We are going to see a character known as wisdom and the character is spoken of in female terms. Proverbs 8:22-31 and in chapter 8, wisdom is speaking at the beginning of the chapter, and in verse 22 The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old…then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. Wisdom is cast as a co-creator in the Old Testament. We see that wisdom was the agent, but who or what was wisdom?
In the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament there is a very large body of literature that’s written by Jewish rabbis and scholars and thinker, religious authorities on all stripes, and they know their Old Testament. They comment and produce a lot of material that deals with wisdom. In Wisdom of Solomon 6:22, I will tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be, and I will hide no secrets from you. But I will trace her course from the beginning of creation, and make knowledge of her clear, and I will not pass by the truth.
I could produce a lot of text for you about wisdom, think of Proverbs, you may have not even thought about what you were reading in chapter 8, that all of a sudden wisdom is a person that’s a co-creator right there at creation. You probably thought, and for really good reason, and this is accurate as well, that wisdom is about right living, it’s about obeying the commandments of God. In fact, wisdom literature is the commandments of God, it’s God laying out his will, it’s giving you the repository of how you are supposed to live, it’s good for you, it’s the best for you. God knows what’s best. The Jews thought of Proverbs that way, and they thought of wisdom that way. In fact, to the Jew, wisdom was the Torah. They believe that the law was eternal, that it was there when God was there. Now, that’s quite a bit different than what the New Testament writers are going to do with it. Because the Jew takes all of that “person” language and “embodiment” language and transfers it to the Torah and they made the law the focus of all that they were about. It was as though the law had an existence and a personality all of its own, it was an extension of Yahweh.
Now, Paul and some of the other New Testament writers, what are they constantly talking about? That righteousness doesn’t come by the law. It comes by this person, Jesus. That person, that second person right there is God, he is wisdom, he is the word, he is the angel, all these things that we associate with embodied deity in the Old Testament. So you can see that the conflict is transparent, it’s Christ and the Law. Which wisdom is it? Which word is it? Is it this person, Jesus of Nazareth, or is it the Torah? Jesus says, I didn’t come to do away with the Torah, I came to fulfill it. Jesus is the embodiment of it. The New Testament writers, wisdom is an equation pushing the Torah aside, the Torah is not the co-creator. The Torah is not God’s answer for everything, wisdom is, but wisdom is Jesus.
In the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament there is a very large body of literature that’s written by Jewish rabbis and scholars and thinker, religious authorities on all stripes, and they know their Old Testament. They comment and produce a lot of material that deals with wisdom. In Wisdom of Solomon 6:22, I will tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be, and I will hide no secrets from you. But I will trace her course from the beginning of creation, and make knowledge of her clear, and I will not pass by the truth.
I could produce a lot of text for you about wisdom, think of Proverbs, you may have not even thought about what you were reading in chapter 8, that all of a sudden wisdom is a person that’s a co-creator right there at creation. You probably thought, and for really good reason, and this is accurate as well, that wisdom is about right living, it’s about obeying the commandments of God. In fact, wisdom literature is the commandments of God, it’s God laying out his will, it’s giving you the repository of how you are supposed to live, it’s good for you, it’s the best for you. God knows what’s best. The Jews thought of Proverbs that way, and they thought of wisdom that way. In fact, to the Jew, wisdom was the Torah. They believe that the law was eternal, that it was there when God was there. Now, that’s quite a bit different than what the New Testament writers are going to do with it. Because the Jew takes all of that “person” language and “embodiment” language and transfers it to the Torah and they made the law the focus of all that they were about. It was as though the law had an existence and a personality all of its own, it was an extension of Yahweh.
Now, Paul and some of the other New Testament writers, what are they constantly talking about? That righteousness doesn’t come by the law. It comes by this person, Jesus. That person, that second person right there is God, he is wisdom, he is the word, he is the angel, all these things that we associate with embodied deity in the Old Testament. So you can see that the conflict is transparent, it’s Christ and the Law. Which wisdom is it? Which word is it? Is it this person, Jesus of Nazareth, or is it the Torah? Jesus says, I didn’t come to do away with the Torah, I came to fulfill it. Jesus is the embodiment of it. The New Testament writers, wisdom is an equation pushing the Torah aside, the Torah is not the co-creator. The Torah is not God’s answer for everything, wisdom is, but wisdom is Jesus.
