Wisdom from Above

1. Read James 3:13-18. How does James describe true wisdom in this passage?
2. In what ways is this different than the world's idea of wisdom?
3. How is the gospel in your life preparing you to relate well?
4. What are some examples of ways we relate to one another that James would describe as "demonic"?
5. In what ways can you work on being a peacemaker in your friendships, family, or other relationships? What is something within your control that is creating disharmony right now in your relationships?

Prayer + Practice:

In the beginning of his book, James said "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him" (James 1:5, ESV). Now that James has unpacked some of the differences between earthly and heavenly wisdom and how they play out in our relationships, spend some time asking God for the kind of wisdom that comes only from above and changes how we relate to each other. Ask God to show you where you haven't operated with wisdom and how you can start to make it right with that person. Ask God to "unite my heart to fear your name" (Psalms 86:11), knowing that "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight" (Proverbs 9:10).

Well, we skipped a week. We're back together. We have new lights, all new wiring in here. Boy, there's so much I could say about the difference that it makes. First of all, it's cooler because of the amount of heat that those bulbs were putting out.

Andy, who's back there. Who works with epic. And has done so much to make this happen. Was showing us all the white spots. That those lights had created.

On those dark beams up there. Because it was burning them, basically. And he personally painted all of those white spots. So you wouldn't have to see them this morning. And that wasn't part of the deal.

He just said, I'm doing it for you. So I'm really grateful to them. I don't know if you guys. Those lights can be any color. Any one of them is controllable, can be turned off.

They don't produce heat. You couldn't touch the parkers. These you can grab with your. So the heat and then the wiring. We were in bad shape on some of those things.

I don't know. You want to show them anything, Brady? They can be any color we want them to be. So it can create. Take me back to the sixties.

Do you remember those posters you used to have on the wall? And a black light? I had that in my room. How many of you had black lights in your room? Yeah.

All sixties.

Druggies? Seventies. That's what you were. Let's go ahead and say it. If you had a black light, you were in a drug house.

That's the truth.

Okay, so we're going to take communion at the end of the service today. That was not a great segue, was it? Into communion?

We are going to take communion at the end of the service. And so I will direct you on that. So don't be nervous about it. If you're a guest or you haven't done that with us before. I'll explain all of that at the end.

So we are in the book of James. And we are coming to the end of chapter three. Which is really the center of the book. And really getting at the central theme of the book. I think, about how genuine faith really shows itself.

And James is over and over. Saying, your connection to God, your relationship with God. Transforms everything about you. And James just keeps uncovering all these layers of ways. That God impacts your life.

Once he comes into it. And he's trying to say. And he said it at the end of the last paragraph that we saw about the tongue. He's trying to say, remember this? Does a spring pour forth the same, from the same opening, both fresh and salt water.

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither a salt pond yield fresh water. So James is just getting at, you have a whole new source by which to live your life, and you can't live two ways. This source generates a different kind of life. That's what James is trying to tell us all throughout this.

And he just keeps showing you over and over again different ways that this happens, just keeps peeling back the layers to show, really, the depths of how the gospel transforms us as individuals. And he arrives at the central piece of that, and it's all building sort of toward this at the core, which is relationships. And I wanted to show you in this paragraph that we're going to look at right now. This is the whole paragraph, verses 13 to 18. And I wanted to show you all the words James has already used that he's going to put into these five verses.

And the reason I want you to see that is because James has taken all the language he's used so far and bringing it to bear on this little section, the center of the book, and getting at the heart of basically relationships right here. He's going to just bring it all to this place right here. All his work in chapter one, all his work in chapter two, chapter three on the tongue, all of it is building toward relationships. And that's what this section is about. So genuine faith is essentially relational, highly interpersonal.

Interpersonal. And this is the key mark of the spiritual life for James. Why do I want you to manage your tongue? Why do I want you to be wise? Why do I want you to show your works?

Why do I want your faith to be real? Why do I want you to have one genuine source for all that you are in your life? It's because of relationships. So a right relationship to God leads to a right relationship with others. Your salvation, James is about to say, is not just a personal matter.

It has a social dimension. And we've learned that over and over. You see it everywhere in the New Testament. We can't get away from it. We can't escape it anywhere we're studying.

