Humility is Sagehood

By Matt Watson

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7

Sages

To be a Christian is to be a life-long learner. Not always in a formal, scholastic way, but as we grow and mature, we also grow in wisdom. It is generally true that a grandparent has greater wisdom and knowledge of the world than a child, and this is partly due to the natural process of simply growing older and having life experiences. 

However, for the Christian, it is more than passively growing older. As we are lifelong cultivators making disciples, lifelong rulers having dominion of wherever God has placed us, and lifelong warriors fighting sin and advancing the kingdom, so too are we lifelong sages growing in our knowledge of the Lord. 

The first line of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses states, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Said another way: for the believer, all of life is repentance. All of life is turning away from sin, the corruption of our flesh, from temptation, and the schemes of the enemy, and turning back to God. In so doing, we grow by the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us and makes us look more like Jesus. For the Christian, this is a lifelong process where we are constantly growing as children of our Father.

This whole process can be summed up by a popular slogan from the Protestant Reformation: semper reformanda, or “always reforming.” This does not mean we are always trying to change the way things are done or on the bleeding edge of church and culture. The grammar of this Latin phrase means that reformation is always happening to you and me as a person by the Holy Spirit. 

What does the Bible say? 

Even our Lord Jesus learned. Yes, he is God the Son, and as God, he shares in omniscience or all-knowing. Yet, he was also born an infant and grew up to be a man. Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “learned obedience” through his suffering. He is the perfect Son of God, but even he had to learn, just as the rest of humanity learns.

We even have an account of a 12-year-old Jesus in the temple learning from the priests. Luke 2:46-47 says, “After three days [his parents] found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” If Jesus grew in his understanding of his Father’s work, then so too should we be devoted to growing in that same understanding.

“Growing in understanding,” or learning, starts with fearing the Lord (Prov 1:7). Solomon, famously the wisest of all Israel’s king’s apart from Jesus, said that the whole duty of man is to “fear God and keep his commandments” (Eccl 12:13). If we do not follow the Lord in obedience as Jesus did, then the Bible says we are nothing but fools, like dogs returning to their vomit (Prov 26:11) rather than learning from our mistakes.

Jesus also says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37-38). Likewise, Romans 12:1-2 argues that renewing our minds is an act of spiritual worship. Therefore, God takes knowledge and learning seriously and frequently prods his people to learn and grow, not just in holiness but also in wisdom. 

How to be a sage

In the letter to the church in Rome, Paul spends 11 chapters laying out complex theology in what is considered some of the richest teaching in all of Scripture. At the end of chapter 11, it seems he can’t take it any longer and blurts out praise. He says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:33-36). 

God is so high and so deep, so above us, that it seems impossible to know him. Yet, at the same time, we do have access to God and can know him through Jesus Christ. His depths or so deep that we can always, as C.S. Lewis puts it in the last book of the Narnia series, “go further up and further in” with God. 

The first and primary way we go further up and further is by devoting ourselves to his Word. The Bible is his revealed will, and by being sages of his Word, we then grow in knowing our Father. Psalm 119 demonstrates the importance of continually drinking from the well of God’s Word and is itself a meditation of the Lord’s commandments. Every Christian is called to this, no matter what age, life stage, or relationship status.

Second, husbands should be sages of their wives, and wives sages of their husbands. Rather than taking them for granted, men should constantly learn more about their wives and how they can love and serve them. The duty of the man is to love her like Jesus loves his bride (Eph 5:25-26). Likewise, wives must be sages and learners of their husbands so that they can grow in helping him on God’s mission (Gen 2:18; Eph 5:22-24). 

To learn is to have humility. To believe others have something to teach us about themselves or the world. The world is too complex for our simplistic world-views. People cannot be reduced to zodiac signs or personality test acronyms or numbers. God does not actually fit into our theological models. Every day, in every situation, we do not have all the necessary information and we need God’s Spirit to teach us the way to best love others.

Lastly, we are to be sages for others. The Great Commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves. The Great Commission is to go forth to make disciples, teaching them to obey the Lord. In other words, we are to know God and help others know God. If God is the greatest of everything, then it is the most loving thing possible to introduce people to our wonderful, beautiful, holy, loving, just, all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful God. As we grow as sages of the Lord, may we also be helping others to do the same.