Who is wise?

Everyone has access to more information than any generation in history, yet most of us still feel stuck when it comes to the decisions that actually shape a life: how to choose well, lead well, disagree well, and love people without losing the truth. James 3:13-18 gives us a simple but searching test for real wisdom, and it is nothing like the loud confidence our culture often rewards.

We walk through James’s contrast between wisdom from above and wisdom from below, and we get specific about how to tell the difference. We talk about source first: true wisdom is revealed by God and stays pure, while counterfeit wisdom can sound reasonable yet remain earthly, unspiritual, and destructive. Then we move to spirit: meekness is not weakness, it is power that doesn’t need to prove itself. Selfish ambition, jealousy, and the need to dominate are not just personality quirks; they are warning lights on the dashboard.

Finally, we look at outcomes. False wisdom divides communities into factions. Wisdom from above seeks peace and grows a harvest of righteousness through gentleness, openness to reason, mercy, and sincere peacemaking. We bring it home with practical ways to pursue unity in your local church, especially when you disagree, feel misunderstood, or want to “win.” If you want a biblical framework for discernment, Christian leadership, and church unity, this one will steady you.

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Scripture Reading From James 3

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For the rest of us, I will invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word, which this morning, as we continue in James, comes from James chapter 3, beginning in verse 13. The word of God reads this way. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 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 in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, in a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This is God's word. Thanks be to God, and you may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word.

A House That Reveals Quality Over Time

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I looked at a project on a house this week, and it this is one of the most stunning, beautiful homes that I have ever seen. It was designed and built by a local architect who's kind of famous. And it's about six years old, and it's it's amazing. There's these columns that hold up the house like these, but each column is a tree. I mean they have good ideas, but not always the best in execution. Um but in construction, it's it is important that things look pretty upon the day of installation. But it's even more important that they continue to look pretty and that they hold up over time. A quality installation and a poor installation might look very similar on the day that they are installed, but only time can reveal the true quality of the installation. Which one still looks good a year later, or five years later, or ten years later, that's really what matters. The wise builder is vindicated and proven only over the course of time.

Why Knowledge Is Cheap Now

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In our passage today, James talks about two wisdoms, one heavenly and the other earthly, one of them from God and the other demonic. And he asks the question: who is wise in understanding among you? Or in other words, how can you recognize true wisdom? How can we discern between these two wisdoms, between the true wisdom and the false wisdom? We live in an information age where all of the knowledge and all of the information that you could ever want is it's at your fingertips. It's more available to you now than it has ever been. And that's good, but I think that as a consequence of that, what people are really hungering for today is wisdom. Beyond knowledge, knowledge is cheap, it's easy to come by. Anybody can get expert knowledge just by pulling up ChatGPT and getting all the information that they want. But where do we find wisdom? That's what people are hungering for. How do I live the good life? And one thing that AI cannot give you and technology cannot give you, one thing that it cannot give you is wisdom and experience. Because, as smart as it sounds, it's actually never lived a human life and doesn't actually have any real wisdom or experience. So it can't give you that. And that's what James is saying in verse 13. He says to the wise, by his good conduct, let him show his works. And that could be translated, by his beautiful life, by his good life, let him show his works. And there are many competing ideas over what constitutes the good life. Who is wise? Who is wise among you? The truth always reveals itself over time, just like in construction, but it's not always obvious in the moment. The devil masquerades as an angel of light, after all, and the advice of the devil can seem in the moment like wisdom. Peter thought he was giving Jesus good advice when he recommended that Jesus not go to the cross, but Jesus recognized that wisdom for what it was, and he said, Get behind me, Satan. And the problem is that we must commit to a way of life here in the moment without knowing for certain what kinds of fruits it will bear over time. So how can we discern the difference? And how can we make sure that we are on the path of wisdom and that we are living the good life?

