The Discerning

God came to the young king Solomon in a dream and offered him a thing seldom offered to any man. Ask what I shall give thee, he said. Anything. And Solomon, feeling the weight of a kingdom he was too young to rule, asked neither for riches, nor for long life, nor for the death of his enemies, but for this. Give thy servant an understanding heart, that I may discern between good and bad. He asked for discernment, for the wisdom to tell the one from the other, and the Scripture says the request pleased the Lord, so that God gave him not only the wisdom he asked but the riches and honor he did not.

It pleased God that of all things Solomon asked for this. For a discerning heart is among the greatest of gifts and among the most needful, and the man who knows he lacks it and asks for it has already begun to be wise. The world is full of good and evil so tangled together that it takes a given wisdom to tell them apart, and full of choices not between plain good and plain evil but between the good and the better, the lawful and the excellent, and to walk rightly through such a world a soul needs a heart that can discern.

THE HEARING HEART

The phrase Solomon used is worth pausing over, for what our translators render an understanding heart is, in the older tongue, a hearing heart. He asked for a heart that hears. And this tells us where discernment begins, not in cleverness but in listening. The discerning heart is first of all a hearing heart, attentive to God and attentive to the matter before it, slow to speak and quick to hear. The fool, the proverb says, answers a matter before he hears it, and that is his folly. The discerning man hears first, listens long, weighs before he judges. Discernment is a listening humility before it is anything else, and the proud who will not listen can never truly discern.

And the first listening is to God, for true discernment is not the soul’s own shrewdness but a wisdom given from above. The hearing heart hears God, bends its ear to his word, asks him what is good and evil rather than leaning on its own understanding. This is why the fear of the LORD is called the beginning of wisdom, for the soul that reverences God and listens to him is the soul that begins to see as he sees, and to tell, by his light, the good from the evil that its own eyes could never have distinguished.

TRYING THE SPIRITS

We need this discernment the more because evil so rarely comes labeled as evil. Satan himself, the apostle warns, is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers into ministers of righteousness. The most dangerous errors do not announce themselves as errors; they come clothed in the appearance of good, plausible, attractive, wearing the borrowed dress of truth. And so we are commanded, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. We are surrounded by counterfeits, and without discernment we cannot tell the true coin from the false, the voice of the Shepherd from the voice of the stranger dressed as the Shepherd.

The apostle prayed for his people exactly this, that their love might abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that they might approve things that are excellent. Not merely that they might avoid the grossly evil, but that they might discern, among many good things, the excellent, the best, the thing most pleasing to God. This is the finer work of discernment, to choose not only good over evil but best over good, and it requires a heart trained and tender and taught by God.

SENSES EXERCISED BY USE

And discernment, though it is God’s gift, is also a trained faculty that grows by use. The apostle speaks of those of full age who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Their senses are exercised, trained like an athlete’s muscles by long practice, until they can tell, almost by taste, the difference between the word of God and the plausible counterfeit. The babe in Christ cannot do this; the mature can, not because they are cleverer but because they have practiced, have handled the truth long enough to know its feel, and so are not deceived by imitations that would fool the untrained. Discernment is grown, over years, in the exercise of a soul that keeps testing all things and holding fast the good.

Yet with all our exercise we are still to ask, for the gift remains a gift. If any of you lack wisdom, the apostle says, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. We need not be born clever, and we need not despair of our own dullness. We must ask, as Solomon asked, and God gives liberally, and does not scold us for asking. The soul that cries after knowledge and lifts up its voice for understanding, seeking her as silver and searching for her as for hid treasure, is promised that it shall understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God, for the LORD giveth wisdom.

THE WORD THAT DIVIDES

The great instrument of discernment is the word of God, for the word is itself a discerner. The word of God is quick, and powerful, the apostle says, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The word divides. It cuts between the soul and the spirit, between the true motive and the false, between what merely feels good and what is actually of God. The discernment we lack is not to be spun out of our own intuition, but is given to the soul that lives under the word and lets it do its dividing work.

This is a great safeguard, for our own hearts are too deceitful to be trusted as the judge of what is good, but the word is not deceitful. When we bring our thoughts, our impulses, our plausible reasonings to the word, it divides them, showing which are of God and which are only of ourselves dressed up as God. The soul that would discern must therefore be a soul steeped in Scripture, for it is by the word that we test all things, and the man who neglects the word has thrown away the very sword by which the true is divided from the false.

So the growth of discernment is bound up with the reading and keeping of the word. The more the word dwells in us, the more surely we can tell the voice that agrees with it from the voice that subtly departs from it, the teaching that rests on it from the teaching that only borrows its language. A soul soaked in the word develops a kind of instinct for what is true, not a mystical intuition but a trained recognition, so that the counterfeit, however plausible, strikes a false note against the word it knows so well.

And this is why the plainest and least gifted believer, if he is deep in the word, may discern more truly than the cleverest man who is not, for discernment is not finally a matter of native intelligence but of living under the light of Scripture. Thy word is a lamp, and it lights not only the path for the feet but the difference between good and evil for the judgment. Let the word divide, and you will discern; neglect it, and no cleverness will keep you from being deceived.

So ask for the hearing heart. Do not lean on your own shrewdness, which is so easily deceived, but ask God for the discernment you lack, and he will give it liberally. Listen before you judge, hearing God and hearing the matter, for discernment begins in a listening humility. Try the spirits, for evil comes clothed as light. Exercise your senses by use, testing all things and holding fast the good, until you can tell by long practice the true from the false. And seek not only to shun the evil but to approve the excellent, the best among the goods. Give thy servant an understanding heart, Solomon prayed, and it pleased the Lord that he asked it. Ask it still, and it will please him yet.