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In the previous message we saw that according to 1 Corinthians 1:9, God has called the believers into the fellowship of His Son, that is, into the participation in Him, and that to be called into the fellowship of Christ means to be called into the co-enjoyment of Christ as our unique portion. Now we must go on to see various aspects of this portion for our enjoyment. In particular, verses 23, 24, and 30 reveal that we may enjoy Christ as God’s wisdom and God’s power.
Before mentioning Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God in verse 24, Paul in the previous verse declares, “We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness ” (v. 23). This indicates that the Christ who is the power of God and the wisdom of God for the carrying out of God’s economy is the crucified Christ, a Christ who did not do anything to save Himself. In man’s eyes, if a person is crucified, he is deemed powerless, because a powerful person would not allow himself to be crucified, yet the Christ who is the power of God was crucified. Furthermore, from man’s perspective, a wise person would find ways to avoid crucifixion, yet the Christ who is the wisdom of God was crucified.
The crucified Christ is the power of God. In the cross of Christ we see God’s power. It takes the power of God to defeat Satan, the world, sin, fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, the old creation, and the ordinances. What other power is greater than Christ crucified as God’s power? What other power can destroy Satan or overcome the world? Only God has the power to accomplish these things. This power is not that of doing things by speaking, such as the power God exercised in creation. Rather, it is the power of crucifixion, the power of the wonderful death of Christ. This means that the crucifixion has become the power of God. The death of Christ has become God’s power to destroy Satan, to solve the problem of the world, to eliminate sin, and to terminate fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation (Heb. 2:14; Gal. 6:14; John 1:29; Heb. 9:26; Rom. 6:6; 1 Cor. 15:45a; Col. 1:14; Matt. 27:50-51). By this power God is able to solve the problem of the ordinances (Eph. 2:14-16). By one death, the death of Christ, all the problems in the universe have been cleared. Thus, Christ crucified is God’s power to abolish all negative things and carry out His plan.
This crucified Christ is the wisdom of God. In order to accomplish anything, we need both power and wisdom. Wisdom is for planning and purposing, whereas power is for carrying out and accomplishing what is planned and purposed. In God’s economy, Christ crucified is both God’s power and His wisdom. It is possible for us to have power or strength without having wisdom or the way. If we have power without wisdom, we may use our strength in a foolish way. Therefore, we need Christ as both power and wisdom.
When we experience the crucified Christ, He becomes to us not only the power of God but also the wisdom of God. The crucified Christ as God’s wisdom is related to God’s deep and profound plan according to His good pleasure and also according to God’s way to fulfill His will (1:9, 11; 3:11). Since we have the crucified Christ as God’s wisdom, there is no need for us to seek a way to carry out God’s will. Simply by experiencing the crucified Christ, we spontaneously have a way to do God’s will. We become very wise in doing the will of God. As long as we experience the crucified Christ, Christ will become to us God’s wisdom to fulfill His plan. We will have the wisdom of God to do His will.
When we experience the crucified Christ, we are terminated. All that we are, all that we have, and all that we can do — all is completely terminated. When we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, as we are enjoying Him and experiencing Him, His crucifixion will terminate us. Christ crucified is not only the power but also the way for us to be delivered from the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation.
First Corinthians 1:24 says, “To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Here those who are called refers to the believers who were chosen by God in eternity (Eph. 1:4) and who believed in Christ in time (Acts 13:48). To these called ones, the crucified Christ preached by the apostles is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It seemed to both the miracle-seeking religious Jews, who require signs, and the wisdom-seeking philosophical Greeks that Christ was crucified as a fool (1 Cor. 1:22-23). Because both to Jews and Greeks Christ was nothing, they rejected and despised Christ. To the Jews, the crucified Christ was a stumbling block, and to Greeks, He was foolishness. But to those who believe in Him and call upon His name, He is the power of God and the wisdom of God for them to be delivered from all negative things.
