Discernment in the Bible is the spiritual characteristic of sound judgment for perceiving the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and error, and identifying God’s will and direction for his people.

In its simplest definition, discernment is nothing more than the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. In other words, the ability to think with discernment is synonymous with an ability to think biblically.

Discernment is learning to think God‘s thoughts after Him, practically and spiritually; it means having a sense of how things look in God‘s eyes and seeing them in some measure “uncovered and laid bare” Jesus‘ discernment penetrated to the deepest reaches of the heart. But the Christian is called to develop similar discernment.

It may simply mean "observe" (bin), "I discerned among the youths" (Proverbs 7:7); or discriminating knowlege, "A wise man's heart discerneth time and judgment" (Ecclesiastes 8:5, yadha`); "He discerned him not, because his hands," etc. (Genesis 27:23, nakhar); "Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked" (Malachi 3:18, ra'ah); "So is my lord the king to discern good," etc. (2 Samuel 14:17, shama`).