Characteristics of God's Wisdom

James 3:17-18

17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

Hello! We have today an encouraging verse. God shows us thru James what Godly wisdom is like. He has shown us in the previous verses of James 3:14-16 what is ungodly wisdom. Now James is giving us the contrasting truths God showed him. God’s wisdom - from above - is pure.

Do you know what pure is? Remember the verse Jesus gave about the eye being single. It is the same concept. A single and pure focus. Pure from sin or ideas and thoughts that are sinful. God’s wisdom is free of all taint of wrong thinking, attitudes, and action. God only sends pure wisdom. We are the ones who taint it with our own ideas. How? Picture a couple of people trying to communicate with each other and one person is behind a clear glass window, but the other person is behind a smudged smokey window. The clear glass represents the message going from the one and the smudged smokey glass represents mind of the person receiving the message. You may say, but since we have been washed from sin and are new creations, how can that be? You have to remember, when you received the Holy Spirit, even though He joined Himself to your spirit, you have still a soul to be cleaned up. Remember how Paul spoke of being sanctified? Remember how Peter spoke of being purified by the obedience to the truth? Our soul being so intimately connected to our flesh can get swayed awfully easily to sin. But you see even though that is true, sin no longer has dominion over us because of the Holy Spirit living in us, so we can choose to obey God. The more obedient we are to God in all things, the cleaner the glass of our minds become and the message comes in much clearer.

Another analogy would be a radio communication. One person sends over radio waves from his microphone-or cell phone to another who is receiving thru his radio or cell phone. But sometimes there is a lot of static that messes up the reception. To make this fit what I am saying, we will say that the person receiving the message has a faulty radio or phone. So there is all this static interfering with what we are hearing. When it comes to hearing God with a pure heart-it takes having that pure heart in order to have clear hearing regarding what God is saying.

So God sends us His pure wisdom. We just don’t always hear it right. Not only does God send us His pure wisdom, but it is a wisdom that is peaceable. If you find the wisdom you have is not peaceable, then you need to automatically be suspect of it.

Not only is God’s wisdom peaceable, but it is gentle. Are you gentle in the way you deal with people? I am not nearly as much as I need be and this is showing me right now I need to make some changes. Wow. Am I ever glad I am going through this material with all of you. Should have realized this years ago. And I mean years ago. God is so merciful, folks. Let this statement of James convict you too.

Not only is it gentle, but it is reasonable, open to reason, easy to be entreated. I think the RSV gives us the best translation of the Greek word "eupeithees". The meaning of this word-it comes from two Greek words and suggests that one can reason with the person with God’s wisdom. It sounds to me as if the person can be approached with an idea or suggestion and be willing to listen and evaluate rather than just rejecting out of hand what the person says. So this suggests to me that a Christian following God doesn’t have to be closed minded, yet the interesting thing is we must be closed minded when it comes to accepting anything contrary to scripture. I believe what James is getting at here is that Christians need to have a receptive attitude toward people and allow them their say and then evaluate it. Doesn’t God do that for you? He does for me.

Now God’s wisdom is also full of mercy. Really, when God listens to us and says either OK or NO, He is not only being reasonable but is also being merciful. We need to remember to practice mercy. After all, God did the most merciful thing of all by sending His Son to pay for our sins and free us from the power of sin. So let us remember to practice mercy.

James tells us too that God’s wisdom is full of good fruits. Go to Galatians 5:22-23 for a list of the fruit of the Spirit.

Lastly, James tells us that God’s wisdom is without partiality and hypocrisy. Do you know what it is to be partial? Remember what I covered in May-the two devotionals I sent on not showing favoritism? See God doesn’t show favoritism among His own. He is impartial and that is one of the reasons we can call Him a just God. Anyone in authority who is partial cannot exercise his authority justly. In James’ times, you seldom found a judge who wasn’t partial and who did not accept bribes. You find them more now today because of Christianity, but sad to say there are still plenty in every country of the world who practice partiality in their judgments.

Hypocrisy. God’s wisdom is not hypocritical. He has never required from us what He has not required from Himself. The self sacrifice He calls us to, He too has done. The cross is proof of that. Jesus is proof of that. May I suggest to you, folks, to memorize that verse. It will help you to keep a handle on your behavior and serve as an excellent check and balance on your behavior.

God bless and have a great weekend. The Good News Lady