Saying Seven

Proverbs 23:1-3

When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you; and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Saying Seven, although seemingly all about food, is much more general when the underlying principle is drawn out. The inspired writer of these proverbs, rightly discerning that food is one sure way to grab his reader’s attention, used the example of a free meal to make his point; however, he could just as easily have spoken about unsolicited gifts, seemingly unwarranted compliments, or even feminine charms:

When you receive a great gift from a mere acquaintance, consider carefully what is before you; and tie a rock to your heart if you are a man given to effusiveness. Do not gush over the item, for it is a deceptive burden.

When you receive an unusually fulsome compliment, consider carefully what you hear; and put a gag in your mouth if you are a man given to requital. Do not acknowledge his words, for they are deceptive flatteries.

When you pass your female employee in the hallway, and her smile seems a little too generous, consider carefully what is before you; and put a blindfold over your eyes if you are a man given to lust. Do not desire her beauties, for they are deceptive snares.

In each of the situations mentioned — eating another’s food, accepting gifts or compliments, or observing the beauty of a woman — the reader is advised to consider the motives behind what is given. Ostensibly, all of these things are freely offered as gifts, like the salvation that is ours in Christ. And since we can’t think of anything we did to deserve it, we naively conclude that that it really is free. After all, ‘to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt’ (Rom 4:4). If there were no works we did to deserve what is being offered to us, then maybe it was simply given out of the goodness of that person’s heart.

What we fail to realise is that the works we do to deserve the ‘gift’ may come after it has already been given. Your benefactor may see this ‘free dinner’ they’re giving you as an investment from which they can draw in future times. They will expect the crop to grow later. Perhaps they have asked you to dinner on five stray occasions in the past year, only so that your indebtedness to them cannot easily be counted; so that, deep in your bones, you will believe you owe that person something large, yet indistinct. Yet, over time, even as you pay them back for their supposed kindnesses, you still imagine that what they did for you, whenever it was, was rightly defined as a gift. After all, you had done nothing to deserve it at the time.

Recall, however, that God’s grace is gifted to us aside from any works we may have performed either before or after the moment of justification. If our standing with God depended on works performed after justification, it is no more a gift than if those works were before. No, our obedience to God post-justification is itself part of the gift.

With this doctrinal truth in mind, we can see the difference between the way a Christian and an unbeliever thinks about gifts. In the world of unbelievers — for, in this respect, unbelievers really do operate in a sub-creational dimension — gifts are not really gifts, but bargaining chips to gain social leverage. Even in the most generous non-Christian communities, there is an unspoken expectation of reciprocation whenever gifts are involved. If Mr Smith says something nice to Mrs Brown, the latter feels an indebtedness to say something nice in return.

In Christian communities, on the other hand, the source and destination of generosity is quite mysterious. It originates somewhere wholly miraculous, and, rather than placing the recipient in a specific bond of debt, adds value to a general bucket of liberality which then spills over into the lap of anyone with whom they subsequently cross paths. As such, the recipient’s liberality is itself part of the gift they received from another.

Let us get this clear. Suppose that A is generous to B, and as a result, B is generous to C. In this case, B’s generosity towards C is actually part and parcel of A’s gift to B. Person C is benefitting downstream from A’s original generosity. But if this system was true (points out a smart interlocutor) it would imply an infinite regress of gifts. If all acts of true generosity are, by definition, extensions of other acts of true generosity in the past, then the very first act of generosity could not have been true generosity. It would be like one of those seemingly infinite genealogies in the book of Chronicles — …which was the son of True Generosity, which was the son of True Generosity, which was the son of True Generosity… — only there really is no end in sight. Who was the first ‘True Generosity’, and where did he come from? Every son needs a father.

So, like every other field of study in our universe, we run into problems of infinite regress — problems which only an infinite God could solve. Only an infinite God, whose character is generosity, could produce the formative acts of beneficence: the creation of our world, and the sacrifice of his Son. And since Christians are the specific recipients of that love, they have the unique ability to be truly generous — to act out the generosity of God himself towards others. Now, by common grace, unbelievers may experience a modicum of this love, but it cannot be a permanent state, for they are fundamentally in rebellion against it.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:17)

Putting all of this together, Saying Seven takes on a vivid meaning that may be paraphrased as follows: do not gorge yourself on gifts that are not gifts.

But how are we to know if what we are receiving is a real gift? Ought we, therefore, to cast sideward glances at anyone who asks us to dinner just in case it is deceptive? The point is well taken — and I write this as someone who is frequently asked to dinner by truly generous people. This is why the wise man includes the phrase ‘consider carefully what is before you.’ There are only certain situations in which the knife-to-throat approach is appropriate, and it is up to the discretion of the reader to discern them.

For purposes of balance, allow me to jump around the other side of my argument and set up another guardrail there. For there are certainly situations in which Biblical wisdom would require a man to not be suspicious of a friend whose motives are uncharacteristically questionable.

Suppose you had known your friend, Peter, for more than a decade, and had always found his company enjoyable. But Peter, unbeknownst to you, is going through a rough patch financially, and wishes to really get you onside in readiness for the time when he has to ask for help. He knows that you are reasonably loaded with the mammon of unrighteousness, and he views it as smart decision-making (cp Lk 16:8). So he starts hanging out with you more than usual, and when you talk with him, he tends to nod his head at abnormally frequent intervals, murmuring his unmitigated agreement at all of your latest hot-take shower thoughts.

Now, in a situation where Peter was a new acquaintance, Biblical wisdom would certainly recommend a reticence to be over-friendly, or even a suspicion of his motives. But, as we have noted, you have known Peter for a long time, and he has been a genuinely good friend to you. As such, you should be very slow to suspect poor motives, and you should open yourself up to the vulnerability of being hurt by him. He’s your friend. Friends exist in the zone of vulnerability. Whether or not he turns out to be a Judas, you have no right to expel him from your open arms of friendship on the suspicion that he may drive nails through your hands. If it is God’s will that you be so betrayed, then rejoice that you were counted worthy to suffer in the same way that Christ did.

In using the analogy of ‘a ruler’, the saying gives a useful hint for determining the genuineness of a gift. For the principle under consideration is especially true for those in power — those who have a need to win friends and influence people. The most intelligent rulers will quickly observe that, in achieving the goal of influence over their subjects, the use of sheer power is often  less effective than the exertion of personality. If a king can make his citizens feel genuinely indebted to him, he is more likely to succeed.

Therefore, the proverb warns particularly against falling into the snare of being buttered up by a ruler. They’re good at it. They know what they’re doing. And they’re only buttering you up so you’ll go down more smoothly when the time comes to take a bite out of your juicy scruples.

Temperance never hurt anyone; no matter the situation, it is a skill worth developing.

Scriptures for Comparison

Proverbs 27:6

Proverbs 26:28

Ecclesiastes 7:7

Psalm 141:4-5

1 Timothy 6:9-10

Matthew 10:16

James 1:17