Wisdom is demonstrated in love and faithfulness

Wisdom is characterized by love and faithfulness. Solomon aligns his wisdom with Moses and the law in Proverbs 3:3, and in doing so, shows how Wisdom in the life of Israel is to be characterized by love and faithfulness: "Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you."

These two ideas “steadfast love and faithfulness” occur together at various points in Israel’s history, including the passage to which Solomon seems to be returning again and again. Deuteronomy 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Solomon uses the word “forsake” where Moses uses the word “with” to show these indwelling characteristics.

Further, instead of steadfast love and faithfulness being characteristics of God, they are characteristics of the wise who incarnate wisdom in the covenant relationship with God. (It’s also interesting that this “steadfast love” of the covenant keeping God is part of Solomon’s prayer of dedication at the temple.) Love and faithfulness were inseparable in God’s disposition toward Israel in the covenant and Israel’s response to God. One could not have either love or faithfulness without the other in the covenant relationship. Certainly these characteristics point forward to the Ultimate Wisdom whose cross kind of life and crucifixion demonstrated unmatched love and faithfulness.

Solomon isn't finished showing how wisdom relates to the law. The love and faithfulness doesn't stem from an outward conformity to a bunch of rules. Solomon believes wisdom is internal and thus its demonstration comes from within, even as wisdom itself has been imputed to the righteous. Highlighting the fervor with which one is to pursue wisdom and its fruit, he says “bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” Again, Solomon is drawing from Deuteronomy 6 where Moses says “these words that I command you today shall be on your heart…you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and… you shall write them on the doorposts of your house.” Solomon uses the same bind and write combination as Moses to impress on his son the importance of internalizing the commandments.

Both Moses and Jeremiah remind us that such an internalization of steadfast love and faithfulness require a new heart. Jeremiah 31:33 says that the days are coming when God “will put his law within (Israel) and he will write it on their hearts.” This new heart on which the law will be written also has a Spirit-breathed wisdom (Proverbs 1:23) that demonstrates love and faithfulness. God's people are identified in the New Covenant as those who live out the love and faithfulness flowing from a wisdom that has been implanted in them by the Spirit and from Christ, their true Wisdom.

Redemption: the "mold and color" of heaven

"Heaven is the normal goal of our redemption. We all know that religion is older than redemption. At the same time the experience of redemption is the summit of religion. The two have become so interwoven that the Christian cannot conceive of a future state from which the redemptive mold and color would be absent.

"The deepest and dearest in us is so much the product of salvation, that the vision of God as such and the vision of God our Savior melt into one. We could not separate them if we would. The simple reason is that precisely in redeeming us God has revealed to us the inmost essence of his deity. No one but a redeemed creature can truly know what it is for God to be God, and what it means to worship and possess him as God." -- Geerhardus Vos