Wisdom From Above Versus Below

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Well, James in this passage gives us three ways to discern between these two wisdoms. They have different sources, that's number one. They have different spirits, and then they have different outcomes. So we're going to look at these three to help us discern true from false wisdom. So first, true wisdom, they have different sources. True wisdom comes from above, while false wisdom comes from below. James' first concern is to show that these two so-called wisdoms come from two completely different sources. In verse 15, he says, this is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. And that's a really fascinating verse because he says there is a wisdom that comes down from above, and that's the one that we want, but there's another competing wisdom, and look again at how it's described. He uses three words and we'll do them in reverse order. He says it's demonic, which ultimately means that it comes from the devil. He says that it's unspiritual, which means that it does not come from the Holy Spirit, but is simply the ideas of fallen man. It is unspiritual. The Holy Spirit is not involved in this wisdom. And then finally, he describes it as earthly, which means that it does make sense from an earthly perspective. It is a wisdom that makes sense if we ignore God and if we ignore the things of God. It is an earthly vantage point, an earthly point of view. In other words, what James is saying is that true wisdom is revealed. The true path to the good life is not something that we could ever figure out on our own. It's not simply earthly wisdom. We cannot figure it out by trial and error. The true path must be made known to us. It must be revealed from above. It does not come from below, it comes from above. Another important note is what James adds in verse 17. He says, But the wisdom from above is first pure. So the wisdom that comes from God is pure wisdom, which means that it is not mixed with any bad ideas. It's wisdom through and through. It's not corrupted or intermingled with any bad ideas. It's not mixed with any foolishness of man or any demonic ideas. And by contrast, of course, earthly wisdom is not pure. It may make some interesting points. It may say some true things. It's not crazy. It makes sense, especially from an earthly perspective. But the problem with it is that it is not pure. It's subtly mixed with poisonous ideas that ultimately yield bitter fruits. And this is what is so dangerous about earthly unspiritual wisdom is that it's half-right. It's very convincing because it co-opts God's wisdom, but it adds to it or it takes away from it and corrupts the wisdom of God and ultimately is a Timu version of God of God's wisdom. True wisdom comes from God, and so it is revealed. And without God, we cannot find the path to the good life. It must be revealed to us by the Creator. When I was a kid, my parents used to take us to Myrtle Beach for vacation. And one year we went to this facility that had this big outdoor wooden maze. It was kind of like a putt-putt golf facility, but it had this big maze, and it was like a big rat maze for kids. And the participants would go through the maze below, and that's where the kids were sent. But the parents could get a cocktail and they could stand on the platform above and they could watch the kids try to figure out the maze. And the interesting thing about it was that the solution to the maze was not obvious from below. There was a long hallway that appeared to be a dead end. So no one would go down it or no one would venture down it because it looked like it was a dead end. Only when you got to the end of that hallway could you see that it was actually the only way out, that there was a corner that it turned and that was the solution. That could not be seen from below. It could only be seen from above. And so our parents were pointing us in this direction, and we thought, you're crazy, that's a dead end. And they're saying, No, go that way. They had a perspective from above. In John 8, 23, Jesus says, You are from below. I am from above. You were of this world, I am not of this world. And this is the most important difference between Jesus Christ and every other so-called teacher or guru. Every other wisdom teacher is giving us the perspective from inside the maze. But Jesus, although he lived in the maze, he came as a man, he has a nature like ours, Jesus is from above. And in order to make sure that we're living the good life, we must cleave to the words of Scripture. You have to be reading the Bible and studying the Bible and meditating on the words of Scripture so that you know the words of Scripture, so that they become a part of your thinking and your worldview is shaped by them in testing everything and measuring everything according to the words of Scripture. This is the only way to grow in discernment and be able to discern what is pure wisdom from what is almost wisdom or what is half-right, but ultimately is unspiritual and earthly and demonic. If you hold fast to the words of Scripture, then you can listen to any so-called wisdom teacher or guru, and you can discern. You can eat the fish and leave the bones, you can pick out the legitimate nuggets of wisdom, and you can discard what is unspiritual and earthly and demonic. Without the words of Jesus Christ, which are contained in the Holy Scriptures, we will never figure out how to get out of the maze. We need the one who comes from above, and that's who we have in

