There comes a moment in the contemplation of human existence when the mind must rise above the clamour of daily pursuits, the intoxicating allure of earthly accomplishments, the restless competition for prominence, and the ceaseless accumulation of things that perish, and confront the most fundamental question of all: What, ultimately, is the purpose of man? Why does he rise in the morning and retire in the evening? Why does he labour, accumulate, compete, conquer, build, acquire knowledge, pursue recognition, gather titles, enlarge possessions, extend influence and struggle so relentlessly to establish himself upon the earth? And beneath all these pursuits lurks an even more searching question: why is man so relentlessly tempted to exalt himself? Why this ancient hunger to be seen, celebrated, deferred to, elevated above others and established upon some summit from which he may survey the accomplishments of his hands and say, in one form or another, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?” (Daniel 4:30). Scripture treats this appetite for self-exaltation not as an innocent eccentricity of human personality, but as a matter upon which heaven itself keeps watch. In one of the most formidable challenges God ever addressed to man, the LORD said to Job: “Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place” (Job 40:12). The words are staggering. Job is being asked whether he possesses what God possesses: the power to survey the proud wherever they arise and bring them down. The implication is unmistakable. Pride does not wander unnoticed beneath heaven. The Most High sees it. He confronts it. He knows how to abase it. Nebuchadnezzar eventually learned this after being driven from his throne into an existence among the beasts, and when his understanding returned he confessed that “those that walk in pride he is able to abase” (Daniel 4:37).
This divine hostility toward pride runs like a scarlet warning through Scripture. “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6; cf. Proverbs 3:34). Peter repeats the same great principle and then draws its necessary conclusion: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:5–6). Christ Himself states the law with uncompromising simplicity: “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11; cf. Matthew 23:12; Luke 18:14). Here is one of the great reversals of the kingdom of God. Man instinctively reaches upward by self-exaltation; God commands him downward into humility. Man struggles to manufacture his own elevation; God tells him that exaltation belongs to the divine timetable. Man grasps the throne; God points him toward the servant’s towel. Man advertises himself; heaven searches the heart. Man says, “I will ascend” (Isaiah 14:13–14); Christ says, “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” There is therefore something profoundly dangerous about building a life around the enlargement of self. The very God from whom promotion ultimately comes: for “promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:6–7) has declared Himself opposed to the proud and gracious toward the humble.
It is against this vast background that the question of life’s ultimate meaning becomes so urgent. What remains when the applause has subsided, the offices have acquired new occupants, the treasures have changed hands, the magnificent edifices have surrendered to the elements, the certificates have yellowed, the photographs have faded, and the generations that once celebrated our names have themselves disappeared into the corridors of history? Scripture does not leave humanity wandering indefinitely through the wilderness of philosophical speculation. It brings the entire enterprise of human existence before the tribunal of divine wisdom and pronounces a conclusion of astonishing simplicity, breathtaking comprehensiveness and eternal consequence: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14).
These are not the embittered reflections of a man who had been denied the pleasures of life and therefore sought consolation in religion. They are the considered conclusions of Solomon, a king who had explored the extraordinary possibilities of human existence from a position of almost unparalleled privilege. He possessed wealth beyond ordinary comprehension, wisdom that attracted rulers from distant lands, political authority, architectural accomplishments, extensive possessions, servants, musicians, gardens, vineyards and access to virtually every pleasure his heart desired. He had reached heights that multitudes spend their entire lives attempting to climb. Yet after surveying the whole landscape of earthly achievement from its summit, he discovered that none of these things could bear the ultimate weight of human meaning. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). The Hebrew hebel evokes vapour, breath, mist: something real enough to be seen for a moment, yet impossible to seize and preserve. Solomon was not declaring that work, knowledge, prosperity, beauty or accomplishment possess no legitimate value. He was exposing the catastrophe of demanding eternal satisfaction from temporal things and expecting created things to provide the ultimate meaning that belongs to the Creator alone.
Solomon did not merely theorise about wealth, pleasure and achievement; he conducted the experiment upon himself. He built houses, planted vineyards, made gardens and orchards, constructed pools, acquired servants and livestock, gathered silver and gold and surrounded himself with the delights of men (Ecclesiastes 2:4–8). “Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them,” he confessed (Ecclesiastes 2:10). Few men have ever been so magnificently equipped to investigate whether abundance can satisfy the human soul. Yet when he stood back and inspected the empire of accomplishment his own hands had constructed, his verdict was devastating: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). The laboratory had been supplied with virtually every specimen of earthly success, the experiment had been conducted on an imperial scale, and the result was in. Creation cannot substitute for Creator. Possession cannot cure mortality. Achievement cannot cleanse conscience. Applause cannot answer judgement. And abundance cannot fill a cavity in man whose dimensions are ultimately eternal.
