The Fear of the Lord
In the first chapter and seventh verse of Proverbs, it states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” This is a foundational verse at the outset of the book of Proverbs, and it is a foundational verse for any learning—Christian or otherwise. First, it assumes several things, namely, (1) there can be a fear of the Lord, (2) knowledge is accessible to all, and (3) the fear of the Lord is necessary for true knowledge. Second, the verse begs the question, “what is the fear of the Lord?” The Bible answers this question, albeit indirectly.
The phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” is used twenty-five times in the Bible, with twenty-three times (or ninety-two percent) usage found in the Old Testament. This is fascinating on many levels, but mainly because God is establishing throughout His dealings with humanity in history that to fear Him is to understand something unique about not only Him, but the things He created. Further, of the twenty-five times this phrase is used in the Bible, it is used fourteen times (or fifty-six percent) in the book of Proverbs.
Thus, one can assume that the concentration of understanding “the fear of the Lord,” which leads to true knowledge is found in the Proverbs. It is safe also to assume that drawing a specific definition and meaning of the phrase would be found in the book of Proverbs as well. However, what we find is that this phrase remains largely enigmatic. One is left to draw from patterns and context where the phrase is used instead of being given an exact meaning of the phrase. In other words, there is enough information in the twenty-five verses used regarding this phrase to make a strong case as to the meaning, while at the same time not formulaically applying a standard to a mysterious biblical concept.
With that being said, then, I want to make the case that to fear the Lord, one must “hate evil,”[1] and to hate evil one must love God. Therefore, the person who fears the Lord has a trust in God that recognizes God’s creative acts and His sovereign care. In other words, one who fears the Lord both recognizes their separation from God because of their evil, and subsequently turns to God in faith to bring them to a place of reconciled relationship with God.
The practical outworking of this transfer of trust from oneself to be right with God to God is a changed heart. And a changed heart can see and understand how knowledge is for more than just filling the mind, but changing a life, i.e., transformation. This person—in the fear of the Lord—walks into life with the potential to be changed and to change others. Thus, it is safe to say, “Pedagogically, the fear of the Lord is the beginning and end of true Christian teaching. The goal is not prestigious exclusivity but humble repentance and reconciliation. The fear of the Lord is the intellectual place where wise disciple-makers of all disciplines desire their disciples to focus habitually.”[2]
Thus, to reach more than just the mind of a student, the disciple-maker must aim for the heart. What connects the heart to the mind is more than just a transfer of knowledge. Information is good and “of course, textbooks can wield significant influence, and shaping course content responsibly surely matters. Yet the shape of the teaching and learning process affects how students access and experience that content, helping weave the web of values, relationships, and actions within which learning becomes meaningful. An account of Christian education that focuses only on the truth of what is taught and fails to address the meanings molded through how it is taught and learned is at best incomplete.”[3] Thus, the responsibility of the Christian disciple-maker is to bring knowledge to the center of understanding. All the while, the aim is transformation of the heart, not just knowledge acquisition, which leads us to biblical knowledge.
Biblical Knowledge
The book of Proverbs uses the word knowledge thirty-nine times. The word generally means, “the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning”[4]. The idea being that information has to be first transferred to someone with the capacity to make sense of the information. The word knowledge is used as part of a metaphor teaching that knowledge fills the room with precious and pleasant riches. The notion that knowledge “fills” is a critical piece to transformative learning.
First, it implies that knowledge is necessary. There is always the temptation to both trivialize and over-emphasize the distinct significance of knowledge in the process of learning. Both contribute to knowledge’s detriment. Second, knowledge not only fills a room, but does so—according to the author of Proverbs—bringing both value and delight. In the case of value, knowledge takes a room that is barren and empty and brings valuable items inside. Secondly, those items are not only to be utilized, but also bring inherent pleasant delight.
However, as with anything the value and the delight need a context or a frame of reference for lasting enjoyment. In other words, a picture on a wall may be to some of great value and to others a pleasant delight, but if it is not placed in a broader context then it loses both value and delight. This is the challenge with mere knowledge transfer.