Christ crucified is the power of God for saving us and the wisdom of God for fulfilling His plan. In order to achieve anything, we need both power and wisdom. Power is the ability, and wisdom is the way. Christ is first our power, and then He is our wisdom, that is, our way. Christ is the power of God to carry out God’s economy, and He is also the wisdom of God, the way of God, to carry out God’s economy.
Christ as the power of God strengthens us with a dynamic power, supplying and sustaining us in what we are and what we do. In all our circumstances and conditions, Christ as the power of God enables us to suffer, to bear burdens, and to stand firm. He also sustains us to the point of being unshakable. For this reason, Paul declared, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me” (Phil. 4:13). Christ as the power of God is daily supplying and sustaining us through His divine dispensing.
Christ as the wisdom of God flows unceasingly from God to us to be our present and practical wisdom in our experience. As we face certain problems and realize that we do not know how to handle them, we should apply Christ as our wisdom. If we remain with the Lord to receive His dispensing, He will be transmitted into us as the wisdom to handle all kinds of problems and matters. This is to apply Christ as wisdom in our daily life.
Wisdom may be understood as the way to do things. If we have wisdom, we will know the proper way to do things, but if we are not wise, our way of doing things will be foolish. In order to have the best way to do things in our daily life, we must have wisdom. Christ as wisdom to the believers is actually the divine way. Hence, wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1:30 is equal to the way in John 14:6, a verse in which the Lord Jesus says, “I am the way.” God’s way is His wisdom. If we enjoy Christ and participate in Him, we will have Him as our wisdom, as our way. This wisdom comes from our enjoyment of Christ. Day by day and hour by hour we should live in the spirit and exercise the spirit to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. If we do this, we will enjoy Christ and have Him as our wisdom, that is, our way of doing things.
Christ has become wisdom to us from God. In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul says, “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” In this verse Paul does not say that Christ became our wisdom; instead, he says that Christ became wisdom “to us from God.” The expression to us from God indicates something present, practical, experiential, and ongoing in the way of transmission. For Christ to become wisdom to us from God indicates that there is the transmission of Christ as wisdom from God to us for our daily experience. Paul composed verse 30 in the particular way he did in order to point out to the believers that Christ should continually become wisdom to us from God.
God has never given us wisdom as a thing apart from Himself. Rather, God Himself in Christ is wisdom to us, constantly transmitting Christ, His wisdom, into us as the divine element that constitutes us wise persons. In this transmission, Christ as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption is transmitted into our being.
Christ became wisdom to us from God as three vital things in God’s salvation: (1) righteousness (for our past), by which we have been justified by God, that we might be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life (Rom. 5:18); (2) sanctification (for our present), by which we are being sanctified in our soul, that is, transformed in our mind, emotion, and will, with His divine life (6:19, 22); and (3) redemption (for our future), that is, the redemption of our body (8:23), by which we will be transfigured in our body with His divine life to have His glorious likeness (Phil. 3:21). It is of God that we participate in such a complete and perfect salvation, which makes our entire being — spirit, soul, and body — organically one with Christ and makes Christ everything to us.
On the one hand, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption cover three stages of God’s salvation: regeneration in the spirit (for our past), sanctification in the soul (for our present), and redemption in the body (for our future). On the other hand, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption refer to three aspects of the nature of God’s salvation that we need to experience daily in our Christian living and work. Today in our living and work we need Christ as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Every day we need to be righteous, we need to be sanctified, and we need to be redeemed in all matters of our living. Christ, the wisdom of God transmitted into our being, is doing everything within us to make us righteous in our deeds and to sanctify us in our nature. Hence, whatever we do must be righteous and holy. Not only so, Christ as the wisdom of God redeems us from all things other than God (1 Pet. 1:18). Every day our living and work must be righteous, holy, and redeemed. Even our entire being should be righteous, holy, and redeemed.
Christ as righteousness takes care of our past. In the past we were unrighteous, always doing things unrighteously. Now Christ is transmitted into us as our righteousness to take care of our past in order that in Him we would be accepted by God.