Here is one of humanity’s most persistent illusions: that the next acquisition, the next promotion, the next qualification, the next title, the next triumph, the next contract, the next property, the next office or the next elevation in social standing will finally deliver the completeness that every previous attainment somehow failed to provide. Man ascends one mountain only to discover another beyond it. Yesterday’s aspiration becomes today’s possession and tomorrow’s commonplace. The appetite expands with acquisition and the horizon recedes with every advance. Solomon observed that “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Jesus later demolished the same illusion: “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). And then He placed the whole world on one side of the scales and a single human soul on the other: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
The problem is therefore not that man builds, studies, works, invents, governs, prospers or excels. Scripture commends diligence, wisdom, stewardship and fruitful labour. The problem begins when legitimate achievements are enthroned as ultimate things, and when gifts become grounds for self-exaltation rather than occasions for thanksgiving. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” Paul asks with devastating economy; “now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Intelligence is received. Opportunity is received. Strength is received. Life itself is received. The capacity to labour is received. Moses warned Israel against reaching the summit of prosperity and saying, “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth,” commanding them instead to remember the LORD, “for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17–18). Pride is therefore not merely excessive self-esteem. At its deepest theological level it is a falsification of the accounts. It enters divine capital under human ownership. It receives and then boasts as though it originated. It occupies a house built from borrowed materials and begins behaving as though it laid the foundations of existence itself.
Against this background the declaration of Micah enters with extraordinary force: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8). Notice the address: “O man.” Not O king. Not O professor. Not O millionaire. Not O priest. Not O governor. Not O celebrity. Man. The titles fall away before the Creator and the creature stands exposed in his original category. The summons reaches the palace and the peasant’s dwelling, the university and the marketplace, the sanctuary and the courtroom, the boardroom and the workshop, the employer and employee, the celebrated and obscure. Before asking what a man possesses, God asks how he walks. Before examining the splendour of his offerings, God examines the character of his dealings. Before counting the height to which he has risen, heaven examines whether he has learned to stoop.
The immediate context makes the point even sharper. Micah imagines increasingly extravagant religious offerings: burnt offerings, calves of a year old, thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil, even the firstborn offered for transgression (Micah 6:6–7). But no magnificence of religious performance can purchase exemption from the moral claims of God. Samuel had already told Saul, “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). Isaiah condemned worship accompanied by injustice and called the people instead to “learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). Hosea recorded the divine declaration, “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6), words Christ Himself later invoked (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). Heaven is not dazzled by religious spectacle. God cannot be bribed with ceremony while justice is trampled underfoot, mercy is withheld and pride sits enthroned in the heart.
To do justly means that righteousness must descend from abstraction into transaction. Justice is not fulfilled by admiring it, discussing it, preaching it or demanding it only when we ourselves have been wronged. It must be done. It reaches the weighing scale in the marketplace, the measurements entered in the construction book, the quantities certified, the figures entered in the accounts, the evidence submitted to a tribunal, the wages paid to a labourer, the evaluation of a tender, the exercise of professional judgement, the treatment of a subordinate and the decisions of those entrusted with public power. “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1). “Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 20:10). Amos condemned those who made “the ephah small, and the shekel great” and falsified balances to exploit the poor (Amos 8:4–6). God’s interest in justice therefore penetrates even those little manipulations that men imagine are too technical, too commercial, too administrative or too concealed to possess spiritual significance.
The real examination of justice comes when righteousness becomes expensive. It is easy to praise integrity when integrity costs nothing. The furnace is heated when truth threatens profit, impartiality inconveniences friendship, fidelity jeopardises advancement, or refusing corruption closes a lucrative door. Scripture does not permit righteousness to become a garment worn only when weather conditions are favourable. “Thou shalt not wrest judgement; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift” (Deuteronomy 16:19). Neither poverty nor wealth is to distort judgement (Leviticus 19:15). The God who commands justice is Himself no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and those who walk with Him cannot permanently reconcile devotion to God with systematic injustice toward man. Hence Amos’s thunderous cry: “Let judgement run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).
Yet justice does not exhaust the requirement. Man is commanded not merely to show mercy occasionally, but to love mercy. The distinction is profound. Mercy grudgingly dispensed may satisfy an external obligation; mercy loved reveals a transformed heart. The Hebrew hesed carries the richness of steadfast love, loyal kindness and covenant faithfulness. It reflects something of God Himself, who proclaimed His name to Moses as “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). His mercies are the reason we are not consumed; His compassions fail not; they are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). Psalm 136 repeats like a great liturgical heartbeat that “his mercy endureth for ever.” The man who lives every morning by mercy yet refuses mercy to others has misunderstood the very atmosphere in which his own life is sustained.
