Proverbs 12:1-3

The Bible's bluntest word on coachability — "brutish," like the livestock: the ox that kicks at everything that pricks him, learning nothing. Both men dislike reproof; nobody enjoys it. The difference: the fool casts away the precious because it is unpalatable, and the wise man accepts the unpalatable because it is precious. David showed the move at its hardest — cursed by Shimei, he looked past the foul tongue for the Father's hand behind it (2 Samuel 16:11). Adversity is the best university, and the old line stands: God first humbles whom He means to illuminate — men beat and bruise their torches before they light them, to make them burn the brighter.

Keep the order of grace straight here: God's favour is a flower that grows only in God's own garden — the good man's goodness is the fruit of favour already given, never its purchase price. He is not merely the subject of grace; he becomes its distributor. After all is done, "we are unprofitable servants" (Luke 17:10).

Plenty of men are established in wickedness — but no man was ever established by it. There is rottenness in the root of every crooked success; the hidden curse of God is in it, and no cleverness can engineer it out. The righteous man's stability is in the opposite place — underground: his leaves may whip and wither in the storm, but the root shall not be moved. Like a ship at anchor: it wags up and down with every wave, yet it does not move.