None of us has a good past. Because our past life was sinful, we need Christ to be our righteousness. This is the real remedy, the real cure. Formerly, our past was awful because of our sins and wrongdoings, but now it is glorious because of Christ. By Him, through Him, and in Him, we have been justified by God, and our past has been forgiven. Now that we have Christ as our righteousness, we should no longer say that our past is awful. Instead, we should declare that our past is glorious, because our past is Christ.
Righteousness is actually Christ Himself. Christ, therefore, is not merely to be righteousness for our past so that we may be justified by God; He should also be our present righteousness in our daily living. Christ as righteousness enables us to be right and just toward God, man, and everything else. Christ is dispensed from God into us to be our life, power, and wisdom so that in our living we can be righteous in every word, deed, movement, and action. In this way, the Lord becomes righteousness to us.
Christ as our righteousness is for the believers’ enjoyment. Whenever we enjoy Christ and experience Him, we have Him as our righteousness not only objectively but also subjectively. As our objective righteousness, Christ is the One in whom we are justified by God. Justification is God’s action in approving us according to the standard of His righteousness. In Christ as our objective righteousness before God, we are justified, approved, by Him (Rom. 3:26). As our subjective righteousness, Christ is the One dwelling in us to live for us a life that can be justified by God and that is always acceptable to God (Phil. 3:9). When we live this Christ and express Him, He becomes our daily righteousness. As believers, we need not only to receive Christ as our righteousness but also to live Him as righteousness subjectively. When we exercise our spirit to contact Him, we become righteous. The more we contact Him and enjoy Him, the more righteous we become in Him. Eventually, by having Christ wrought into us, we become the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ as sanctification takes care of our present. Because our present life is not holy, not sanctified, we need Christ to be our present sanctification that we may become holy and separated unto God. In ourselves, that is, in our natural life, we are altogether not holy, not sanctified unto God. However, the divine element in the life of Christ that is constantly transmitted into our being sanctifies us, separating us unto God and thereby making us holy.
Sanctification is more than holiness; it is holiness “to us” in a subjective and experiential way. Whereas holiness refers to the thing itself, sanctification is holiness becoming our experience. By calling on the name of the Lord continually, we gain Christ as our holiness in a subjective way and experience Him as our daily and hourly sanctification. Day by day we need to experience Christ as our sanctification in order that every aspect of our daily walk, including our appearance, our attitude, and our relationships, would be Christ. The more we exercise the spirit to call on the name of the Lord Jesus, the more we are separated from what is common and from being common ourselves. The Christ we enjoy causes us to become holy, sanctified, and separated. In this way, we are no longer common; instead, we are sanctified, separated, marked out, and absolutely different from the worldly people. This is sanctification — Christ becoming our holiness in our experience.
Christ as the sanctification to us from God is sanctifying us not only in position but also in disposition so that we can be set apart to God from everything common. He is both the power of our sanctification and the factor for our sanctification. Through Him, the divine dispensing is continually transmitted into us, sanctifying our whole being — spirit, soul, and body — making us holy, full of the divine element.
Christ as redemption takes care of our future. Christ as righteousness saved us in that when we believed in Christ and were justified in Him, we were regenerated in our spirit. Christ as sanctification is now transforming our soul, thereby making us holy, yet our body still remains unsaved. In the future our body will be redeemed in Christ; that is, Christ will be our redemption. One day our body will be transfigured into the same body of glory possessed by Christ (Phil. 3:21). This is the redemption of our body, the full enjoyment of our sonship (Rom. 8:23). In this way we enjoy God’s full salvation.
Christ as the redemption to us from God will transfigure our body of humiliation through His divine life into the body of His glory. Everything that God glorifies must first be redeemed by passing through the judgment of the cross. Everything in us that is of the natural being, the flesh, the self, the world, sin, the old creation, and Satan must be crucified and judged by God before we can be redeemed and glorified. First, there is redemption, then glory. We are all still in the old creation and in the natural life. Therefore, we need to take the judgment of the cross in order that we can receive Christ as our redemption and be qualified to enjoy God’s glory. This is both for our living today and for the redemption of our body in the future, when our whole being will enter into God’s glory and will express His glory and radiance forever.
