“Don’t walk through life alone. Don’t be self-reliant. Don’t ultimately depend on your own muscle power, your own experience, your own brainpower and knowledge. Don’t depend on yourself for salvation. Walk arm in arm with me. Rely on my strength, my wisdom, my knowledge, my promises, and my love.”

Two people arm in arm. This always gives me joy. Of all the ways that human beings can express physical affection, this one seems unfailingly delightful. It brings people closer than holding hands. Unlike the kiss, it doesn’t exclude others. Unlike an embrace, it doesn’t prevent you walking along together.   

A father and daughter proceed arm in arm down the church aisle. Two students, backpacks bouncing up and down, skip arm in arm to school. Comrades in arms march arm in arm on their country’s Memorial Day with grim smiles and misty eyes. Two friends walk briskly, arm in arm, to find mutual warmth on a frosty morning.

Two people arm in arm are going somewhere, helping each other on the way. 

Two people arm in arm are going somewhere. They are going somewhere together. They are helping each other on the way. That is what I want with Jesus. I want to walk through life arm in arm with him. I want to go in the same direction as he is. I want to feel his love. I want his strength to hold me up and keep me going.

As we will see, the book of Proverbs urges us to do exactly this. It calls us, lovingly and loudly, to walk arm in arm with Wisdom himself, Jesus Christ the Son of God, our Creator and Redeemer. As believers we walk close to Jesus in our marriages, our friendships, our child-raising, our work, our finances, our food and wine, our speaking, our old age, and our final hours and breaths.   

In Proverbs 3:5-6, we hear Jesus call us to walk arm in arm with him through every path of life:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight. (All passages from NIV)

The medium is the message.

Here are four lines arranged in two couplets. This careful structure is designed to help us better interpret the meaning of the words. Notice the general plan:

This is what to do;

This is what not to do;

This reiterates what to do;

This is the consequence of doing.

Reread Proverbs 3:5-6 with this plan in mind, and its meaning will already seem clearer and stronger.

Now look at how the structure ties certain words and ideas together in such a way that they mutually explain each other. Notice how “trust” and “lean” and “submit” go together. Trusting is like leaning, and leaning is like submitting (or knowing, as we will see). Notice also how “ways” and “paths” go together.

Jesus is the hero of Proverbs.

Proverbs personifies Wisdom, showing her creating the world and calling to us on the street corners (ch. 8). Wisdom is manifestly Jesus himself. He is the wise Creator. He is the wise Teacher, out in the streets and fields, calling and instructing with the kinds of stories and pithy sayings that characterize Proverbs. And he is, of course, the LORD, Immanuel, God come to be close to his people—to save them and lead them with love, mercy, and justice.  

Going back and reading Proverbs 3:5-6 through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we know that it is the Lord Jesus himself calling us to trust him with all of our heart. Keeping in mind the structure of Proverbs 3:5-6 and its deep-rooted Christ-centeredness, let us ask three questions.

1. What does the Lord Jesus require of us?

In short, he requires us to trust in him instead of ourselves. The word “trust” (bātach) doesn’t need a lot of explaining. It means to have faith in, to believe, to rely upon, to depend on, to have confidence in, to count on. The same word features in Psalm 22:9, “You brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast.”

Is there any more beautiful and compelling picture of trust than an infant lying against her mother’s breast, feeding with languid tranquility and satisfaction? The Hebrew preposition “on” strengthens this idea. Trust “on” Jesus. Rest yourself entirely on him.

Exactly a hundred years ago World War One was coming to its final ghastly end. We have all seen the haunting photos of the walking-wounded survivors of chlorine gas attacks. Chlorine turns to hydrochloric acid in the moisture of the eyes and lungs. It blinds and liquefies the lungs’ delicate membranes. The eyes of these men in the image above are rough-bandaged, and they stagger as they struggle to breathe. They lean heavily on their more able-bodied compatriots. They had to lean. They could not move without leaning. They were blind, and the supporting strength of their friends was utterly necessary. 

Jesus commands us to trust in him by leaning on him. For by sin’s noxious fumes our eyes are blinded, and our strength is shattered.

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