First, there is a worldly wisdom. Isaiah refers to it (29:14), and Paul quotes that ancient prophet (1Cor. 1:19), “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ ” This is the kind of wisdom that men teach each other, in great universities and technical schools. Men become extremely proud of themselves when they attain to this kind of wisdom, even though this kind of wisdom is perfectly worthless when it comes to understanding the ways of God and attaining to eternal life. “The world by wisdom knew not God,” declared Paul. None of the knowledge men can teach each other enabled the “wise men of earth to recognize Christ, “the wisdom of God”, when he came to dwell among them (1Cor. 2:8). In fact, he writes, by the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ, “God hath made foolish the wisdom of this world.” To sum it up, Paul tells the saints in Corinth, “The natural man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.” And to the Romans (8:7), Paul wrote these sobering words: “The carnal mind [the ordinary mind of man] is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be.”

This is what Jesus was trying to communicate to his disciples, when answering their question, “Who then can be saved?” He said, “With men, it is impossible.”

Another characteristic of worldly wisdom, Solomon taught us, is that the person who has it knows how to make money. But that, too, is worthless in the pursuit of eternal happiness, and that is why Solomon told his son, “Labor not to be rich; cease from thine own wisdom.”

Impossible as it sounds, Satan did not seem to think that God or anyone else knew what kind of spirit he had within him. God did not cast the devil out of heaven the moment that his heart became perverse. In fact, Satan was not cast out of heaven until Jesus died, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and began his ministry to the saints from the right hand of God.

All those thousands of years before, Satan was in the presence of God as one of the sons of God (Job 1:6). He and the angels who had become like him gathered with all the sons of God, worshiping God as they did, singing when they sang, bowing when they bowed, praising God as they did, and feeling the glory of His power when they felt it. If you had been there, observing them all as they worshiped around God’s throne, you would not have been able to tell which of the angels were evil and which were upright, nor would you have been able to tell which one of the worshiping cherubim was Satan.

Satan’s wicked wisdom is the knowledge of how to blend in with the righteous without really being righteous. His wisdom is to know how to appear holy without truly being holy.

Satan shares this wisdom only with children of God who, like him, want to share in God’s glory but who, also like him, are unwilling to pay the price to really have it. God tolerates those saints as He tolerated Satan, and they seem to think that their true spiritual condition is hidden, as Satan thought his condition was hidden in the presence of God.

This is the wisdom of Satan, and any child of God can have it if he elects not to submit to the power of God but just to seem to submit. James warned some in the congregation that if there was any ungodliness on the inside, then they must not rejoice with the saints as though that was not true. “If ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts,” he said, “Glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish” (3:14-15). Paul called it “eating and drinking unworthily” when someone in the congregation attempted to deceive the saints by partaking of the glory of God when they really were hiding secret sin. They thought they were “getting by”, too, but Paul pointed out the obvious fact that some of the guilty were sick, and others had actually died prematurely. As he told another group of saints, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).

It is frightening to know that God will bless a hypocrite when that hypocrite comes to worship Him. May God help us not belong to that “wise” group of saints, that group who depend upon the wisdom of Satan for their fellowship with other saints and do not do the will of God so that their fellowship can be real. In the end, Jesus said, they will be cut out of the body and thrown into flames that will never be quenched.