Christ exposes this contradiction with terrifying clarity in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:23–35). A man released from an enormous debt walks out of the presence of mercy, finds a fellow servant owing him comparatively little, seizes him by the throat and demands payment. The ugliness lies not merely in his severity but in the contradiction between what he had received and what he refused to extend. James states the principle plainly: “He shall have judgement without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgement” (James 2:13). Mercy does not abolish accountability, excuse wickedness or convert truth into sentimentality. Rather, it restrains cruelty, rejects vindictiveness and refuses to derive pleasure from another person’s humiliation. Justice and mercy stand together in Micah precisely because righteousness without compassion may become brutality, while compassion detached from righteousness may become moral surrender.
But then comes the requirement that reaches beneath conduct into posture: “walk humbly with thy God.” Not merely believe that God exists. Not merely speak about God. Not merely visit God ceremonially. Walk with Him. Walking implies continuity, direction, companionship and daily movement. Enoch “walked with God” (Genesis 5:24). Noah “walked with God” amid a generation filled with corruption and violence (Genesis 6:9–13). Abraham was commanded, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1). The language describes not an occasional religious encounter but an existence consciously lived before God.
And Scripture leaves us in no doubt that humility in this walk is not optional. God is not neutral toward pride. “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 16:5). “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility” (Proverbs 18:12). Isaiah declares that “the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:11). Mary, contemplating the mighty acts of God, rejoiced that He “hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” “put down the mighty from their seats,” and “exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:51–52). Scripture repeatedly presents history itself as a theatre in which God overturns the pretensions of human pride.
Nebuchadnezzar provides perhaps the most spectacular case study. Standing upon his royal palace and contemplating Babylon, he declared, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built…by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). The sentence had scarcely left his mouth when judgement fell. The king who had elevated himself above men was reduced beneath ordinary human society until he learned “that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will” (Daniel 4:32). When his reason returned, his theology had changed. He praised and honoured Him whose dominion is everlasting and concluded: “those that walk in pride he is able to abase” (Daniel 4:37). Babylon thus became not merely the location of one king’s humiliation but a monumental commentary upon Job 40: God sees the proud and knows how to bring them low.
How extraordinary, then, that fallen man spends so much energy performing the very manoeuvre against which God has declared Himself! We advertise ourselves, enlarge ourselves, compare ourselves, defend our superiority, hunger for recognition, resent being overlooked and become agitated when another receives the honour we believe belongs to us. Yet Jesus calmly announces an entirely different economy: “Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). At the Pharisee’s table He said the same (Luke 14:11). After the Pharisee and publican prayed, He said it again (Luke 18:14). Three different settings; one immutable principle. Self-exaltation carries within it the seed of abasement; humility carries within it the promise of elevation: not necessarily according to human schedules or earthly definitions, but under the sovereign hand of God.
Peter therefore gives perhaps the safest counsel ever offered to human ambition: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:6). What magnificent security resides in those words. The humble man does not have to manufacture his own throne. He does not have to claw his way into every room, announce his importance from every rooftop or crush every competitor who appears upon the horizon. He places himself under the mighty hand of God. And the hand under which he humbles himself is the same hand capable of raising him when the proper time arrives. Joseph did not promote himself from prison to Pharaoh’s palace. David did not need to murder Saul to obtain the throne God had promised him. Mordecai did not engineer the night when Ahasuerus could not sleep and discovered that his service had gone unrewarded (Esther 6:1–11). “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). What an exchange: relinquish the exhausting enterprise of self-exaltation and receive grace.
Humility, however, is not mediocrity dressed in religious clothing. It is not pretending to possess no gifts, denying legitimate achievement or cultivating theatrical insignificance. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt (Acts 7:22), Daniel possessed extraordinary wisdom and understanding (Daniel 1:17–20), Paul was intellectually formidable, and Solomon himself was exceptionally wise. Humility does not require the competent man to pretend incompetence. It requires him to remember the source, limits and purpose of his competence. Paul could say both “I laboured more abundantly than they all” and, without contradiction, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). That is humility at full intellectual strength: achievement acknowledged, effort recognised, but glory correctly allocated.
Above all, humility finds its supreme expression not in Solomon, Enoch, Moses, David or Paul, but in Jesus Christ. Though He was in the form of God, He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,” humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, “even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:6–8). And then comes the divine pattern once again: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). Humiliation followed by exaltation. The basin before the throne. The cross before the crown. The Servant exalted above every name. Christ did not merely teach the principle that he who humbles himself shall be exalted; in the mystery of His incarnation and obedience, He displayed its supreme form.
