JESUS CHRIST and HOLY SPIRIT in Proverbs

JESUS CHRIST in Proverbs

No direct references to Christ, prophetic or typological, are especially conspicuous in the Book of Proverbs. In fact, the personification of Wisdom is normally feminine throughout. Nevertheless some passages (such as 8:23–31) seem an unmistakable description of Jesus Christ, who was “in the beginning with God” (John 1:2), is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24), and “became for us wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:30).

Certainly the book performs a powerful service in whetting the human appetite for wisdom and understanding, a hunger that can only be fully satisfied in Christ.

Proverbs, much like the Mosaic Law, describes an ideal, an aspiration, a longing for perfection. Yet even Solomon himself was not perfectly wise, or he would not have so flagrantly disobeyed and thus displeased God (1 Kin. 11:1–11). Only later, in Jesus Christ, came the full example of all that Proverbs extols, the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom” (Col. 2:3).

Point by point, the qualities of wisdom are the qualities of the Christ. Obedience to God, right behavior, patience, reliability, humility, diligence, the perception of things as they really are—all these, plus love, are perfectly illustrated in the Savior.

HOLY SPIRIT in Proverbs

The Holy Spirit is not mentioned directly in the Book of Proverbs. But Wisdom refers to her spirit (1:23), which of course is the Spirit of God. In fact, a main point of the book is that wisdom apart from God is impossible, so in that sense His Spirit is prominent throughout. However the dominant word translated “spirit” in the book is almost always with the meaning of “attitude,” or “demeanor,” never implying a personality.

In our era, a time of the special work of the Holy Spirit, it is the Spirit who helps us mine the riches of the Proverbs, rather than Proverbs helping us understand the Spirit. It has been said of the Old and New Testaments, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.”

In the case of the Book of Proverbs, the Holy Spirit in the New Testament demonstrates how the wisdom of this book (which comes only through righteousness) is made achievable.