The Great Epistemological Divide Text: Proverbs 28:5
Introduction: Two Ways of Knowing
We live in an age that is drowning in information and starving for wisdom. Our culture prides itself on its expertise, its data, its science, and its endless stream of expert opinion. And yet, for all our supposed knowledge, we cannot seem to grasp the most basic realities. We cannot define what a woman is. We celebrate the dismemberment of the unborn as a right. We call evil good and good evil. How can a society so full of facts be so utterly bereft of understanding? The book of Proverbs answers this question with a brutal and necessary clarity. It tells us that the issue is not a lack of information, but a corrupt foundation. The problem is not intellectual; it is moral and spiritual.
Proverbs 28:5 draws a line in the sand, not between the educated and the uneducated, or the sophisticated and the simple, but between the evil and the righteous. It establishes that there are two distinct ways of knowing, two separate epistemologies that are mutually exclusive and perpetually at war. One path leads to a profound and comprehensive blindness, while the other leads to a genuine understanding of all things. This is not a matter of differing opinions or perspectives. This is a matter of two different kinds of men, inhabiting two different moral universes, operating with two entirely different sets of intellectual equipment.
The modern secularist believes that knowledge is a neutral tool, available to anyone who is clever enough to wield it. But Scripture teaches that the heart is the organ of sight. The moral condition of a man determines what he is capable of seeing and understanding. You cannot staple a PhD onto a corrupt heart and expect to get wisdom. You will only get a more articulate and dangerous form of folly. This proverb is the foundational premise for a biblical theory of knowledge. It tells us that true understanding is not an academic pursuit, but a covenantal one. It is not found in the laboratory or the lecture hall, but in the seeking of Yahweh.
Therefore, we must see this verse for what it is: a declaration of the great antithesis that runs through all of human thought. It is the dividing line between the city of God and the city of man. One man builds his house of knowledge on the shifting sands of his own autonomy, and the other builds upon the rock of God's revealed character. One ends in confusion and ruin; the other in a comprehensive and glorious understanding.
The Text
Evil men do not understand justice,
But those who seek Yahweh understand all things.
(Proverbs 28:5 LSB)
The Blindness of the Wicked
First, we must consider the diagnosis given to evil men.
"Evil men do not understand justice..." (Proverbs 28:5a)
The proverb begins with a flat, unqualified declaration. Evil men are constitutionally incapable of understanding justice. The word for justice here is mishpat, which refers to God's righteous standard, His judgments, the way things ought to be. This is not about a simple ignorance that could be corrected with a few law classes. This is a fundamental cognitive disability rooted in a moral rebellion. The evil man is not someone who is merely mistaken about the nature of justice; he is at war with it.
Why can't he understand it? Because to understand justice, you must first presuppose a standard of justice that exists outside of yourself. You must acknowledge a Lawgiver. But the very essence of being an "evil man" is the rejection of any authority higher than the self. The evil man is his own god, his own lawgiver, and his own supreme court. For him, "justice" is simply a tool, a lever to get what he wants. It is a word he will use to advance his cause, but it has no objective meaning for him. He will speak of justice when it serves him, and he will trample it when it obstructs him. His relationship to the truth is entirely instrumental.
This is why our modern political discourse is so insane. We are trying to have a conversation about justice with people who, according to God's Word, are incapable of understanding it. They speak of "social justice," "reproductive justice," or "economic justice," but what they mean is a raw power grab, dressed up in the stolen language of morality. They cannot understand true justice because their hearts are unjust. An unjust man does and speaks unjustly. He cannot do otherwise. To ask an evil man to render a just verdict is like asking a blind man to appreciate a sunset. He lacks the necessary faculty.
This blindness is not limited to the courtroom or the legislature. It pervades every area of life. The man who rejects God cannot understand the justice of a seed growing into a tree, the justice of a husband loving his wife, or the justice of a beautiful poem. All reality is structured by God's mishpat, His righteous order. To be at war with God is to be at war with reality itself. And so, the evil man stumbles through a world he cannot comprehend, full of rage at a system whose rules he refuses to learn.