And here the argument must move beyond Solomon altogether, because Scripture itself demands it. Solomon was wise, but a greater than Solomon is here. When the scribes and Pharisees sought a sign, Jesus pointed to the queen of the south, who travelled from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon’s wisdom, and then declared: “behold, a greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42; cf. Luke 11:31). What a declaration! Ecclesiastes records the conclusions of perhaps the greatest human experiment in wisdom, pleasure, achievement and earthly magnificence ever conducted. But Christianity does not end at Solomon’s conclusion. Solomon can tell us that everything under the sun cannot satisfy the soul. He can expose vanity. He can command us to fear God. He can point toward judgement. But standing within history is One greater than Solomon: not merely another possessor of wisdom, but the One “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).
This changes everything. The conclusion of the whole matter is not ultimately an abstract philosophy but leads us to a Person. Christ is called “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). And Paul goes further still: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Consider the magnificence of that declaration. Man does not merely need wisdom because he is confused; he needs righteousness because he is guilty, sanctification because he is defiled, and redemption because he is enslaved. Solomon can diagnose the vanity of life under the sun, but he cannot himself redeem the sinner from it. The law can identify righteousness but cannot become our righteousness. Moral exhortation can command holiness but cannot purchase redemption. But Christ has been made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
Here the entire article finds its Christological centre. What does the proud man need? Not merely advice about modest behaviour, but Christ, who humbled Himself. What does the unjust man need? Not merely a lecture on ethics, but Christ our righteousness. What does the defiled man need? Christ our sanctification. What does the enslaved man need? Christ our redemption. What does the bewildered man wandering through the vanities of life need? Christ our wisdom. And therefore Paul immediately concludes, “That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31). There is the deathblow to pride. If Christ is our wisdom, where is boasting in intellect? If Christ is our righteousness, where is boasting in moral superiority? If Christ is our sanctification, where is boasting in spiritual achievement? If Christ is our redemption, where is boasting in self-salvation? “Where is boasting then? It is excluded” (Romans 3:27).
This also illuminates Solomon’s conclusion with greater brilliance. “Fear God, and keep his commandments” is not contradicted by the gospel; it is placed within the redemptive accomplishment of Christ. The same Scriptures that declare the whole duty of man also declare that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). If Ecclesiastes ended the biblical story, humanity would stand beneath an obligation it has universally failed to fulfil. But the greater than Solomon has come. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). God made Him who knew no sin “to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24). The conclusion of the whole matter therefore does not leave trembling humanity merely staring at the standard; it leads us to the Saviour.
Grace, however, does not abolish Micah. It makes Micah possible in transformed lives. Salvation is “not of works, lest any man should boast,” but those saved by grace are immediately described as God’s workmanship, “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:8–10). God promises to put His law within His people and write it upon their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33); He promises a new heart and a new spirit and declares, “I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Thus the man in Christ does not do justly, love mercy and walk humbly in order to manufacture redemption; he increasingly does these things because redemption has begun its transforming work within him. The fruit does not purchase the tree; the living tree produces the fruit.
The Lord Jesus brings Solomon and Micah into their fullest moral coherence through the great commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” “On these two commandments,” He declares, “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40). Fear of God, obedience, justice, mercy and humility therefore converge in love. Love for God establishes the vertical orientation of life; love for neighbour governs its horizontal expression. John refuses to allow the two to be separated: “he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20). James refuses a faith that speaks piously to the hungry and naked while withholding what they need (James 2:14–17). Christ identifies the treatment of the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick and imprisoned as possessing profound eternal significance (Matthew 25:31–46). Religion that sings magnificently about heaven while practising injustice upon earth has misunderstood the God it claims to worship.
And still Ecclesiastes will not allow us to escape the final reckoning. “God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). The final audit will penetrate beyond the published accounts. It will reach the concealed transaction, the secret motive, the unrecorded cruelty, the private kindness, the manipulation nobody discovered, the mercy nobody applauded, the prayer nobody heard and the act of integrity that cost its practitioner dearly while attracting no earthly recognition. “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3). “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). God “will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5). Paul declares that God will judge “the secrets of men by Jesus Christ” (Romans 2:16), and that “we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
This prospect radically revalues human achievement. The question is no longer merely whether a man succeeded, but what governed his success. Not merely whether he accumulated wealth, but how he acquired it and what he did with it. Not merely whether he exercised authority, but whether justice and mercy accompanied his power. Not merely whether he acquired knowledge, but whether knowledge produced wisdom or merely enlarged his pride. Not merely whether he became famous, but what manner of man existed behind the reputation. Not merely whether men exalted him, but whether he humbled himself under the mighty hand of God. The world may erect a pedestal beneath a man whom heaven is preparing to abase; equally, the world may overlook a servant whom God intends to exalt in due time. Human applause is therefore an extraordinarily unreliable instrument for measuring eternal significance.
