The Wonderful Counselor lay in that manger,
bringing heart-changing, life-giving wisdom to all
who would put their trust in him.

All human beings are on a lifelong journey to find wisdom, and all human beings want to think that they are wise. That three-year-old who endlessly asks “Why?” is in the process of putting pieces of a worldview together that will be the means by which she interprets and makes sense out of everything in her life. She’s forming some kind of wisdom system that includes ways of thinking about her identity, the meaning and purpose of life, what relationships are about, where happiness is to be found, who God is, what’s right and wrong, and a host of perspectives on other things. You see, from birth we are all philosophers, we are all theologians, and we all function like archeologists, digging through the mound of our existence to make sense of it all.

You may be thinking, “Paul, what does this have to do with Christmas?” Well, the Christmas story is a wisdom story, the best wisdom story ever told. No one was more aware that sin reduces all of us to fools than our Creator. I know that it’s easier to see foolishness in someone else than it is to recognize it in yourself. It’s the nature of foolishness. A fool is a fool because he hears his foolishness and thinks it’s wisdom. So it’s true of you and me and everyone else who has ever lived that sin turns us into fools. We see the world upside down and inside out. We have the sad ability to hear foolishness and think it’s wisdom, to mistake falsehood for truth, and to confuse right with wrong.

But there’s something even more dangerous and destructive about being a functional fool. Psalm 14 alerts us to the fact that at the epicenter of our foolishness is a denial of God. I don’t think that the psalmist is talking about philosophical atheism. What he’s alerting us to is the foolishness of living as if God doesn’t exist or as if you don’t need his authority, wisdom, power, and grace. Every time you take your life into your own hands and do whatever you want to do no matter what, you are functionally denying the existence of God. Every time you make decisions as if your life belonged to you, you are denying the existence of God. Every time you buy into the delusion of independent wisdom, righteousness, and strength, you are telling yourself that you can live quite well without the presence, power, and grace of the One who made you. Every day that you live without God in your thoughts and his glory as your core motivation, you functionally deny the existence of God.

God not only knew that in our foolishness we would tend to be more attracted to what is not true than what is true, but he also knew that our foolishness would make us forget him rather than make him the hope of our hearts. So here is another way to think of the Christmas story: our God of wisdom sent his Son, who is wisdom, to shed his grace on fools so that by his grace they would be rescued from themselves and become wise. A fool has no ability whatsoever to rescue himself from his own foolishness. A fool is always a person in need of external rescue. The Christmas story is about God being willing to provide that rescue.

Listen to how Paul talks about God’s gift of the One who is Wisdom.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:20–31)

So as you celebrate this year, remember that Wisdom is a person, and his name is Jesus. He was born to rescue fools like you and me. That’s something worth celebrating!

For further study: Titus 3:1–11

For parents and children:

Central theme: Foolishness

Ask your children to tell you what they think a fool is or what it means to be foolish. In the Bible a fool is someone who thinks he’s so wise that he does not need God’s Word or God’s help. Help your children to grasp that Jesus came to earth on that Christmas night to rescue fools. Let them know that one of the names of Jesus is Wisdom. Help them to see that sin turns all of us into fools who want our own way and resist God’s help. Then tell them that at Christmas God sent Wisdom to earth to rescue us (fools) from ourselves.