The Wisdom of Ecclesiastes: Sinner and Saint

In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.
Wisdom gives strength to the wise more than ten rulers that are in a city.
Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning.
Do not give heed to everything that people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others.
All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness. I found more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters; one who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. See, this is what I found, says the Teacher, adding one thing to another to find the sum, which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes. ~ Ecclesiastes 7:15-29

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. ~ Soren Kierkegaard


There's some comedy to me in that last line: God made human beings straightforward.
Because this passage is to me anything but! :-)
Do not be too righteous?
Do not act too wise?
The wisdom perhaps is in realistically knowing ourselves.
Can we be wise just by saying so?
How do we know we are righteous?
Have you ever known someone that has thought they were wiser perhaps than they actually were?
Or less righteous to your eyes than they claimed?
So likely the same is true for us.
"Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning."
There we get to the heart of the matter. It is true, is it not?
We cannot be too wise. Or too righteous.
Because at the end of the day, we do all still have our schemes.
And yet fear of God...
Awe of God...
Love of God...
Amazement of God...
makes us in the end both wise and righteous.
God gives wisdom and insight.
And God makes us righteous.
So all those other folks who don't seem all that wise or righteous to us?
Maybe we need to cut them a little slack - and hope they do the same for us!

Prayer: Lord, you alone are wise and you alone are righteous. Thank you for loving me even when I forget that and bask in my own self-righteousness! Amen

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