So James is going to put his spin on that reality right now. I read something in a book on community many, many years ago, and it's to some degree haunted me. And I think what James is about to do is haunt us. And it goes like this. And I think it's the essence of what James is saying, what I am.

John Powell wrote this in a book called why am I afraid to tell you who I am, what I am? At any given moment in the process of me becoming a person, which is what James is talking about, who are you becoming will be determined by my relationships with those who love me or refuse to love me with those I love or refuse to love. So you could just look at the landscape of your life right now, say, where are my relationships healthy?

Where am I loving? Well, where am I not being loved? They refuse to love me for some reason. Is there anything going on with me? It's just a powerful statement.

And so the question becomes, how does the gospel, if James is building to this, how does the gospel and your relationship with Christ prepare you to relate well? And we would all say that would be a high priority in our lives. And many of us struggle with that. We either struggle with it mightily, or we have certain areas of our life that make it hard for people to relate well to us or for us to relate well to them. And to get underneath this is, it's a lot of work.

I mean, James is pushing for a lot of work here, and he's going to bring up the topic of wisdom, and he's going to ask, who is wise and understanding among you by his good conduct? This is that the good works, let him show. Let him show his works by his good conduct. What does he show in the meekness of wisdom? So you got these dynamics going on here.

This is morality. Good morality will show that God has done doing something in your life. What's he showing? Because we don't know what the wisdom really is yet until you see this phrase, the meekness of wisdom. And this is the whole, it's kind of a trap question, who is wise and who is understanding among you?

Now, you start off this section with a question, because almost every person has to really give some real deep concentration and reflection on who they are. Am I really wise? Now, here's the reason. It's a trap question, because no one's yelling out, no, I'm dumb as rocks. Oh, surely I'm wise and I understand things.

But we know at the beginning of the book, he says, if you lack wisdom, you need to ask for it. So if you assume you have it, you might be in trouble, at least as James is going to unfold us, because we don't know really what kind of wisdom he's telling us to have yet. But he says good conduct. So this is the way to talk about morality. I'm gonna put it on here.

Morality is the good conduct. There's a certain kind of morality. And when you live that certain kind of morality, you show what God has done, what God is doing in your life, and how you show it is what James is talking about here, which is the meekness of wisdom.

So you got these components in this section James is all about. Let's see it. Show me you have this good conduct or this ethical kind of conduct. What does that look like? And it's moral acts.

But then you get this language here, and you would think, well, does just being smart, is it just being smart? That is how I show it. No. Doing great moral deeds. No.

He uses this word, meekness, and it requires relationship to operate in. So whatever wisdom he's talking about, he's talking about relational skill. If it's going to be shown, this is where it should show up the most. Now, for christians who hear morality, we immediately have a list of maybe some high level ethical things that you ought to be doing. James is going to take all of that, all the smart.

Everything you think of when you think of being intelligent or smart, and everything you think of when you think of morality. And he's going to take wisdom and morality, and he's going to put them right smack into everyday interactions with people. How good are you at that? Because that's where your morality is. That's the essence of ethic and ethics.

It's also the essence of wisdom. It's right there. That's how he's bringing this together.

There's a book out right now. You might have seen it by David Brooks. I've finished it this past week. It's called how to know a person. In it, he quotes a philosopher and novelist, Iris Murdoch, and she says this.

She argues, morality is not mostly about abstract, universal principles. It's exactly what James is saying, or even about making big moral decisions during climactic moments. Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. Moral behavior happens continuously throughout your day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments. And then Brooks says, for Murdoch, the essential immoral act is the inability to see other people correctly.

Human beings, she finds, are self centered beings, anxiety ridden and resentful. We are constantly representing people to ourselves in self serving ways, in ways that gratify our egos, serve our ends. We stereotype and condescend, ignore and dehumanize, and because we don't see people accurately, we treat them wrongly. And then this line, evil happens when people are unseeing, when they don't recognize the personhood in other human beings.

James is talking about social skill. Don't talk to me about all your morality.

Show me how you relate. And if we're going to talk about faith and the difference Christ has made in your life, I'll tell you where it ought to show up first, how you relate to people. This is very convicting, and I've had two weeks to process it in my head. What I've tried to do is figure out every spot. Do you always know when you're being self centered in any kind of interaction with people?

