Do not be wise in your own eyes...it could lead to your demise.

Probing Proverbs: 3:7–8 Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the LORD and turn away from evil. Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones. 

Every student wants to believe that they are very wise, I think this is normal. I know I felt it when I was in school. However, we need to be careful. I remember a friend at Bible college was always trying to discover something new that no other theologian had yet discovered. He came to me one day and claimed that he now understood how the Trinity worked. He said, God was the Father when He was in heaven, became the Son when He came to earth and then returned as the Holy Spirit after Jesus ascended. He wasn't trying to be a heretic, he just had a drive to have a superior “wisdom,” which we will see from this Proverb can be a dangerous thing. I asked him how he explained the baptism of Jesus, Who was in the water, the Father spoke from heaven and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. He got angry at me and told me I ruined his theory. Months later, we laughed together about this incident.

Here we are in a book that exhorts us to seek wisdom, yet now it is giving us a warning! There is no contradiction because the Proverb “qualifies” the wisdom it is warning us not to have. We are to seek wisdom, but not just any wisdom. “Our” wisdom is very different from God’s wisdom:

1 Corinthians 3:18–20 Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise.¹⁹ For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.” ²⁰ And again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are worthless.”

God desires us to use our brain, all of His Creation, even those that are not in a relationship with Him. This is usually “common sense” wisdom, like do not step out of a plane at 35,000 feet…gravity will kill you! This also is not speaking of intellectual abilities, God has gifted people of medicine, arts, science, etc. with differing abilities, each should use them in a proper way. The wisdom the Scriptures focuses on deals with eternal matters. This is where we get into trouble. We are neither infinite nor eternal in our perspective. We all possess “eternal existence,” our spirit with never cease to exist, but even that is not “eternal” in the sense the Scriptures describe. There is always a “qualifier” attached to this word. Either “life” or “death.” Life speaks of fullness, wholeness, and joy. Death is separation, which is described with various degrees of sorry.

It is in that light that this Proverb warns us to not be “impressed” with our own wisdom. It would be “wise” for us to heed this warning.

The word “impressed” is defined as: deeply or markedly affected or influenced. The Lord knows how easily pride can infiltrate the mind of man, and before he realizes it he thinks he is so wise that he believes his own counsel. We must remember our mind has been so affected by sin that we should not trust it alone.

This Proverb turns from that warning and gives us the right option, fear the Lord, which does not mean be afraid of Him in this context, it means respect His view and seek His counsel. That is why God's Word is so important, allowing His wisdom to filter what our mind leads us to do. We should praise God for our mind, but remember the wisdom we seek is from above so we need to be careful how highly we think our own wisdom is, remembering it this temporal, His is eternal.

James 1:5  But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

The so what? It is important to continue to learn, are you doing that? Do you have a set time to sit with God’s Word and learn from it? Who do you depend on the most, human teachers, or the Holy Spirit? In the last 6 months list what you have learned about God and life.