Fourth, Wisdom is “submissive.” Other translations say, “gentle.” Strongs says the Greek word can mean “mild, moderate, patient.” The idea is that we are gracious and approachable, willing to listen to what others have to say, giving serious consideration to their input. This encourages others to talk with us, seeing us as safe, gentle, moderate, patient. They know they will be heard and their ideas considered.
It also implies that if they have a better idea than I do, that I would give up preference for my own solution and go with theirs. For me this happened often during the first year of my marriage. It was humiliating to see that my wife had a better idea than I did about 80% of the time! But by swallowing my pride and accepting her idea, complimenting her on it and going with it made our marriage better, our ministry better and my leadership better!
It is pretty obvious why this quality of submissiveness/gentleness comes after being “sweetly reasonable.” Gentleness and submissiveness to better ideas will naturally flow out of sweet reasonableness.
The opposite of this is when I try to draw my self-worth and significance from being right and in charge. With this attitude, the point of life is to reach my goals. And I will use others to get there, trying to get others to be submissive but not consider this quality at all for myself.
Yes, wisdom is first of all pure, then peace loving, sweetly reasonable and then submissive/gentle. These make life full of grace and good fruit instead of competition and strife. None of these preclude hard work, moving towards goals and achieving, but they make the process entirely other, they make it, well, heavenly.