If a disciple merely stops at gaining knowledge, then his rooms are filled with precious and pleasant delights, but they are not utilized or enjoyed in the long term. There is potential, but not realized experience. That’s why the apostle Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that knowledge alone puffs up. There must be more than mere transfer of knowledge and the filling of heads (rooms) with precious and pleasant riches (information).
Thus, there is an indirect correlation to the student receiving only knowledge and his life being transformed. In other words, if knowledge transfer is the aim, then the life a student will struggle to change. He may pass exams, ace tests, but without understanding of the knowledge, he’ll remain full but not understood. That is where biblical understanding steps in.
Biblical Understanding
Like knowledge, the word, understanding, is used multiple times in the book of Proverbs. In fact, it is used nineteen times, and it has two general meanings. The first is, “the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination,” and “the cognitive condition of someone who understands”[5].
However, the author of Proverbs once again makes clear the need for understanding the why behind the what when he says, “knowledge is easy to him that has understanding.”[6] The essence of the meaning is the ability or the capacity to place the pieces of knowledge into the bigger scope of the puzzle. In other words, as information is transferred in sections or pieces to a student, the student therefore understands the information when he sees how the pieces fit together—in any subject.
The difference between understanding in a general sense and biblical understanding is the student makes the connection to the larger story taken from Scripture. The larger story of God’s redemptive plan ties the student into a broader vision for learning. When this type of understanding occurs, then the heart is affected and not just the mind.
For instance, there is the story of Jonah in the Bible. Jonah was a prophet of ancient Israel asked to bring a message of salvation to their ancient enemies, the Assyrians. Jonah knew that this task was given to him by God, but he did not understand the request. Thus, Jonah retreated with knowledge, but not understanding. In the end, God expressed His displeasure with Jonah and taught not only Jonah but every reader since that God is compassionate and seeks that none perish. In the case of Jonah, he knew what to do but he did not understand.
Therefore, his actions were motivated by mere knowledge and not the connection of knowledge and understanding. If, on the other hand, Jonah had remembered the promises to Abraham back in Genesis 12, which stated that Abraham’s seed would be a blessing to the nations, then Jonah might have connected the dots or fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Furthermore, if Jonah would have remembered and understood even more about God’s heart for all people, then he would have recalled that ever since Genesis 3 and the promise that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head, God has already promised to restore the brokenness of sin brought about through the Devil’s deceit. Jonah had knowledge, but Jonah did not have broader biblical understanding.
Biblical understanding moves the soul. As previously mentioned, there is a problem if one merely stops at understanding though. You are just a passionate person with a bunch of knowledge. You can know information about something, and you can see how it fits together—it may make complete sense—but if a student does not apply it to their life, then it is useless. In other words, one may know that telling a lie is bad, and one may understand that telling a lie brings (and has brought in history) consequences, but if one still lies then knowledge and understanding are for naught. A connection of biblical knowledge and biblical understanding must be made, and then applied to life. This leads us to biblical wisdom.
Biblical Wisdom
In each generation there has been the voices of reason, of clarity, and of insight. Throughout time, philosophers have made their indelible mark and contribution to myriad thoughts and ultimately adding at some level to the shaping of our present society. No doubt, the so-called thinker’s contribution to society has served society well. In the final analysis, though, philosophy and the shaping of society has simply grown on a trellis of established forethought. Even when we consult Aristotle—as a student of Plato and ultimately Socrates—and his philosophical concept of phronesis, which explains “phronesis as ‘a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods,’”[7] we are left without an absolute and outside-of-man’s-thought grounding. While the essence of acting with human good is critical to knowledge acquisition is still needs an absolute foundation—outside of man’s thoughts—from which to build.
Otherwise, who defines “human good” and how do we know when we have accomplished such an endeavor as a disciple-maker? There must be more than a universal understanding of how to live rooted on philosophical thought. The Bible—God’s very words—must inform the human mind and frame his understanding of knowledge.