And I will tell you, it's not always easy to know that you are being self centered in an interaction with a person. But James is just asking us to think about that when we are being that way.

And I'm going to give you some ways that it might trigger for you to ask the question in your relationships. But before I get there, let's talk about this word. Because it is a very, very important word.

It's usually translated gentle. The meekness of wisdom.

It's usually translated gentle. It almost always is associated with humility. It's put next to humility very often in texts or context of conflict.

Who is meek now? I don't know that any of those words signify what it really means. It's really hard, by the way, to translate this word.

It has the idea of being of self subduing. So you enter into any interaction with a person not overly impressed with yourself or your own importance. I don't know how many times you've interacted with a person, but in your head you have whole different things going on. You know what I mean? That's what James is talking about here.

So you don't see yourself as the most important person in the interaction or the most important person in the room. You're not the biggest person in the room.

You know, when you're the biggest person in your world, you crowd out everybody, crowd out their ideas, you crowd out their opinions, you crowd out their wants. You crowd those things out because your head is so full. You wouldn't say you're being selfish. You would say, maybe you're just thinking, or you're just in your head, or you just have ideas, or you're thinking about what you're going to say. Whatever it is, it's all.

It crowds people out when you're the biggest person in the room. And James is saying, for people who've come to know Christ, they're never the biggest person in the room.

So in his book, how to know a person, David Brooks gives a few ways, and James is going to do it, too. But I thought it was interesting that he gives a list of ways that we interact, why we interact poorly. And the first one is what I just mentioned, it's sort of egotism. It's the self centered, my perspective, my opinion matters more self focused, that kind of thing. Millions of ways.

We act selfishly in interactions with people. So one of them is egotism. The second one, interestingly enough, is anxiety, where you're in your own head, like self preoccupied. They're self centered, then they're self preoccupied where you are. How am I coming across?

Am I liked?

What am I going to say next? Those are the kind of dynamics that are going on, maybe perhaps in a person of anxiety.

They're not thinking. They're thinking about their comfort in the interaction, not the comfort of someone else. And I told you, my son and I went to see Jordan Peterson recently, his latest lecture, and he made a comment that stood out in the whole lecture, and he said, there's no difference between thinking of self and being miserable. There's no difference between them. And then he stopped to say, that's not cause and effect.

If you're selfish, you'll be miserable. No, they just go together. They just live together. You're a miserable. Ask yourself, this is one of the things you have to ask yourself, am I miserable right now?

It's very possible it's because self concern. So how do you overcome anxiety? He said in the lecture, anxiety about whether you are everything you should be or whether you'll be liked, whether it's you'll be smart or whether you'll be anything, and you're not sure if you can socially interact and you have social anxiety. He says that's because you're focused on yourself too much. Enter a room and think to yourself, how do I make this other person feel comfortable?

And then you'll get over your anxiety, because self centeredness creates anxiety. So walk into the room and go, how do I overcome, how do I help another person overcome their anxiety instead of just worrying about mine? It's brilliant. That's kind of what James is saying. So when God, so you say, how does the gospel create this mentality or this sort of posture in relationships?

When the God of the universe comes into your life, he shrinks himself, becomes small in order to enter your world.

He makes room for you with him, the biggest person in the world, making room for you to relate and to interact with him. And so right in that moment, you sort of learn how to do it for others. You are at one time, by somebody bigger than you, given infinite value, because he's willing to become small to connect to you and your life and your world.

And at the same time, you're given this infinite value, you become smaller so that you can interact with people and do the same thing for them. Do you see that? That's what the gospel does for you. It at once gives you infinite value and shrinks you down so that you're never the biggest person in the room. You never have to fight for that spot anymore, because it's already the biggest person in the world has already entered your life.

That's how the gospel works. Now James is going to show the other side of what happens, and we'll see. When he does this, he will uncover some of the things about us that make our relationships just complete chaos at times.

And we'll get moving through this here, he says. But, you know, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, and basically you boast and are false to the truth, is what he said. So here's one way of looking at some of the way the selfishness works inside of our lives. And these are the terms James uses to describe that self centeredness in our world. So you have this zeal.

