October 31, 2025 - Proverbs 3:1 - "The Obedient Son"

Proverbs 3:1

"My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments:"

These are the words of the Father to His Son, and this entire book is the record that God has given of His Son. What we read here is what God the Father required of His Son to satisfy His law and justice, in order to be just and to declare righteous those that the Father had given His Son from eternity.

When we read these words, we are not reading a rulebook for self-improvement. We are beholding the LORD Jesus Christ, The Obedient Son. He is the One of Whom the Father says, “My Son.” He is the One Whose heart kept every commandment. In Him there was no forgetting, no failing, no transgression. Every jot and tittle of the law was fulfilled perfectly in Him. The law says, “Do and live.” We could not do; but Christ did.

The Father’s demand was perfect obedience. The law requires that every commandment be kept from the heart. “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). None but Christ ever did that. He loved His Father with a perfect love, and He loved His neighbor as Himself (Matthew 22:39). "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3).

Here is the marvel of the Gospel—what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us (Romans 8:3–4). The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in Christ, and by substitution is counted to us as "fulfilled in us". He obeyed where we disobeyed. He remembered where we forgot. He kept what we broke. He did not lean on His own understanding, but trusted perfectly in the Father.

To understand perfect obedience, it's not in us! It's in that Righteousness that the LORD Jesus earned and established in His obedient life, and culminated in His death in fulfillment of the penalty for the disobedience of those sinners for whom He paid their sin debt. The law demanded holiness, righteousness, and truth. All of that is seen in the Person of the LORD Jesus. The law reveals God’s justice; the Gospel reveals His justice satisfied through the perfect obedience of the Son unto death. We all stand condemned under that law—“There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). But when Christ Jesus stood in our place as elect sinners by the Father, He fulfilled the law’s demands, and bore its curse. Either Christ finished the work or He didn’t.

Thanks be to God, He did finish it! On the cross, He cried, “It is finished.” In His life He fulfilled the law; in His death He satisfied the penalty that God's justice required. By His resurrection God the Father declared His people already righteous because of His death. "Now there is therefore no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). He alone is The Obedient Son, the Beloved in Whom the Father is well pleased. The command, “My son, forget not My law,” finds its complete obedience in Him. Every precept of Proverbs 3—trusting in the LORD with all the heart, acknowledging Him in all ways, fearing the LORD and departing from evil—was lived perfectly by Christ. He is the Wisdom of God. He is the One Who feared the LORD and turned away from evil. He is the One Who honored the LORD with all His substance.

We do not come to this passage to learn how to make ourselves righteous. We come to see the righteousness of Another. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). The believer’s Hope is not in his own obedience, but in the obedience of Christ. When the Father looks upon His people, He beholds them in His Son, clothed in that perfect righteousness which satisfies His law forever. So, as we read Proverbs 3, let our eyes by the Spirit be turned to Christ—to behold Him and Him alone. He is The Faithful Son, The Perfect Substitute, the One in Whom the Father delights. In Him the command is kept, the justice of God is satisfied, and Grace reigns through Righteousness unto Eternal Life by Jesus Christ our LORD (Romans 5:21).