Meekness Versus Selfish Ambition

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Jesus. So different sources, but also these two wisdoms have different spirits. False wisdom is ambitious and has a spirit of ambition, while true wisdom is meek and has a spirit of meekness. Look again at verses 13 and 14. James says, by his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. So James says that one way to recognize true wisdom is that true wisdom is meek, whereas earthly wisdom is characterized by bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Well, what does it mean to be meek? Meek does not mean weak, although they sound similar. It does not mean that we lack power or lack the ability to do anything. Jesus said of himself, he said, Come to me all you who are weary, because I am meek. I am meek and lowly. But we know that Jesus does not lack power, even the winds and the waves obey him. Jesus is not weak, although he says that he is meek. The same Greek word translated as meek can also be translated as gentle. So gentleness is part of the meaning, but I think a fuller definition would be that meekness is power that does not need to assert itself. When Gandalf was convinced that Bilbo needed to let go of the ring, he could have easily overpowered him and taken it from him and forced him to give it up. He's far more powerful than Bilbo. He's one of the Maiar, after all. But he didn't do that because he knew that if he did that, it would absolutely break Bilbo in the process. Instead, he was meek and he did not assert his power, but he persuaded him with reason and with gentle words until Bilbo chose of his own volition to relinquish the ring. Gandalf is not weak, although he is meek. The opposite of meekness is what James calls bitter jealousy and selfish ambition, the desire to dominate over others, the desire to be better than others, the belief that we are better than others and most deserving of honor and authority, and a corresponding eagerness to assert oneself to aggressively seek leadership and authority and control. And James says that this is a hallmark of earthly, unspiritual, and demonic wisdom. It always seeks to assert itself and it makes great claims about itself. So how can we recognize wisdom in those who are truly wise? Those who are truly wise are so secure that they feel no need to assert themselves. They don't need recognition, they don't need people to listen to them, they don't need to be leaders. They're willing to lead if they're called upon, but they have no emotional need to be leaders. But those who are earthly and unspiritual and demonic, they are radically insecure. They have a deep emotional need to be recognized and acknowledged and to lead and to be followed and to be applauded, and so they assert themselves. And if they cannot take charge, if they cannot lead or be recognized, then they will take their ball and they will go home because they need that recognition. Julie and I just finished re-watching the Dune films. And in the first film, Duke Leto Atreides is called by the Emperor to take control of the strategic planet Arrakis. And he keeps his son Paul close by his side because he knows that one day Paul will be Duke and he wants to prepare him for leadership. But Paul wrestles with this. He doesn't want to be Duke. He's more interested in becoming a fighter pilot like his hero, Duncan Idaho. And he tells his father, Father, what if I'm not the future of House Atreides? And his father listens to him and he says, You know, I didn't want to be either. When I was your age, I also wanted to be a fighter pilot. But he replies with this sage wisdom and he says, Great men do not seek to lead, Paul. They are called to it, and they answer the call. Great men and great women do not seek to lead. But if they are called to it, they will answer the call. And that is the meekness of wisdom, and the opposite of bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. So how do we recognize the truly wise? True wisdom comes from above and is first of all pure, as James tells us, adhering closely to the words of Scripture. But the truly wise are not those who seek to lead. Wisdom cannot easily hide itself. And so if a wise person is in our midst, sooner or later, we will realize that there is a wise person in our midst. And they will probably be called upon to lead. They will be asked to lead in some way, whether that be in a formal sense or even just people asking them for help and for advice and for mentorship. I mean, if you if you're wise, it's going to be hard to hide that. It's going to show itself, and people are going to come to you for help. They're going to say, you seem to have this figured out. Could you please give me some advice? Those are people who are truly wise, and the wise will answer the call when it comes. But beware bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Beware the tendency in yourself to want to assert yourself, to take control and to lead, especially when no one has asked for your help, to give advice, especially when no one has asked for that advice. And beware those who are particularly ambitious, who seem to have an emotional need to be in charge and to be influential and to be in the spotlight. We need leaders. The church needs leaders and the world needs leaders. We need people in the spotlight showing us the way. It's not bad to be in the spotlight, because we do need good examples to follow. It's very important. But remember that a great man or a great woman does not seek to lead. They are called to it and they answer that call. As our Lord Jesus said, when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, Give your place to this person. And then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place. That is the meekness of wisdom. So that when your host comes, he may say to you, Friend, move up higher. Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. True wisdom is meek, it takes the lowest place, and when it is called to a higher place, it answers that call. So it has different spirits.