Redemption includes three matters: being brought back to God, terminated, and replaced. When God redeems us, He terminates us, replaces us with Christ, and brings us back to Himself. First, when we enjoy Christ as our portion, we will experience Christ as our redemption and thus will be brought back to God. In our experience we may go astray from the Lord. But when we enjoy Christ and thereby become righteous and sanctified, we are brought back to God. Second, redemption also includes termination. The Christ who dwells in us, supplies us, and becomes our nourishment also terminates us. The more we call on the Lord’s name, the more we will realize how much we are still in the old creation, and the more we will hate ourselves and confess that we need to be terminated. Third, redemption includes being replaced by Christ. When Christ terminates us, He replaces us with Himself. This is transfiguration. This is more than sanctification, which separates us and makes us different from others. This is the actual process in which our element, our old constitution, is terminated and replaced with a new element, a new constitution — Christ Himself in resurrection. When we are replaced, we are reconstituted with Christ. The future redemption of our body will be the transfiguration of our body, but today we may experience Christ as the One who transfigures our inner being. Thus, Christ not only will be our transfiguration in the future; He also is our present transfiguration, redemption, of our inner being.
With regard to everything in our daily life, we need to be brought back to God, terminated, and replaced with Christ. In the church life we also need redemption because we are still very natural in many matters, such as our preference or care for the saints. In the church life we need to be brought back to God, terminated, and replaced with Christ. In all things we need to be righteous, sanctified, and redeemed. When Christ becomes wisdom to us from God in our daily experience, eventually in everything He will be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, it is of God that we are in Christ. Whatever we believers, as the new creation, are and have in Christ is of God, not of ourselves. It is God who put us in Christ, and it is God who made Christ wisdom to us. How can God in Christ be transmitted into our being so that we may have Christ as our power and wisdom? This is because God has put us into Christ, transferring us from Adam into Christ (2 Cor. 5:17) through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (Gal. 2:20) and by our believing and being baptized (John 3:15; Gal. 3:26-28). Christ could not become wisdom to us before we were in Him. But when we believed into Christ and were baptized into Him, God put us into Him, and then Christ became wisdom to us.
Although we never thought or even dreamed that we could be in Christ, one day through the gospel God called us and caused us to believe in Christ and to be baptized into Him. In so doing, God put us into Christ. To be baptized is to be put into Christ, the embodiment of God, and in Christ we believers have all been baptized into the Triune God. From that time onward, the heavenly, spiritual, and divine transmission has begun to unceasingly transmit all that God is and has into our being in order to make us one with Him. Just as we enjoy the constant supply of electricity transmitted from a power plant to our home, we may also always enjoy the rich supply of Christ as wisdom transmitted from God into our being.
Every day Christ, the power and wisdom of God, is being transmitted from God the Giver to us the enjoyers (Eph. 1:19-22). Without the transmission of Christ as power and wisdom to us from God, we have no power or wisdom. At times we may be weak, in sin, and in darkness, and thus be temporarily cut off from this transmission, but whenever we turn to the Lord and confess our sins, we are forgiven and are connected again to the transmission. As the transmission resumes, we enjoy Christ as our power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We must learn to remain in this transmission all the time. Our enjoyment of this continual transmission is the way to enjoy Christ.
Paul’s word in 1 Corinthians 1:30 concerning our being in Christ is related to the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. On the one hand, God has put us into Christ positionally. This makes it possible for us to experience the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. On the other hand, the more God in Christ has dispensed Himself into us, the more we are transferred into Christ experientially. Although through Christ’s redemption God has already transferred us from Adam into Christ, according to our actual experience we have been transferred into Christ only in part. From the standpoint of our position, we have already been transferred into Christ as the result of God’s work, and we are now in Christ. But experientially we are not yet wholly in Christ. Therefore, God is continually seeking to dispense Christ into our being in order that we may be transferred into Christ experientially more and more.
