If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.
Proverbs 9:12 belongs to Proverbs 8 to 11, among Solomon's poetic wise sayings that serve as a manual of practical rules for everyday duties to family, neighbor, friend, and God. In the verse Christ in the character of Wisdom invites and counsels mankind, while Jehovah is presented as creator and governor who rewards piety and punishes evil, and the passage is to be studied in the light of Scripture examples. The surrounding chapter warns against the sins described at its end, and its instruction is meant to take hold of both men and women.
The verse teaches that wisdom benefits the person who chooses and embraces it for himself, while the one who scorns bears the burden and loss of scorn alone as the consequence of his own choice. It presses whether the beginning of wisdom is present in life, calling for sincerity and submission to correction and measuring life by its standard. It calls the reader to choose between life and death, where the path of life leads through knowledge of sin, repentance toward God, faith in Jesus, faith working through love, and keeping God's commandments, and warns that rejecting this path brings personal consequences.
A person who rejects correction cannot rightly blame the church for the loss that follows, since the responsibility rests with that person alone. Settling whether to become a Christian is the unconverted sinner's own immediate and urgent business, involving inalienable personal responsibility for a treasure to be forever saved or forever lost while time is short. If he does not make salvation his first and chief business, even the united prayer and effort of all Christians cannot make him a Christian or save him, while if he makes it his business to care for his own soul even when no one else cares for him, he can come to Christ and be saved. People are not made blind or deluded through arbitrary divine partiality; their unbelief, refusal to love truth, and pleasure in unrighteousness bring those consequences upon themselves, leaving God's judgment just.
Proverbs 9:12 belongs to Proverbs 8 to 11, among Solomon's poetic wise sayings that serve as a manual of practical rules for everyday duties to family, neighbor, friend, and God. In the verse Christ in the character of Wisdom invites and counsels mankind, while Jehovah is presented as creator and governor who rewards piety and punishes evil, and the passage is to be studied in the light of Scripture examples. The surrounding chapter warns against the sins described at its end, and its instruction is meant to take hold of both men and women.
The verse teaches that wisdom benefits the person who chooses and embraces it for himself, while the one who scorns bears the burden and loss of scorn alone as the consequence of his own choice. It presses whether the beginning of wisdom is present in life, calling for sincerity and submission to correction and measuring life by its standard. It calls the reader to choose between life and death, where the path of life leads through knowledge of sin, repentance toward God, faith in Jesus, faith working through love, and keeping God's commandments, and warns that rejecting this path brings personal consequences.
A person who rejects correction cannot rightly blame the church for the loss that follows, since the responsibility rests with that person alone. Settling whether to become a Christian is the unconverted sinner's own immediate and urgent business, involving inalienable personal responsibility for a treasure to be forever saved or forever lost while time is short. If he does not make salvation his first and chief business, even the united prayer and effort of all Christians cannot make him a Christian or save him, while if he makes it his business to care for his own soul even when no one else cares for him, he can come to Christ and be saved. People are not made blind or deluded through arbitrary divine partiality; their unbelief, refusal to love truth, and pleasure in unrighteousness bring those consequences upon themselves, leaving God's judgment just.