The Vision of the Righteous
In stark contrast, we have the second half of the proverb.
"But those who seek Yahweh understand all things." (Proverbs 28:5b LSB)
Here is the other side of the great epistemological divide. The defining characteristic of the righteous man is not his inherent goodness or his intellectual horsepower. It is that he "seeks Yahweh." This is an active, ongoing pursuit. It is the fundamental orientation of his heart and mind. To seek the Lord is to acknowledge Him as the source of all things, the standard for all things, and the goal of all things. It is to submit your mind, your will, and your heart to His authority.
And what is the result of this pursuit? A comprehensive understanding. They "understand all things." This does not mean that a righteous man becomes omniscient, that he knows the chemical composition of Saturn's rings or the intricacies of quantum mechanics. It means that he has the key that unlocks the meaning of everything. Because he has the central point of reference, God Himself, he can see how all the other pieces fit together. He understands the point of it all.
The man who seeks the Lord understands that history is not a random series of events but the unfolding of God's sovereign plan. He understands that science is not the discovery of brute, meaningless facts but the exploration of a coherent, created order. He understands that ethics are not a matter of personal preference but are grounded in the unchanging character of a holy God. He understands that his own life is not a tale told by an idiot, but a part assigned to him in a grand, cosmic drama.
This is because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). It is the starting point, the axiom, the absolute presupposition. If you begin anywhere else, you are building on a lie, and your entire intellectual structure will be a house of cards. But if you begin with God, then everything else finds its proper place. The man who seeks God has the ultimate filing system. He knows where to put justice, and mercy, and beauty, and work, and family, and suffering. He understands it all because he understands the One who gives it all meaning.
The Great Exchange
So we are presented with a stark choice. There is no middle ground, no neutral territory in the war for understanding. You are either an evil man, blind to justice, or you are a seeker of Yahweh, who understands all things. There is no third way.
This brings us to the very heart of the gospel. How does a man cross over from the first category to the second? How does a blind man receive his sight? The answer is not that he tries really, really hard to understand justice. The answer is not that he enrolls in a course on ethics. The answer is that he must stop being an "evil man." He must be made new.
The ultimate evil is to establish our own righteousness, to be our own standard of justice. This was the sin of the Pharisees, and it is the sin of every unregenerate heart. They were ignorant of God's righteousness and went about establishing their own (Romans 10:3). They would not submit to the righteousness of God.
But the gospel announces that God has provided a righteousness that is not our own. It is the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. He is the only man who has ever perfectly understood and fulfilled all justice. On the cross, a great exchange took place. Our injustice, our evil, our willful blindness was imputed to Him, and He was punished for it. His perfect justice, His perfect understanding, His perfect righteousness was imputed to us who believe. We are found in Him, not having our own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (Philippians 3:9).
When God saves a man, He performs a heart transplant and an eye surgery all at once. He takes out the heart of stone, the heart that is its own law, and gives a heart of flesh, a heart that seeks Yahweh. And in that moment, the light goes on. "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). The one who was blind to justice now sees the very definition of justice in the crucified and risen Lord. The one who understood nothing now has the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), and in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).
Conclusion: Seek the Lord
So the application of this proverb is profoundly simple. Do you want to understand? Do you want to make sense of this chaotic world? Do you want to know what justice is? Then you must seek the Lord. You must abandon your pretense of intellectual autonomy. You must repent of your pride, which is the root of all blindness. You must confess that you are the evil man described in this verse, who does not understand justice.
And you must look to Christ. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God. To seek Yahweh is to seek the face of Jesus Christ. In His life, you see justice perfectly embodied. In His death, you see justice perfectly satisfied. And in His resurrection, you see justice perfectly vindicated.
When you seek Him, you will find that you begin to understand all things. Not because you have become a genius, but because you have been brought into a right relationship with the Logos of the universe, the one through whom and for whom all things were made. Your mind will begin to be recalibrated to reality. You will start to see the world as it truly is. And you will find that the path of righteousness is not a path of grim duty, but a path of ever-increasing light and understanding, shining more and more brightly until the full day.