Giving Wisdom to Others

Scripture — Colossians 3:16 (NRSV)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

Devotion

For sure, to receive and embrace the gift of divine wisdom is a wonderful thing. God’s wisdom guides us to live with meaning and purpose. It helps us to make the right decisions when things appear murky and complicated. It enables us to walk on the path to personal flourishing. Wisdom is surely a gift we are glad to receive and use faithfully.

The faithful stewarding of wisdom, however, is not simply allowing it to direct our thinking and acting for our own benefit. Essential to the right stewardship of wisdom is giving it away to others. We see this in Colossians 3:16, where it says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” There you have it. Wisdom isn’t just for our own benefit. We are to give it away by teaching and admonishing each other “in all wisdom.”

I’d like to draw your attention to several features of Colossians 3:16. First, notice that we are to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” Giving wisdom to others through teaching and admonishing isn’t something assigned only to church leaders. Rather, it is something all believers are exhorted to do. The community of God’s people will only benefit from all of God’s wisdom if all of the members are striving to share it with each other. There’s a profound mutuality in Paul’s vision of how wisdom can be given away in the Christian community.

Second, notice that we are to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” Teaching is instructing people positively in matters of theology, faith, and life. Wise teaching proclaims God’s truth and passes on God’s guidance for living. But notice that we are also to admonish each other. The Greek verb translated here as “admonish” means “to counsel about avoidance or cessation of an improper course of conduct, admonish, warn, instruct.” Thus, the CEB reads, “teach and warn each other with all wisdom” (3:16, CEB). At times, stewarding divine wisdom well requires difficult conversations with people who are going in the wrong direction. This is a particularly challenging aspect of what in Ephesians is called “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).

Third, notice how Colossians 3:16 begins: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” The order of these short sentences suggests that if we wish to teach and admonish wisely, we must first let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. But what does this mean? Though the phrase “word of Christ” could refer to the teachings of Jesus, in this context it almost surely refers to the word (logos in Greek) about Christ. Paul is referring here to the gospel, to the good news of God’s love and grace given through Christ, which leads to salvation, renewal, and reconciliation.

Thus, if you want to be equipped to teach and admonish others in all wisdom, you should let your mind and heart be saturated by the gospel. Not only does this good news put God’s love and grace at the very center of all things, but it also reveals the astounding, counter-cultural, life-transforming, community-building wisdom of God (see 1 Cor 1:20-31).

Now, you might be wondering how, in daily life, you might in fact let your mind and heart be saturated by the gospel. There are many ways to answer this question. I’m going to suggest some of these ways in tomorrow’s Life for Leaders devotion. For now, however, I’d invite you to think about how in reality you can let your mind and heart be saturated by the gospel.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project’s online commentary. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Set Your Mind on Things Above: Heavenly Living for Earthly Good (Colossians 3:1–16).