Division Versus Peaceful Fruit

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But a third way to discern is that there are different outcomes. False wisdom is quick to divide, while true wisdom seeks peace. False wisdom is characterized by jealousy and ambition, a desire to assert oneself and to gain dominance over others. And James warns about the outcome in verse 16. The Greek word for disorder really carries the idea of rebellion or insurrection. It's the idea of a social order breaking down. Where there is jealousy and selfish ambition in leadership, the church community will break down into factions and divisions and will not live in submission to one another in unity and brotherly love. The Apostle Paul connects the same dots when he talks about the characteristic works of the flesh in Galatians 5. He says the works of the flesh are evident. Enmity, strife, jealousy, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, all of these things come together. False wisdom has no ability to compromise. It has no open-handed issues. It's not flexible about anything. It's extreme in all of its positions, and it is very willing to separate and to divide from other believers over fairly insignificant matters. But true wisdom really values peace. Look again at verses 17 and 18. James says the wisdom from above is first pure, then, listen to these words: peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And he doubles down on the concept of peace in verse 18, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So let's unpack some of those concepts. Peaceable. A man or a woman full of the Holy Spirit really has no interest in controversy. Being full of the Holy Spirit, you don't want to fight. You know that there's disagreements, but that's you don't want to focus on those things. You have no desire to stir up quarrel. They love their church community. They desire to keep it together. They desire the relationships and the community that they have. They want to build it up. They desire that new people would join and would be saved. And they seek to use a very overused phrase, but I think appropriate in this situation, they seek to build bridges and not walls as much as possible with the people around them. They're peaceable. They're also gentle and they're open to reason. When there is a disagreement, the wise person handles it gently, with gentleness. They're open to being wrong and they're willing to listen and they hold their views with humility. They're full of mercy. In disagreements and disputes, the wise person is quick to forgive. They're very merciful toward those who offend them and step on their toes. They are very safe people to offend. I hope that that is true of me, that I'm a safe person to offend. I try to tell people, people figure out I'm a pastor and then they realize that they're not supposed to say cuss words in front of me and all that kind of stuff, or they're not supposed to espouse their crazy pagan views. But I always try to tell people like, look, like there's almost nothing that you can do to offend me. That's how I want to be. And I don't know if I am that way, but that's the aspiration. They're hard to offend. And then they make peace. James borrows from his brother Jesus, who said, Blessed are the peacemakers. The wise person values the peace of the church, and they agree with the psalmist who prayed, Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity, when we are at peace with one another and united and moving forward together. There may come a time when separation is necessary, but as much as possible, the wise person seeks to bind everything together in harmony and unity and to bear with one another in brotherly love. False wisdom cares more about its own vision of the world than it does about real relationships that it has. But true wisdom cares deeply about relationships, and it's not that we don't care about the truth, but it's that we have learned how to love the truth and also fight to stay together at the same time, what our Book of Church Order calls the peace and the purity of the church. We must value both the peace and the purity of the church. It's hard to fight to stay together. It's hard for a family to stay together. It's hard for a church community to stay together. Family game nights are hard because every kid has their own preference on what game they want to play. And when it comes time to play a family game night, they seem to be very insistent on the one particular game that they would like to play. And that's fine that everybody has a different preference, but it becomes a problem when everyone is far more committed to their preference than they are to the idea of the family playing a game together. My goal as a father, I don't really care what game we play. I don't, it's not my goal to play my favorite game. The goal is just to find a game that we can all agree upon. And it might not be the first choice for any of us. It never will be. Life on this side of glory is not about solutions, it's about trade-offs, right? There's no perfect solutions. There's just the best worst situation, and that's what we're looking for. And our kids haven't learned this yet. So many game nights end up with without an actual game being played. Sometimes the best that we can do is split up into multiple groups that are each playing their preferred games, and sadly we have missed the point of family game night. Because the point is not to play my favorite game or even to win. The point is that the whole family is together. False wisdom has strong views and preferences, and if it doesn't get its way, well, it's quick to rebel, it's quick to divide, it's quick to stir up factions and dissensions because it cares more about its vision of the world than it does about the actual relationships that it has. I want you to love the truth, and I want you to have strong convictions, and I want for your life to be guided by your convictions. And James is not calling us to sacrifice these things. He's not telling us that we shouldn't love the truth or that we should not have convictions. But I also want you to fight for unity in your local church. And before you worry about unity in the American church or in the worldwide church or even unity within your own denomination, before we worry about all the fights that are happening in the PCA, which, yeah, sure, that's, you know, those are all very interesting. Let's just focus on unity with the people in this room. Let's just see if we can like build a healthy church community and keep that together. Let's focus on the real relationships that are before us before we get too involved in some of these bigger

