Proverbs 8:23 Commentary and Bible Study

We know there was no beginning with God: before the creation of the world you are just looking into eternity past, forever and forever back into the past. And wisdom always was with God, an attribute of God. But of course, the same is true of Christ too, because Christ is the author of the word; he is the imparter of all wisdom to the human race. But actually it is the attribute which is referred to here.We learn from this that the plan of salvation was set up from eternity. That plan of salvation is God's wisdom. This is what we want to know, the way of Christ, the way of salvation: this was in the mind of God from eternity. Therefore if you are seduced and drawn away by this world, and you give your life to this world, then consider, what does this world know? What is this world going to teach you? How does this world explain human nature? How does this world explain human personality? In pathetic Freudian terms. Why, this world explains these things according to the ideas of men, and you can trace them back. What is the current prevailing theory of human personality? Where did it come from? Oh it came from the early psychologists, and they described it and they advanced it. Where did they get it from? Well they got it from certain German philosophers at the middle of the 19th century. Where did they get it from? And eventually the line peters out. Eventually you trace the understanding back to some very human point. It arose at some given point in history, somebody thought of it, then it was garnished and added to, and developed. How old is it? How old is the prevailing theory of human personality, which is generally taught in the world, and which undergirds most philosophy and psychology? What is this theory of human personality? It is something which is barely 200 years old.In its more sophisticated and developed form it is something which is barely 100 years old. That is what you are getting: a recent product of the human race. You search for God's wisdom, and you are getting explanations that go back from before the foundation of the world. You have the authentic knowledge of the Creator, who knows how he made us, who formed us in his mind before he ever created. You are coming to the most ancient and authentic and sophisticated and deep knowledge imaginable. No wonder man’s understanding of human personality does not work. No wonder, even with all our knowledge, when it comes to human behaviour, we cannot explain it and we cannot control it or get to the bottom of it, and theory after theory is swept away.