What we behold shapes us. Our allegiance must therefore be pure and undivided. The call to holiness is ultimately the call to imitate God. Jesus commands, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Peter echoes this command: “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15–16). We are to love because He first loved us, and we are to love others as Christ has loved us (John 13:34).

The Pursuit of Wisdom

When we read the greatest sermon ever preached, it is almost as though we can hear the soundtrack of a father instructing his son in the book of Proverbs. The voice of wisdom echoes through the Sermon on the Mount. Christ is not abandoning the wisdom tradition of Israel; He is revealing Himself as its fulfillment.

The book of Proverbs reminds us that the first step toward wisdom is the recognition that we lack it. “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:7). Wisdom is not stumbled upon accidentally. We are commanded to pursue it. Solomon exhorts the son to “raise your voice for understanding” and “seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures” (Proverbs 2:3–4).

The implication is profound: our treasure reveals what we value most. Wisdom is to be desired above riches because wisdom teaches us to treasure what God treasures. Christ takes up this same theme in the Sermon on the Mount when He commands us not to lay up treasures on earth “where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,” but instead to lay up treasures in heaven that cannot perish (Matthew 6:19–21).

The treasures of the Kingdom cannot be stolen, corrupted, or exhausted. They anchor the soul because they are rooted in God Himself.

Seeking the Kingdom First

This is why Jesus repeatedly calls His disciples to ask, seek, and knock (Matthew 7:7–11). Like the son in Proverbs crying out for wisdom, the believer seeks all that he needs from his heavenly Father, trusting that God delights to give good gifts to His children. Wisdom recognizes that man is not self-sufficient. True wisdom lives dependently before God.

In reverential awe of who God is, wisdom rightly orders our loves and priorities. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and Christ teaches that this rightly ordered life seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).

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