Question
What is the relationship between wisdom and righteousness?
Answer
The relationship between wisdom and righteousness in Scripture involves partial overlap, not total identity. In the Old Testament there's a sense that wisdom does begin with the fear of the Lord, and it's obviously strongly associated with righteousness in the way that it helps us to have a growing capacity for living well in accordance with God's design. But there's also a sense in which even those who do not fear the Lord can avoid the most extreme examples of folly, particularly physical and spiritual adultery. They can avoid the kinds of basic traps that would simply destroy their lives because God has communicated enough of his design for creation that people can recognize parts of it and live in partial relationship to it, or at least avoid self-destructive folly, even if they're not particularly righteous. In the New Testament, of course, Jesus Christ is not only wisdom for us, but our righteousness and holiness and redemption. So there's a strong association again between wisdom and righteousness. And the relationship between Solomon as wisdoms human paragon in the Old Testament and Jesus Christ is instructive, I think. Solomon was able to develop skill and intellectual culture and many aspects of wisdom, and in many respects to live well and enable his people to flourish, but he was not ultimately and enduringly righteous, and so eventually wisdom's human paragon, as he used his skill and his intellect for selfish purposes, was not righteous and wound up committing the most basic folly of over and over again committing physical and spiritual adultery. So Solomon reveals to us, kind of like a photographic negative, why it is that ultimately we need to find God's wisdom in Jesus Christ where wisdom and righteousness fully overlap. One other point that might be worth making about wisdom and righteousness and how they relate is that much of biblical wisdom focuses on how we use our money and how we use our mouths. And those are aspects where wisdom particularly is manifested in righteous living in New Testament material such as the book of James