“Earthly Wisdom”

Sunday, February 16, 2025

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

(James 3.14-16)

We usually consider wisdom to be morally good. But there are two types of wisdom: heavenly and earthly. Whereas heavenly wisdom is always good, earthly wisdom is sometimes very bad. Consider Ahithophel, one of King David’s counsellors. His advice “was as if one consulted the word of God; so was all the counsel of Ahithophel esteemed” (2Sa 16.23). Yet what counsel did he give?

“Go in to your father’s concubines, whom he has left to keep the house, and all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench to your father, and the hands of all who are with you will be strengthened.”

(2 Samuel 16.21)

It’s tough to call that “good” advice, since it’s clearly a grotesque sin. However, it was certainly a clever and effective course of action, which—setting aside the moral dimension—is the very definition of wisdom.

Solomon was the wisest man in the world (1Ki 10.23), yet he saw wisdom’s limits. In despair he asked, “what advantage has the wise man over the fool?” (Ec 6.8). He even went so far as to warn, “do not make yourself too wise” (7.16). This is jarring, but we could perhaps explain it away by supposing that Solomon means only earthly wisdom absent any moral value, and thereby preserve his standards of right and wrong. Yet in the first half of the sentence he said, “Be not overly righteous,” which is much harder to excuse! To be fair, this applies spiritually to our self-perception; but a more straightforward interpretation is just that Solomon is using earthly wisdom to assess earthly wisdom’s usefulness! What the world might consider excessive goodness or wisdom attracts the hatred of wicked people, and therefore makes the righteous and the wise targets for persecution. Of course, from the heavenly perspective, “this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly” (1Pe 2.19); but earthly wisdom can’t see from that vantage point!

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

(1 Corinthians 1.20-25)

Like James, Paul also contrasts earthly and heavenly wisdom. Neither says that earthly wisdom is no wisdom at all. Paul comes close, by labeling man’s wisdom “foolishness” in comparison to God’s; but throughout this context he concedes that what is “wise according to worldly standards” (v26) is, indeed, wise. His point is simply that God’s wisdom far surpasses man’s. James characterized man’s wisdom in a list:

Earthly

As discussed above, it’s not just that man’s wisdom prefers the earth over heaven; rather, the heavenly perspective is foreign and inaccessible, to earthly wisdom! The best of man’s wisdom helps them “feel their way toward” God (Ac 17.27), and “honor him as God” (Ro 1.21), even if they worship what they do not know (Jn 4.22). But in general, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (v22), and proceeded to misrepresent God and worship the work of their own hands.

Unspiritual

Earthly wisdom is about the physical realm.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

(1 Corinthians 2.14)

Demonic

Earthly wisdom is “unspiritual,” but demons are spiritual beings—for example, “the demon” in Luke 4.35 is “the unclean spirit” in Mark 1.26. This demon invaded a man’s flesh and directed it to disordered, evil purposes. Earthly wisdom may be blind to the spiritual realm, but it can’t really escape it! There is no neutral ground between heaven and hell.

Jealous and Ambitious

These two qualities illuminate the problem with earthly wisdom. In the absence of heavenly principles like love, the only sensible goal is to please oneself. Even good deeds become a calculation in reward-seeking. If helping an old lady cross the street can somehow benefit you, then it’s worth doing. Otherwise, the purest earthly wisdom would dictate leaving her to take her chances alone.

§

The world’s wisdom usually paints over its worst results, due to an inkling of heavenly wisdom, or because an honest assessment would horrify common decency. But as Paul wrote, if this life is all there is, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1Co 15.32). Then it would be nothing but an exercise in staving off pain and boredom, with no meaning or purpose to anything we do. It’s no wonder rejecting heavenly wisdom leads to “disorder and every vile practice” (Ja 3.16)! But praise the Lord! In his wisdom he descended to earth and became flesh, not only to share heaven’s wisdom with us, but also to rescue us from foolish, disordered, and vile pursuits, redeeming us for honorable purposes.

Jeremy Nettles

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