The word is zealous, this jealousy, it's really zeal. It's just energy or passion. It can be negative or positive. Here, used with bitter means, it's almost like you have an energy that you cannot help to make sure that you're the center of whatever the thing is, this energy to have to win. And you get petty and you get catty and you get been out of shape because something isn't going your way and it's all about you.

And then sort of a bitterness occurs for other people.

And right now we live in a world, as the columnist Peggy Noonan said. People are proud of their bitterness. Now people are proud of their bitterness. They're mad and it shows and they're happy about it.

So this bitter zeal is that you just have this over the top concern for yourself.

A selfish ambition sort of translates into this selfish ambition where you'll do basically anything to maneuver and win something in a relationship. I mean, just think about your relationships right now, the ones that are a mess at the moment. And there's no question you're posturing some way in this dynamic. And then he says, you know, what he's getting at is don't be boastful and don't lie against the truth. These are the two things that happen when you're in that posture.

When your selfish ambitions go and you're boasting, what does boast mean? You're making yourself the biggest person in the room. Your concern is the most important concern. How you see it is the only way to see it or the most important way to see it. That's what that is.

You're making yourself the biggest person in the room. You crowd everybody else out, and then you lie against the truth. This is an interesting phrase to translate. You lie against the truth. You just out of touch with reality.

You know, of course we have interactions. Some of us have been guilty of it. We're just out of touch with reality. In an interaction with somebody, we don't even know it, and then we'll fight to protect the reality. That isn't even true.

It's remarkable. I told you, I watched the, I went back and watched certain sections of the Lance Armstrong, 30 for 30, because I just had, so, I just could see so many of these dynamics at work and people's lives being devastated. Part of it is because he was just living in an illusion that he had to protect, and so people were devastated because of it. And so the gospel comes into your life. You're not the biggest person in the room anymore, and you don't have to lie against the truth.

You can face the reality of the fact that it's not all about you, and you don't have to create fabrications so that you can get along in the world. That's a remarkable way to describe, you know, analyze the debate, the way James is talking, and you could just see it, completely inept. Social and moral skill just devoid of it. You left that debate. Everybody was dumber.

Thank you for nothing.

You just lowered the quality of everything. Nothing helpful. That's what James is talking about. Some of our relationships look just like that debate. You ever had a marriage fight?

Looks just like that debate. If we put it on tv. But go, I think we're all dumber for having watched that married couple fight over that. I guarantee it. It looks exactly the same thing.

And James calls it goodness gracious, where is it here? Where's 14:00 a.m. i? Do I have 15 here? This is not wisdom that comes from this.

Wisdom doesn't come from above. It's earthly. Look at the three phrases he uses.

And you know, hey, you're born into this world. You live in relationships. If Christ isn't in your life, or even if he is, you learn all these earthly and unspiritual and demonic ways of relating the earthy idea is just spatial. The sphere is like you're trapped. And I guarantee many of us have just felt trapped in certain ways of relating that are just destroying our lives, but we don't feel like we can get out of them.

That's the earthly. You're just stuck in this sick universe of poor relating.

And the unspiritual part is there's no light that can get in it. It's like closed off. Unspiritual just means spiritless.

There's nothing coming from above helping you. You're just relying on your own resources and it just repeatedly destroys us. And then James is even willing to add demonic, which is how many of us would say some of the ways we relate are demonic. It's the way fallen angels think and operate. Imagine that.

And so, of course, it creates disorder, literally chaos. And then every evil practice. This is James getting back to morality.

What is really good, what's really good is good relational skills. That's what's really good. Otherwise you just have chaos.

That's what we encounter all the time in our relationships. And these vile acts, the idea, and it's just worthless acts, just we end up having to do things that have literally the lowest possible value for anybody.

And so James says this isn't wisdom.

The wisdom, though, that comes from above. So Christ comes into your life, the gospel comes into your life, and he relieves you of the pressure of being the biggest person in the room.

Don't you ever? Just the thought of it just sounds relieving, doesn't it? Gosh, I'm tired of fighting for what I want.

And, you know, because there's times in your life when you think, well, I understand what James is saying, but sometimes you gotta be bitter, sometimes you gotta have a little, you know, hard passion. And if you wanna get what you want and you gotta win something, or there's one upmanship that I gotta have, you know, in this relationship. I mean, how else do you survive unless you have a little selfish ambition?

