisdom of God is immeasurably greater than any human wisdom. Paul, when he writes of the revelation of Christ to the early church, puts it this way:
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (I Corinthians 1:20-25, NRSV).
Paul perceives that in Christ the God of Israel revealed a surprising hidden wisdom that forms the basis of God’s being, love, and power. This power is a wise love that works in self-giving sacrifice and weakness, even to the point of dying on a Cross. This is a “secret” or hidden wisdom that humans can only receive by revelation. After all, who would expect that the heart of the all-powerful God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is unlimited, self-giving, self-sacrificial love? Without the cross no one would ever have guessed at the full and deepest nature of God’s wisdom.
The Wisdom of Common Grace Revealed to Faith
Despite the limits of human wisdom, human reflection on life and its problems reveals an orderly universe and a common human situation to which men and women may conform as they live and work in the everyday world. This human aspect of wisdom is not to be despised or undervalued. In fact, human understanding and wisdom are the most valuable things one can acquire in this world. Thus Proverbs teaches,
Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding (Prov. 4:5-7, NIV).
Once we have humbled ourselves before the Creator and the creation and respect our human limits, our minds and hearts are freed to receive a kind of wisdom that will prosper us all the days of our earthly existence. Next to the wisdom revealed in Christ, this wisdom is the most valuable possession we can obtain.
This “wisdom for life” is the practical, earthly expression of the uncreated wisdom of God. It is characterized by an understanding of people, of the world and of day-to-day situations human beings face. This wisdom is bred of experience and observation. It is the product not only of personal reflection but embodies the reflections on life of countless, nameless generations of human beings from the beginning of human history. As part of the created order, it is available to anyone. [3] The common nature of wisdom should not blind believers to its basis in the uncreated wisdom of God.
The Virtue of Respectful Teachability
In order to receive and benefit from any kind of wisdom, we must be teachable. We must understand our human personal limitations, not think too highly of ourselves, and respect God and others. We think and act from the perspective that the created world has lessons to teach. We understand that human life, though externally different from the life of our forbearers, is lived by fallible human beings and governed by the same moral and practical laws applicable to former generations.
In submitting ourselves to God and to the witness of prior generations, we put ourselves in a position to become wise and avoid mistakes that have haunted human life throughout history. This is a hard attitude for contemporary people to adopt. We are accustomed to thinking that all new ideas involve progress. We are inclined to think of the modern world as having escaped the superstition of the past. We are likely to think in terms of our individual ideas, hopes, and dreams. We find it difficult to accept the notion that the past and our forbearers have important lessons to teach us—lessons that we ignore to our peril.
Habits of the Heart
The lessons of wisdom are not fully learned until they are made a part of our heart and mind. Years ago, the sociologist Robert Bellah and his colleagues wrote an influential book called, Habits of the Heart. [4] The book was about the need to recover community and communitarian values in our society. The title speaks volumes about the deepest unmet need of our culture. We are inclined to believe that what we know is most important, as if mere knowledge is sufficient to change behavior. It is not. What we need is a change of heart.
In the Bible the “Heart” is not just a pump that powers the circulatory system. It is the seat of our mind and emotions. The heart is where what we know, desire and will meet in the unity of a person. It is the center of our personality which powerful guides who we are, who we become, the decisions we make, and the instincts we follow. The change of heart we need is a change induced by a changed relationship with God, with other people, and with God’s creation.
Relational knowing and relational changes take time. Changes of heart normally do not occur in an instant, and when they do, there is often a long period of time before that change of heart is reflected in behavior. In fact, the deepest changes of our personality require both a change of mind and a change of behavior. This change of behavior finally results in a deep change in our personality.
One of the biggest changes our culture needs is from a kind of untrammeled individualism to a deep sense of belonging to and being in communion with a spiritual, natural and moral order created by God and a community formed in congruence with order. Both the order of the world and the order of society are older, bigger, and wiser than we are. Humility and teachability are two of the most important qualities we can develop as human beings. It is a first step—and a big step—toward happiness and success in life.
Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] This blog is based on a chapter from G. Christopher Scruggs, Path of Life: The Way of Wisdom for Christ-Followers (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 36-46.
[2] G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: the Way of Light and Love (Memphis, TN: Permisio Por Favor, 2010).
[3] Theologians distinguish between “common” and “natural” grace, the loving provision that God gives to everyone and “supernatural or saving grace,” the special grace by which we know the true God and understand his provision for us in Christ. See, Emile Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, previously cited, 89ff.
[4] Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen,William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).