Proverbs 3:5 as The Greatest Commandment

Wisdom fears the Lord and acknowledges the primacy of His Wisdom. Solomon says in Proverbs 3:5, 6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."

In Proverbs 3:5, Solomon again references Moses in Deuteronomy. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart” is Solomon’s way of saying “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Understanding Deuteronomy 6:2-6 as the backdrop for Proverbs 3:5, 6 certainly helps us see through the "pop culture" interpretation of Proverbs 3:5, 6 that has neutered it into more of a self-help phrase (how ironic, given we're not to put any stock in our own understanding) to be marketed in nice frames for home and office walls. This isn't a mere "trust" for getting through a hectic day and everything will turn out all right (the typical view of "direct your paths"). This is an abadonment, via "loving the Lord with ALL the heart, soul, and strength", of all self in a salvific context. To not trust is to be a wicked pagan. A crooked path is the path of Madame Folly that leads to eternal "death" (Proverbs 2:18), where the wicked never "regain the paths of life" (2:19).

We live in an evangelical world that is all about "trusting the Lord" and very little about "leaning not on your own understanding". In fact, we want to "trust the Lord" and "hang on to our own understanding". But Solomon does not see these as compatible. To do one (fear or trust the Lord) is to shun the other (do not lean on your own understanding). This is Solomon's call to live as a fool for the gospel (This is Solomon's 1 Corinthians 1-3).

There are no "7 secrets to successful living" in his cynical view of depraved wisdom. I don't know how many times I've heard: "well, you know, God doesn't call us to be stupid". Actually, he does. More often than not, what we think is "wise", is nothing more than pagan wisdom that we've attempted to "baptize"; it is nothing more than an attempt to "Christianize" worldly wisdom (I wonder how damaging our over-realization of "common grace" accounts for the dominance of worldly wisdom in our thought and practice?). "Finding favor and good success in the sight of God and man" (Prov. 3:4) requires us to abandon all self-reliance and lean on a Wisdom that can only be found outside of ourselves.

Miracles point to "what Christ does for the soul of a sinner"

“…the miracles which Jesus wrought were with one exception beneficent miracles. To give a sign from heaven, a sign not possessing this beneficent character, he persistently refused. The true signs had to be kingdom-signs, exhibitions of God’s royal power.

“This power, there­fore, has two sides: so far as the enemies of God are con­cerned, it is a conquering, destructive, judging power; so far as man is concerned, it is a liberating, healing, saving power. In the casting out of demons both sides are revealed. In the other miracles it is chiefly the beneficent side which finds expression. Jesus brings release to the captives and sets at liberty those that are bruised, for the satanic power not only renders man miserable but also reduces him to bondage, as is even externally indicated by the fact that the demons control the physical organism of those possessed.

“The question naturally arises, how can this identification of the kingdom with the effected of a power working largely in the physical sphere be reconciled with the emphasis placed by Jesus upon the spiritual nature of the kingdom. The answer is that the physical evils which the kingdom-power removes have a moral and spiritual background. Satan reigns not merely in the body, nor merely in the mind pathologically considered, but also in the heart and will of man as the insti­gator of sin and the source of moral evil. Hence Jesus made his miracles the occasion for suggesting and working the profounder change by which the bonds of sin were loosed and the rule of God set up anew in the entire inner life of men. Be­cause this real connection exists, the physical process can become symbolical of the spiritual.

“In the Fourth Gospel…Jesus gives clearly to under­stand that the physical acts are intended to point to cor­responding spiritual acts. The healing of the blind, the rais­ing of the dead find their counterpart in what he does for the souls of sinners.” – Geerhardus Vos, The Kingdom of God and the Church, pp. 54-56