How else do you protect yourself in relationships?

That's what we're thinking.

Be careful with that.

We'll use anger and hate and deceit and we'll abandon people and we'll slander people. Say, how does the gospel help? Here's how the gospel helps right now. Sitting in the room right now, and you have the gospel in you, it's already happening. He'll show you where you're being self centered right now.

I don't care how right you feel.

That's the first thing the gospel comes into your life and you start to say, I didn't realize, I thought I was that big. Gospel will help you see that you walk into any room. I don't care if it's the party, I don't care if it's an event, I don't care if it's your home.

Gospel show you when you're the biggest and how to out of touch with reality, how broken you are when you see it. The gospel also provides a new base of operation. Wait a minute, I don't have to rely on those resources. I don't have to be the biggest person in the room and I don't have to impress anybody in the room and I don't have to get everything in the room anymore. That's what the gospel relieves me of.

So I got a new picture of myself and I have new resources. You know, I have ways to overcome my insecurity now and I have ways to accept losses. But you need to be able to do that well in a relationship. You need to be able to accept losses. Okay, I'm not going to get my way here.

What matters is the relationship. You've got to say that a lot in the course of the week. What matters is the relationship.

You just value harmony and you prioritize relationship and some of the ways to find out when you're doing that. So let me just give you a couple. Like anytime you're angry or hurt, that's a good time to say, boy, if I'm not careful, I'll be really selfish here if I'm not careful. So when you get angry, somebody hurts you and it could be legitimate. Don't worry about that.

Of course, it could be a real thing. Even then, be very careful that you don't shift to the biggest person in the room. Dominate, manipulate.

That's the first thing. Or any time you disagree. And there's two viewpoints here. This happens all the time in our relationships. How many things do you have to go down swinging for in a day?

I mean, if you don't have the feeling when you put your head down at night that you just let go about 19 different things today that you no longer, that you can't care about, that you're not relating well, it doesn't have to be seen your way. You get relieved of that, okay? That's marriage, that's friendship, that's everything.

When you know you're right, be very careful because there will be an energy inside of you to want to just make sure the whole universe knows that because it's a good feeling, isn't it, to be right? Admit it, you love being right, maybe more than anything you've ever thought of. You know, now that you say it, I think I do love that more than anything. And you know what? You'll ruin a relationship over it.

And James is trying to say, don't ruin a relationship over that. That's hard to do. The gospel helps you do that.

So if you're going to the wall for something, I'm going to the wall for that. Hey, get some counsel, because how many times have we looked at each other and gone, I wouldn't go to the wall for that. Are you crazy? But inside of you, it feels really right.

Be very careful, because you'll get just what James has said, bitter energy, selfish. And you'll go get friends on your side. You'll be divisive as long as you appear on top.

James, that's not how we relate. When you catch yourself doing that, by the way, you'll do it because it's sort of ingrained in you, but you, hopefully you're catching yourself doing these things. All right, so what is the wisdom from above? Just God's way of relating. We got to do this quick here.

Well, James gives seven qualities, and I just want to go through them really fast. Pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason. Look at these things. Full of mercy and good fruit. There's our moral element to it, moral, ethical, and merciful.

And then there's impartial and sincere. So down here you got no game playing is the idea of impartial and sincere. This is the word for a hypocrite. Both of these are intense kind of words. And he's basically saying, you know, be honest in relationships, so you're pure.

Obviously, there's your moral, not polluted with all these things. So in any given dynamic in a relationship that you have right now, you're processing. I wonder how polluted I am in some of my thinking about myself as I'm trying to interact here. So it's just not polluted. And then peaceable.

That's just harmony, just after harmony. And then there's that word, gentle, not easy to translate, just. I'm not the biggest person in the room. Don't you love it when you're dealing with somebody? You ever say to somebody, they're just difficult.

You ever say that? Do you ever catch yourself being difficult?

I think I'm just being difficult. Do you know how nice it is to work with somebody who's just a little easier? James is saying, if Christ is in your life. It should be a little easier to deal with. Just amenable.

That's the word. That's the idea. For general. It's not the best.

Like I said, hard to describe, but I love open to reason because this is the guy who being right is not more important to him than keeping the relationship.

Like, do you know when not.

