What Is Biblical Wisdom? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

The word philosophy combines two important Greek words: the first part of the word comes from the Greek phileō, which means “to love.” We are familiar

with this word in the English language because we all know the meaning of the city of Philadelphia—the city of brotherly love. Some may also be familiar with this word from Jesus’ conversation with Peter in John 21, where Jesus repeatedly asks Peter, “Do you love me?” (vv. 15–17). In this exchange, the New Testament uses two different words that are both translated by the English word love. The first is agapē, which is the spiritual love, the zenith of love, the kind of love that God sheds abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And there is also philia, which is used for brotherly love and affection. This is the word that was joined here to the word philosophy.

The second part of the word philosophy comes from another Greek word, sophia, which ...

When you combine these words, philia and sophia, the simple meaning of the term philosoph...

For the Jew, wisdom meant an understanding, practically speaking, of how to live a life that is pleasing to God. It was the pursuit of godliness that was the central concern of the writers of Hebrew Wisdom Literature. And they say at the very beginning that the absolute, foundational, necessary condition for anyone to have true wisdom is that he must first possess and cultivate a fear of the Lord.

According to the Bible, to be called a fool is to be deemed irreligious and godless. The fool is the person who has no respect or reverence for God, and when someone does not have any reverence

for God or adoration in his heart toward Him, his life will inevitably show it.

One of the most familiar examples of this type of parallelism is found in the Aaronic benediction: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Num. 6:24–26). In this example, there are three lines, and each line contains two ideas. The first line says, “The LORD bless you and keep you.” The next line has that same couplet, but with different words. The first part, “the LORD make his face to shine

upon you,” means the same thing as “May He bless you.” And the second part, “be gracious to you,” is virtually the same as “keep you.” The final line, “the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace,” reiterates what the first and second lines say.

Consider the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He made this statement: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13). This can be confusing to many people because the book of James teaches, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (1:13). God doesn’t tempt anyone in the sense of luring or enticing him to sin. That would cast a shadow on the holiness of God. If the Bible looks askance at such an idea,

why would Jesus say, “Lead us not into temptation”? This apparent contradiction is clarified when we read the next line of the Lord’s Prayer, which amplifies the request of “lead us not into temptation” by saying “but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13). The word that is commonly used in Greek to refer to evil is ponēros. When the Bible uses this term in the abstract, it occurs in the neuter gender, ponēron. But in the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus says “but deliver us from evil,” He doesn’t use the neuter gender form of ponēros. Instead, He uses the masculine form with the definite article “the.” Thus, a more accurate translation would be this: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from

the evil one.” Ponēros is a frequent designation in Sc...

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is essentially saying: “My Father put Me to the test. My Father asked Me to go and wrestle for forty days and forty nights with the unbridled assault of Satan. When you pray, pray that you would be spared from that.”

to lead us into temptation is to say: “Father, don’t send me to the place of testing or ask me to bear that kind of difficulty. Instead, deliver me from ponēros, the evil one.”

One biblical text that many have found confusing, particularly in older translations, is Isaiah 45:7. It reads, “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.” This passage may appear to be teaching that God is the author of evil—that He creates evil. And if that’s true, that would make God evil. However, there are about eight different words that can be translated as “evil” in Hebrew. And if we read carefully, we can recognize that antithetical parallelism is being employed in this passage. Notice the first line: “I form light and create darkness.” Light and darkness are set in contrast to each other. The next statement says, “I make well-being and create

calamity.” Another way of saying that would be, “I bring prosperity and bring judgment.”

True prayer comes from the heart. It’s not just an expression of phrases or carefully devised sentences. Prayer is a tender moment of a soul speaking to God directly. When we hear others pray like that, there’s almost a sense that we’re violating their privacy.

So we should read the Psalms not just to gain a better vocabulary and become more articulate in our prayers but also to learn the spirit of prayer.

We look to the book of Psalms as our model of wisdom in prayer. As we daily immerse ourselves in the Psalms, the sacred literature of prayer and adoration contained in it will begin to run through the fiber of our lives.

In ancient days, the image of black goats descending a green mountainside was a beautiful sight to the people. They would see someone with beautiful, flowing, black hair—rich and deep like the color of these goats—and they would say, “Your hair reminds me of a flock of goats moving down the slopes of Gilead.” That was a compliment, not an insult.