Striving for the Ideal

As I have mentioned before, I had been reading through the book of Proverbs in my quiet time. My constant desire and prayer of late is for the Lord to grow me in wisdom. He promises to give it generously to those who ask (James 1:5). At the end of Proverbs, there is a section that describes the ideal woman of God. On Sunday mornings, I have been digging deeper into certain passages and, this morning, I studied Proverbs 31:10-31 more in depth. It is fitting that this passage would end the book because, as the ESV study notes suggest, it brings together the many themes of Proverbs and demonstrates that the book of Proverbs is for all people - both male and female.

This ideal woman is called excellent both at the beginning and end of the passage (v. 10, 29). She is a hard-worker (v. 13-16, 18-19, 27), she is wise (v. 16, 18, 26), she cares for the poor (v. 20), she is diligent (v. 18, 27), she is industrious (v. 16, 22, 24), she is strong (v. 17, 25), she is kind (v. 26), she is selfless (v. 12, 15, 20-21) and she fears the Lord (v. 30). All of these characteristics are described throughout the book of Proverbs as belonging to those who are wise (20:13; 31:9). The fact that this woman fears the Lord is the foundation for all these other traits - everything good about her flows from her trust in the Lord. What I found most striking as I looked up the cross-references for these verses were the ones for verse 22:

She makes bed coverings for herself;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.

This was one of the verses linked to "fine linen":

it was granted her [the Bride of Christ, which is His Church] to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure -
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. Revelation 19:8

I was caught of guard by this connection. This woman was clothed in fine linen and the verse in Revelation says that the fine linen is the "righteous deeds of the saints." This clothing was given to her (Revelation 19:8 says it was "granted"). She is righteous and walked wisely because she knew the Lord (31:30). He made her righteous and her righteousness was displayed through her wisdom and loving acts. The Lord had clothed her and the same can be said for those of us who are in Christ. God made Christ to be sin even though He was sinless so that we might become righteous in His sight (2 Corinthians 5:21). We do not deserve it or cannot earn it. It is given to us because of the great grace and love of God. The only difference between this woman and the women that Proverbs warns about is grace (Proverbs 2:16-19, 19:13, 21:19, 25:24, 27:15). The only difference between someone that believes in Christ and someone who rejects Him is grace (Ephesians 2:8).

This takes me to today's sermon from Rolling Fields: The Lord Our Righteousness. The righteousness of God affects our every day lives - just like it did for the Proverbs 31 woman. Whether at home or in public or in ministry, she acted wisely and rightly, and so it should be with us. Jesus Christ is our righteousness and everything good that we do and everything good that we are stems from what He did for us on the cross. We have been clothed with His perfection. When God sees us, He sees Christ. We are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), so much so that we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). So even though living the Christian life is based on the past, historic event of Christ's life, death, burial and resurrection and is set on the hope of His future return, we are to live a life pleasing to Him in the here and now (Colossians 1:10).

For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially those who believe. 1 Timothy 4:10