by Garrett Glende

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” These are Paul’s words in Romans 11:33, proclaimed in response to eleven chapters of recounting the wonderful plan of salvation through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. What Paul is admiring here is the wisdom of God in bringing about His redemptive plan, which will also be our focus of study this week as we look at one of God’s communicable attributes. The wisdom of God is communicable insofar as we are able to make wise decisions that would bring glory to Him. We cannot fully know the wisdom of God (some things will happen without us knowing why), but the Christians do have the ability to seek after and apply godly wisdom to their lives.

Throughout Scripture, the quality of wisdom is ascribed to God. According to Wayne Grudem, the wisdom of God “means that God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals.” Not only does God know all things, but He also acts in such a way that the best possible outcome occurs. We see the wisdom of God in creation, as the psalmist writes, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). Job calls God “wise in heart” (Job 9:4), and Paul says that He is “the only wise God” (Rom. 16:27). We simply need to direct our eyes to the world around us and see the greatness of God’s wisdom in creating such a place. It was wise of God to make us with hands to hold things and mouths to eat with, yet this wisdom stretches far beyond our human existence. All of creation is purposefully and deliberately molded in such a way so that it works the way it does.

The pinnacle of the wisdom of God is seen through the events that took place on a hill called Golgotha. Here it was the will of the Lord to crush His Son for the sins of His people, providing a solution to the problem of sin, but all the while maintaining His holiness and justice. It is through the cross that we see most clearly the full spectrum of God’s character. We see His righteousness, justice, and wrath in punishing sin. And we see His love, grace, and mercy in providing a means of salvation for those who were once His enemies. Working off of Grudem’s definition of the wisdom of God, we can see clearly that the redemption of sinners was ultimately the most God glorifying goal and He chose the most God glorifying means to accomplish this goal. The cross is the apex of the glory of God because it so marvelously reveals the character of God without diminishing any one of His attributes. This is why Paul can make such an exclamation at the end of Romans 11 and say that he preaches Christ, the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23-24). The world says a man dying on a cross to save sinners is a foolish message, but we know that Christ has risen from the dead and we are able to see the incredible wisdom of God in the gospel.

The doctrine of the wisdom of God should have a direct influence on the way we live our lives. As Christians, we seek to live with wisdom, but how can we decide what is wise and what is not? Often times, there doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong choice, so it comes down to the amount of wisdom you can offer. We can extrapolate helpful guide to making these types of decisions by looking at the wisdom of God. Seeing that God expressed His wisdom most vividly through the cross, we must apply the same sort of rubric to our decision making process. We must evaluate each possible action in light of its reflection of the gospel. Ask yourself, “How does this choice magnify the death and resurrection of Christ?” In this way we walk in the wisdom of God by choosing to live guided by what God sees at wise, namely the exaltation of the glory of the cross.

First Corinthians 15 provides us with another similar principle. There were some in the church at Corinth who apparently denied the reality of the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:12). Paul makes the case that if there is no resurrection, then not even Christ has been raised, therefore “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Times haven’t changed much since then and there are still many who deny the resurrection. They deny all things supernatural and live their lives with no regard for eternity. But Christians must have the opposite perspective, setting their minds on things above. Unbelievers should look at our lives and pity us because we will not gather our treasures here on Earth. They’ll look at the choices we make and think we are fools. But all of it depends on whether or not Christ has indeed been raised. So the question to ask is, “Is this choice foolish if Christ has not come back to life?” Granted, there are some choices that are foolish regardless of Christ’s resurrection, but it isn’t difficult to identify those. We should seek to live foolishly in the eyes of the world, counting all as loss in view of knowing Christ and proclaiming His gospel to the nations.