Proverbs 19:8 (NASV)
He who gets wisdom loves his own soul;
He who keeps understanding will find good.
At the end of Psalm 23 we read the following:
Psalms 23:6 (ESV)
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
Those who follow after the Shepherd will have "goodness and mercy" follow them. In that favorite Psalm, goodness “follows” us. In the above Proverb goodness is found by the one who gets wisdom and keeps understanding. In that psalm we have goodness because we pursue the right One ... the good shepherd. In this proverb you get goodness because you pursue Wisdom. In 1 Corinthian 2 we read that Christ is Wisdom:
1 Corinthians 1:30 (ESV)
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
Since this is true we can see the harmony between this great psalm and this theme of Proverbs. When we pursue wisdom and seek to keep understanding, we can be assured of goodness in our life. The first line of the above proverb states that we actually love our own soul (which is parallel to finding “good”). Searching and pursuing wisdom is only for those who are spiritually minded and want to build and support their soul via a relationship with wisdom, i.e. Christ. Those who hate their soul will seek folly. In Proverbs 18:7 we read that the fool “does” damage to his soul by his words.
Proverbs 18:7
A fool's mouth is his ruin,
and his lips are a snare to his soul.
Or, Solomon writes in another place:
Proverbs 19:3
When a man's folly brings his way to ruin,
his heart rages against the Lord.
The fool hurts their soul and rages (blames) God. But the wise do good to their soul, when they pursue Christ and the wisdom found in Christ. In our world today we are encouraged to "find ourselves." The problem with that philosophy is that when we find ourselves, we don't find Christ. We are supposed to be seeking Christ and the wisdom in Christ. When we do, we find that we "love" our own soul. A good self-image is really in the pursuit of Christ's image IN US, not our own image FOR US.
This does not mean all things will be good in our lives. We can refer to Job as an example. It does mean, however, that the things that MATTER will be good in our lives. The things that MATTER are eternal in nature. The eternal things that matter never were taken from Job. The things that matter are not of this world. God wants us to pursue His glory. We will, however, also be making better choices. Those choices will lead us down a better path than when we are foolish and reject Christ’s wisdom.
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