Thus, “the ultimate framework of Christian understanding is not a theory about the cosmos but a story about the Christ. This is the difference between the wisdom of Socrates and the wisdom of Jesus. Socrates thought that reason could reach eternal truth, yet eternal truth is instead revealed where the world least expected it: in the story of a Galilean carpenter.”[8] In other words, any making of the nations, any establishing of civilizations, and any flourishing of humanity has been through a preordination of a Designer. I would argue that this Designer is the Judeo-Christian God. The God who has always existed as a Triunity and who not only created all things from nothing, but also sustains all things He created.
Intertwined and interrelated in the establishing of the world around us is wisdom. To be sure, wisdom was not an eternal being, but was instead part of creation to be the distinguishing mark of the Creator’s creation. In fact, the author of Proverbs once again sheds light into this reality in Proverbs 8:22-31:
“The Lord created me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. From eternity I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no ocean depths, I was born, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was born; while He had not yet made the earth and the fields, nor the first dust of the world. When He established the heavens, I was there; when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed, when He set a boundary for the sea so that the water would not violate His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth; then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was His delight daily, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of mankind.”
Here, we see several things; however, two are to be highlighted as it relates to the concept of biblical wisdom. First, as the world was being created, God placed wisdom as the forerunner to its creation. Second, wisdom was not only a worker alongside God as He created, but also a delightful presence. The consequence then is before there was any philosophical thought there was God’s preordination and utilization of wisdom to not only create, but to establish delight in His creation.
Therefore, one must conclude that there is a difference between wisdom that originates in the mind of man—through experience, intuition, and innate aptitude—and wisdom that originates in the mind of God, as it were. Further, wisdom that is from God is given to His creation through His Word. On the other hand, wisdom that is from humanity is given to other humans through one’s thoughts. Left to itself, humanity’s thoughts will not reach the heights, depths, nor scope of God’s wisdom.
And so, philosophically speaking, this is the “how.” In other words, it is applying knowledge and understanding to one’s everyday life. For instance, a person knows that speaking words of love to his spouse is good, and he may understand that it is the love language of his spouse that she so greatly desires. However, if he never gives her the gift of his words of love, then he is not wise (at least he’s not making wise applications of the knowledge and understanding he possesses). Knowledge alone puffs up. Understanding alone ignites passion. But wisdom makes reality and changes lives. Thus, the aim is to not only seek biblical wisdom in order to reach learning transformation, but also transfer the content of biblical wisdom in the learning process. To see how these fits in the education of young adults, we must first see how biblical wisdom is practically applied.
Making the Connection
“By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” Proverbs 24:3-4
These verses bring together biblical knowledge and biblical understanding. As the disciple is instructed in myriad subjects, there is a responsibility is to ensure that not only was the connection made between knowledge and understanding but that both were given space to cultivate application to their lives. Wisdom is the “how” of life—it is the application, and in this passage above, it how a house is built. Understanding is the “why” of life. To understand biblically means that one has a grasp larger than the pieces of information, but sees the how that information connects to a broader story written from God’s perspective. In this passage above then understanding is the foundation. Lastly, knowledge is the “what” of life. It is knowledge that fills the rooms with value and pleasure. It is knowledge that must first make its way into the minds of the students. It is knowledge that moves the student from learning to doing.
When all three—knowledge, understanding, and wisdom—are brought to bear in a young adult classroom, then the desired life transformation has the greatest opportunity to occur.
Next time, we’ll examine a biblical vision for true success using the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom grid detailed above.
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[1] Proverbs 8:13
[2] Edward P. Meadors., ed., Where Wisdom May Be Found, (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications, 2019), loc 460.
[3] David I. Smith, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing, 2018), 11.
[4] The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).
[5] The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).
[6] Proverbs 14:6
[7] Edward P. Meadors., ed., Where Wisdom May Be Found, (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications, 2019), loc 1463.
[8] Edward P. Meadors., ed., Where Wisdom May Be Found, (San Jose, CA: Pickwick Publications, 2019), loc 1273.
— October 13, 2021