Christian Philosophy: How Christ Fulfills Proverbs 10:14

Image Credit: Media from Wix

This week in this blog’s Proverbs series, we come across Proverbs 10:14. The text reads: “Wise men lay up knowledge: but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction.”

The first clause says that wise men lay up knowledge. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and so we see that “wise” is an adjective that perfectly applies to Him. Furthermore, while He is God, He also is man (John 1:1-14). While God the Son only possessed a Divine Nature before His virgin-birth, ever since the Holy Spirit’s conception of Him in a virgin’s womb (Matthew 1:20-23), He has possessed, and will eternally possess, alongside His Divine Nature, a human nature (Colossians 2:9). And this human nature is free from sin, unlike any other man’s nature (Hebrews 4:15). So, since Christ is wise, being the Wisdom of God, and also a man, being 100% God and 100% man, He is, ultimately, the Wise Man spoken of here in this first clause of Proverbs 10:14. Furthermore, as the Wise Man, He, as this same clause goes on to say, “lay[s] up knowledge.” The original Hebrew word here translated “lay up” can also be translated as “store up.” [1] So, Christ stores up knowledge, similar to how a rich man stores up money. Although “knowledge” is such a basic term that it may seem ridiculous to define it, I will attempt nevertheless to do so here. The best way we can do so here is to consider the knowledge of God Himself, which is a knowledge that literally covers all facts about all things, all of which He is the Creator of. Indeed, we call God’s knowledge “omniscience,” which means “all knowledge.” When we say that God knows all facts about all things, we mean that, instead of being ignorant of any facts (i.e., lacking awareness of any facts), God is aware of all facts. He knows all things and all details concerning those things. This awareness is what the Lord Jesus Christ stores up. One sense in which He stores it up, which is the only sense I’ll talk about here, is that He stores up knowledge in the infinite space of His mind, like a retailer stores up its products in a vast storage room. Christ, as the Wise Man, stores up knowledge, or awareness of facts about things.

The second clause tells us that the mouth of the foolish is near destruction. Since foolishness is the opposite of wisdom, and since Christ is wisdom, foolishness is the opposite of Christ. So, foolishness is simply a synonym for christlessness. And christlessness reigns in the hearts and minds of all men outside of Him (Ephesians 2:1-3). And the christless, who manifest their christlessness by their foolishness, have their mouths near destruction. What do mouths do? Alongside eating, drinking, and breathing, they talk. They express their possessors’ thoughts and feelings. So, again, it is the mouths, which perform all these functions, of these christless and foolish men that is “near destruction.” When one says, for example, that a car is near a house, that person obviously means the car is close to the house. So, the foolish man’s mouth is “close to” destruction. And it will soon be clear why! The Lord tells us, in Matthew 12:33-35, that a man’s words are good or bad according to the moral state of his heart. Since we know that the foolish are, by nature, christless, they speak vile things, which are opposed to the loveliness, goodness, and rightness of Christ’s words. While Christ’s words are wisdom, the christless men’s words are foolishness. And it is because of this foolishness they spew that the foolish men’s mouths are close to destruction. Their lack of wisdom brings them to the brink of ruin. So, to sum this second clause up, the christless man, because of the foolishness that characterizes him, speaks foolish things and, because of these verbal sins, finds himself close to his destruction.

Now, as with the other proverbs we’ve covered so far, we have a picture of the Christian, the imitator of Christ (1 John 2:6), as well as of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself here. The Christian, as one becoming conformed to Christ (Romans 8:29), is becoming conformed to Wisdom. So, the Christian, insofar as he acts according to Christ, whose Name he bears (2 Timothy 2:19), is a wise man. And, as a wise man, he also lays up, or stores up, knowledge. And he uses this knowledge to love and serve God (Matthew 22:37-38). Does this fit you, reader? Or does the portrait of the foolish man, in the proverb’s second clause, picture you?

[1] https://biblehub.com/interlinear/proverbs/10-14.htm