Not to focus on the letter of the law?

Do you know when to do that? Not to focus on the letter of law? Yeah, but I. Who likes that guy or that gal? Goodness gracious.

Do you know when to back off of something? Even if it's correct to give the relationship some space, that's not where you put it in the fridge, those kinds of things. See, bitterness has taken over, and now the only thing in the landscape of your life that looks out of place is the mustard.

You know you're in bad shape.

These are qualities that the gospel are giving you. This is what comes from above, you know, in that little trapped world. Journey gets in there and then verse 18. And I love this verse, and I just want to close with it here because we're going to take communion here.

When those seven qualities are operating in your life. Look, there's a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This is the key word. It's used three times in this text. Whatever the wisdom is, here's the wisdom in the text that comes from above.

It's peacemaking peace. And he focuses on. And he basically, at the end of the day, calls you a peacemaker. Do you know how to make peace? Those seven qualities help you make peace in relationships, and that's what the priorities are.

And it's sowing. It's like these are people with green thumbs. Socially and relationally. I just love the image. And then there's this harvest, and everybody benefits from it.

You know, when you plant things, you get so much more than you plant. And there's just a harvest. Think of us as a church right now. Just think of us as a church. You can think of your home just even as a church community.

Think about the harvest and all of us and the produce and the fruits that we all benefit from when we all treat each other like those seven qualities right there. Just how much easier it is to get along. And that's what peacemaking is. You just. You're getting along.

My neighbors have just taken a. You know, let me show you. I snapped a picture of my neighbor. Cause they just created a. They got this big old yard.

It was nothing. A couple of months ago, only they decided they were gonna plant this garden. His wife wanted a garden, and so it's already growing, and they've already, you know, I'll go stand over the fence and talk to him about it, and he'll bring me zucchinis. He goes, they were this big three days ago. They got massive zucchinis, and he handed me three, the first three right out of there.

And so there's this abundance already, and it's so fast. I just can't believe the amount of work that they've put in. You can just see the work. She's killing herself. But he grew up on a farm, and he knows how to ranch.

She doesn't really know how to do it. She's just the one that's most excited about it. He's least excited about it, but he's working really hard. Okay, and I'll talk to them on the fence, and I'll say a few things, and she'll say something, and he'll go, no, that's not correct. I.

Because she doesn't really know how to farm. She just wants the produce. And I love the image because he's bringing her along, and she wants to learn how to do it on the one hand, and he's teaching her how to do it, but she is putting in the hard work. I think of it like James thinks of most of us. We're more like her relationally.

Boy, I sure would love to have a harvest of relationships like that in my life. And you got James coming alongside you. Well, this is how you do it, and it's going to take a lot of work. I'm seeing this little lady. She's roughly our age, I think somewhere our age.

And she's. We're bearing big old, you know, cases of stuff, fertilizer and different things like that, and soil and all this kind of stuff. And they're out there all the time, and they're killing themselves. And when something comes up, like, oh, my God, look at this zucchini. And James is saying, don't you want zucchinis?

Don't you want zucchinis in your life? That's what he's saying. It's just a harvest of it, because everybody benefits from the relationship. You got to learn, and you got to work hard. Listen, I'm asking you to do something here.

It's going to take a lot of work on your part to treat people better. It's gonna take a lot of work on your part. James. You have the tools. They come from above you'll never find them inside yourself.

Just a great.

So are you a peacemaker? Like right now? You got a situation in your life you haven't been interested in? Peace.

Nitpicky, petty, unreasonable. Can I just say wh. Auden said, if equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me, and you just commit to saying, I'm going to be the peaceful one year, no matter what. And I think it's a. I think it's one of the great reasons to come to Christ.

Like, if this is all we had in the New Testament, I would look at every one of you and say, I'll tell you a good reason. You ought to give your life to Christ because it's high time you didn't see yourself as the biggest person in the room. And until he comes into your life, you can't do it and get the chaos of the bad relationships out. That's a good reason to come to Christ. In fact, you know, he says, because of him, he's become to us.

Christ has become to us the wisdom of God. So that it is written, let no one boast so that no one's the biggest person in the room. You've already met the biggest person in the room. That's what salvation is. Isaiah says, woe to you if you're wise in your own eyes.