Fool or a person of Understanding?

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Discipleship leads towards a healthy life before God. Recently, one of my friends asked me about how to work with a person who has a pattern of expressing cold, critical, judgmental, and defensive responds when confronted with corrections. Eventually, the cold, critical, judgmental and defensive behavior at the end of the day only hurting the person who acts this way. Discipleship is not focused on cultivating friendship, which friendship plays a roll, but on sharpening the areas that are sinful, unhealthy, and destructive for the soul.

Proverbs says, "A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool" (17:10). Another words, Proverbs says there are two people at the end of those who are rebuke, a person who understands and a person who is a fool, (none of us reading this, think ourselves as a fool, but do we accept the rebuke from others?). Fool can hear hundreds of rebukes and that will not affect the heart. But when a person with an understanding is rebuke, that goes deep into his heart, the person accepts the rebuke. Proverbs 19:25 says, "Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence; reprove a man of understanding, and he will gain knowledge." Apparently, those who refuse to be rebuked and reproved, end up rejecting the knowledge for life.

On the other side, a heart that is righteous has an attitude that desires to be rebuke. Psalmest says, "Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it" (141:5). By understanding the nature of a rebuke, the Psalmest connects rebuke with something good, "it is oil for my head." It only makes a person stronger if there is someone in our life who shows the negative sides that we might not see. "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning" (Proverbs 9:9).

So the question that we can answer: what is our attitude towards the rebuke?

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