Death eventually performs its own severe demolition of earthly distinctions. The crown and the common hat, the academic hood and the labourer’s garment, the executive chair and the humble stool, the mansion and the cottage all belong to a world from which their occupants must depart. “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither” (Job 1:21). “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). James describes life as “a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14). Peter says that all flesh is as grass and all human glory as the flower of grass; the grass withers, the flower falls, “but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Peter 1:24–25). Moses therefore prays not for the illusion of endless time but for wisdom within limited time: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
And so, after the philosophies have been interrogated, the treasures counted, the accomplishments catalogued, the towers erected, the titles accumulated, the applause measured and the pretensions of human greatness brought beneath the searchlight of Scripture, the conclusion emerges with extraordinary clarity. Man was not created merely to accumulate, compete, consume, conquer and depart. He was created by God, lives before God, receives from God, remains accountable to God and can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. He is commanded to fear God and keep His commandments; to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with his God. He is warned that pride attracts divine resistance, while humility finds grace. He is told not to exalt himself but to humble himself under the mighty hand of God and leave the timing and manner of his elevation to Him. And when he discovers that he has neither the wisdom, righteousness, holiness nor freedom necessary to rescue himself, he is directed beyond Solomon to the One greater than Solomon who has been made unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
What, then, shall a man say when he reaches the evening of his life and surveys the landscape of his earthly pilgrimage? Shall he speak only of the houses he built, the money he accumulated, the offices he occupied, the qualifications he obtained, the battles he won, the adversaries he defeated, the titles appended to his name and the crowds that once assembled to applaud him? Shall he discover too late that he had carefully measured every earthly possession while neglecting the immeasurable worth of his soul? Shall he realise that he mastered the art of appearing great before men while never learning the infinitely greater art of walking humbly with God? Shall he have spent a lifetime exalting himself only to arrive before the God who has solemnly declared that whoever exalts himself shall be humbled?
Or shall he, by the grace of God, look back upon triumph and disappointment, abundance and adversity, learning and labour, recognition and obscurity, and testify that through them all he sought to walk beneath the mighty hand of God? That he used his gifts without worshipping them; exercised authority without oppressing others; pursued excellence without making an idol of achievement; sought prosperity without selling righteousness; administered justice without abandoning mercy; received grace without converting grace into pride; and when he stumbled, returned again to Christ, his wisdom, his righteousness, his sanctification and his redemption? Such a man need not manufacture his own monument. His life rests in hands mightier than history.
For when the final curtain falls upon the theatre of earthly existence, when the applause has ceased and the audience has dispersed, when the crowns have fallen and the monuments have crumbled, when the treasures have changed hands and even the memory of human greatness has begun to fade, one throne will remain. One name will remain above every name. One Wisdom greater than Solomon’s will remain. One righteousness will avail before God. One redemption will have conquered the grave. And every secret thing will stand exposed before Him with whom we have to do.
Then, when all the arguments have been exhausted and all the pretensions of human greatness have fallen silent, the ancient words of Solomon will sound with their full and terrible majesty: Fear God, and keep His commandments. The prophet Micah will answer across the centuries: Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with thy God. The apostles will add their solemn witness: God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble; humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. And above Solomon himself stands Jesus Christ, the One who declared by His very presence, “A greater than Solomon is here.” He is not merely the Teacher who explains the conclusion, but the Wisdom to which the conclusion points; our Righteousness when our righteousness cannot stand before the holiness of God; our Sanctification when we cannot cleanse ourselves; and our Redemption when no price within our possession could purchase our deliverance. Therefore, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31). Let man cease, then, from the exhausting enterprise of exalting himself. Let him fear God and keep His commandments; let him do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with his God; let him humble himself beneath the mighty hand of God and await whatever exaltation divine wisdom may appoint in due time; let him receive the grace that God gives to the humble; and let him glory in Christ alone. For this is the whole duty of man. And in Jesus Christ, the One greater than Solomon, we encounter not merely the conclusion of the whole matter, but the Wisdom that answers our folly, the Righteousness that answers our guilt, the Sanctification that answers our defilement, and the Redemption that answers our bondage: the One in whom the restless questions of human existence finally cease wandering, the vanity of life under the sun encounters the eternal purpose of God, and the whole matter is finally and eternally resolved.