How To Fight For Church Unity

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questions. And what would that mean? Well, let's just, as we apply this, let's review some of the things that James has said. Be peaceable. We all have many disagreements and differences, and we could focus on the things we disagree about, but let's focus on the things that unite us and that bring us together and on the many, many things that we have in common. For example, both of us, all of us, are sinners in need of God's grace. Before the throne of God, we have nothing. Both of us are sinners in need of God's grace. And Jesus died to save the both of us. Wow. We both believe in Jesus as our common savior, so we have that faith, and we both submit to Jesus as king, so we have a lot that we can agree about. If you look at the band of disciples, the twelve, the only thing they had in common for many of them was Jesus. I mean, you had zealots, you had fishermen, you had tax collectors, and zealots and tax collectors did not get along. They did not have much in common, but because they had Jesus in common, they had everything they needed in common. So let's focus on these things that bring us together wherever possible. Be peaceable. Be gentle. Remember that all people are wounded. So when you are quarreling or disagreeing with someone, you are not, you are never just disagreeing with an idea, but you are dealing with a wounded person. That's something that we have to remember. Our ideas and our perspectives are shaped by the ways that we have been hurt. And that's why, one of the reasons why we're so emotional about our ideas. And just like you would deal gently with a child who's scraped his knee, we must deal gently with one another and discover where these wounds are so that we might seek healing together. So be gentle. Be open to reason, James says. Even in the things that you are most right about, you are never completely right. There's always information that you're missing, and your perspective is always limited and imbalanced. So just be open to the fact that you're probably wrong about something. Even if you're right about a lot of stuff, you are most certainly wrong about something. And you're probably missing something. So be open to reason. Be open to what your brother or sister has to say, even though you're convinced that they're completely wrong. Be full of mercy, James says. You must develop a spirit of mercy such that you can break bread with someone who espouses very different views from you. And you may think that they're dead wrong about everything, but you can listen to them without being offended. Even if they behave aggressively toward you, even if they're offended, you should be unflappable and ready to extend mercy.

Jesus As Wisdom And Our Model

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Do not respond to evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. So to conclude, wisdom from above is peaceable. It does not sacrifice truth, but it cares about relationships and it can hold these two things in tension. And I think that the only way that we can do this for each other is to realize that this is what Jesus has done for us, and it's what he continues to do for us and is currently doing for us. Because Jesus Christ died for sinners. And in doing so, he has united sinners to himself. And he lives in fellowship every day with imbalanced and stubborn and stiff-necked people. The most righteous and wise member of this church is our lead pastor, Jesus Christ. So, however messed up we all are, and you think the rest of us are, um remember that Jesus is here too, and he's more righteous and more wise than you, and he is in fellowship with you. And do you know how much immaturity and foolishness he has to put up with to be your pastor? Do you know how much he has to endure to be your Savior and to love you and to perfect you? He has to put up with far more than you will ever have to put up with in dealing with others. Jesus does not sacrifice truth, but he values his relationship with you so much that he is willing to suffer and even to die in order to hold that relationship together, in order to secure that relationship for all eternity. If our Lord Jesus can be so peaceable with us, can be so gentle and so open to reason, how can we be so quick to divide from one another? True wisdom comes from above. It must be revealed to us, and true wisdom is carried out in a spirit of meekness, and true wisdom seeks peace and relationship without sacrificing truth, and it is embodied for us in the person of Jesus Christ, and it is Him that we are called to follow.

Prayer And Closing

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So to that end, let us pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have given us wisdom from above. We thank you that you have not left us in the maze in which we are stuck and that perplexes us and we cannot figure out how to make it work, but that you have entered in, you have come down, and you have brought a perspective from above, you have brought the the way and the truth and the life. All of these are found not just in a book, not just in a set of ideas, but in the living person of Jesus Christ. And so long as we are walking with him, we are walking in wisdom. We are on the path of wisdom because he is the very wisdom of God. And so we thank you for our Lord Jesus. We pray that you would help us to turn from what is earthly and unspiritual and demonic and embrace the one who has come down from above. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's stand and sing together.