God Only Wise

Ch 9 - God Only Wise

I really enjoyed this chapter, and apart from a few quibbles over Packer's view of Abraham and Jacob, I'd say this chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.

Packer begins outlining what wisdom is:

Wisdom is the power to see, the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it. Wisdom is in fact, the practical side of moral goodness.

God's wisdom is not like ours for a number of reasons:
'Human wisdom can be frustrated by circumstantial factors outside the person's control' ... but God's wisdom cannot because his wisdom is allied with his power and knowledge (total in both cases):

His wisdom is profound, his power is vast (Job 9:4)
To God belong wisdom and power (Job 12:13)
He is mighty in strength and wisdom (Job 36:5)
He has 'great power and mighty strength .... and his understanding no one can fathom' (Isaiah 40:26, 28)
Wisdom and power are his (Dan 2:20)
Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel ... God only wise ... (Romans 16:25,27)

Wisdom without power would be pathetic, a broken reed; power without wisdom would be merely frightening; but in God boundless wisdom and endless power are
united, and this makes him utterly worthy of our fullest trust.

But, importantly, it is God's wisdom NOT ours (or what we think is wisdom!)...:

God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.

What is his goal for us / in his world?
His goal is: ...that we love and honour him, praising him for the wonderfully ordered complexity and variety of his world, using it according to his will, and so enjoying both it and him. And though we are fallen, God has not abandoned his first purpose. Still he plans that a great host of mankind should come to love and honour him. His ultimate objective is to bring them to a state in which they please him entirely and praise him adequately, a state in which he is all in all to them, and he and they rejoice continually in the knowledge of each other's love.
And he does this through the gospel.

Packer then illustrates God's wisdom in the life of Abraham and Jacob. I quibble here with his take on Abraham and Jacob and perhaps I will get around to saying why in due course. But not today. It doesn't matter. The point remains and is clear in their lives as in the rest of Scripture - that God orders all things wisely and well, even wickedness, discouragement, frustrations and shortcoming. Ask Job about that. We'll come to him in a moment.

So...

We should not, therefore, be too taken aback when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen to us now. What do they mean? Why, simply that God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet, and he is dealing with us accordingly.

Perhaps he means to strengthen us in patience, good humor, compassion, humility, or meekness, by giving us some extra practice in exercising these graces under specially difficult positions. Perhaps he has new lessons in self-denial and self-distrust to teach us. Perhaps he wishes to break us of complacency, or unreality, or undetected forms of price and conceit.

Packer goes on with many other examples of what God might be wisely doing when it seems to us that the word to describe it anything but wise! Not that this is easy:

We may be frankly bewildered at things that happen to us, but God knows exactly what he is doing, and what he is after, in his handling of our affairs. Always, and in everything, he is wise; we shall see that hereafter, even where we never saw it here. (Job in heaven knows the full reason why he was afflicted, though he never knew it in his life.) Meanwhile, we ought not ot hestitate to trust his wisdom, even when he leaves us in the dark.

Wisely (!) Packer then addresses the obvious question ... ok, so how do I face these perplexing, 'purposeless' yet 'purposeful' situations? First, take them as from God and seek with his help in his word and by prayer to see what God requires of us in them. Second, to seek God's face specifially about them. If we do this, we won't be in the pitch black about God's purpose in our troubles.

He closes focusing on the example of Paul, whose 'thorn in the flesh' was just that kind of thing. Paul came to realise that God's grace is sufficient for him, God's power made perfect in weakness. On reflection he realised that God's goal in him was humility, because Paul was a special man, chosen by God for a unique task and given some special revelations that could have made him proud. Instead God brought him to 'boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me' (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

Whatever purposes God has for us in our trials they will at least be to humble us, to keep us humble and to give us a new opportunity to experience and show forth the power of Christ in our lives.

Once Paul saw that his trouble was sent to enable him to glorify Christ, he accepted it as wisely appointed, and rejoiced in it. God give us grace, in all our own troubles, to go and do likewise.