“Humility and the fear of the LORD

     bring wealth and honor and life.”

 

Here we found a road sign on the path to Wisdom’s House.  If you want these three things in life, you will only get them through the narrow gateway of ‘humility and the fear of the LORD’.  Narcissistic and arrogant leaders in the Church and home lead down a different path to a different end.  The gateway they need to use is much too wide.  It has to be for their egos to fit in.  If you don’t enter through the gate of humility and fear, those holy twins, you will never find the right path.  As is typical of the Proverbs, we read of wealth and honor and life as being received in this life much like in Joseph’s after he was made 2nd in control of Egypt, Genesis 41:41.

 

When we looked for Jesus and His fulfillment of this proverb that we may be made into new creations for His kingdom, my daughter saw Him washing His disciples’ feet, John 13.  Here we see the ‘fullest extent of His love’, 13:1.  In Philippians 2:1-11, we see Jesus enter by and fulfill the gate of humility and fear receiving praise and being ‘exalted to the highest place’.  Not only did Jesus fulfill humility and fear (the love of God and others), but He also fulfilled wealth and honor and life by His resurrection, Luke 24.  He awakened us to ‘an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade kept in heaven for us,’ 1 Peter 1:4.  He made us vessels of His righteousness, Romans 3:22.  He welcomes us to life eternal, 2 Peter 1:11.

 

As I looked deeper at the three rewards of this life, I noticed something familiar.  I saw the temptations Satan set before Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11.  The order is switched a little- life, honor, wealth, but it is there.  Unlike Adam and Eve’s failure with the serpent in Genesis 3:1-6, Jesus resolutely stayed at the gateway of humility and fear as is reflected in His answers to Satan.  In this way, we witness exactly how this gateway was first broken and is now fulfilled in Jesus.  Though He was tested in every way, Hebrews 4:15, He knew no sin, 2 Corinthians 5:21.

 

There are many road signs to various destinations of wealth and honor in this life, but only one has been fulfilled for our salvation.  Enter in the narrow gateway, Matthew 7:13-14, and follow His ways to ever more than this world can provide.  For Jesus fulfilled the way to real wealth, honor, and life that we can keep forevermore, John 3:16.