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Rev Graham Harrison           Sunday May 24th a.m. 1998

1 Corinthians 1:30-31

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [1 Corinthians 1:30-31].

They were bringing two lines of attack against his preaching. The one was that it was not clever enough, that it was not wise enough; and the other one was simply that the Christ that he was preaching was not strong enough. You could not really expect modern man, as it were, to believe in this message unless it was touched up with a bit of human wisdom and learning to make it more acceptable to the clever people of the world. On the other hand, you should not emphasise, as Paul had obviously emphasised, the fact that Jesus had died on the cross. That seemed to speak of weakness rather than of strength.

Already the Apostle has spent a considerable number of verses dealing with these objections and showing how what they think is weakness is in fact strength, and what they are dismissing as foolishness is sublime wisdom. Here right at the end of the chapter, having virtually completed his argument, he sets before them the Lord Jesus Christ, and endeavours to show them how foolish, indeed how ridiculously stupid, they have been in even thinking along such lines. 'Of him', that is of God, 'are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom.' Probably some of the more modern translations are better at this point, in translating it, 'wisdom - that is to say, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption'. With the result 'that according as it is written, He that glorieth, (he that boasts) let him glory (let him boast) in the Lord'.

In other words it is as if he says, 'You are making a big mistake, a terrible mistake, if somehow you are cringing away with a sense of shame from the Christ who has been preached to you. Instead of creeping away in shame from Him you ought to be boasting of Him; you ought to be glorying in Him - because in the Lord Jesus Christ there is everything that you can possibly need! "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus."' He is telling them that they owe everything to God.

Were you to ask me to analyse what was basically wrong with these Christians in Corinth - not the people in the world, but these Christians who had been truly converted under the ministry of the Apostle Paul - I would answer in terms of one word - they were proud. Pride was their problem. They wanted to be able to hold up their heads so that people would not look at them as those who were fools and ignoramuses, believing something that no sensible person would believe. The fact that such was the general opinion of them there in Corinth touched them on their pride. They did not like it. They did not stand back, as they should have done, and argued with themselves, 'Well, of course, the trouble is not with our message but with the misunderstanding of those people who are yet unconverted. We were once like them until the grace of God came to us. It did not simply touch us; it enlightened us in our minds and our understanding, so that we now see everything in a different way.'

What they should have had was great pity and compassion for these people who were still outside the kingdom of God and who were devoid of that spiritual understanding that these Corinthians had been given. But instead of that it was as if they were beginning to feel sorry for themselves. It is rather humiliating to have people looking down upon you, despising you, suggesting that you are intellectually inferior and that what you are believing is rather quaint and odd. So they were embarrassed by this. The trouble was their pride which was causing them to fall in this way. So what the Apostle has to do is to show to them that they have nothing to be ashamed of in Jesus - indeed they have everything to be proud of in Him! All that they have they owe to Him.

They owe everything to God. 'It is God who has made you Christians', he said. '"Of him are ye in Christ Jesus". It is by the work of the Spirit of God that you people who once were so far from the kingdom of God, now are inside that kingdom and know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour.' I never tire of repeating those verses from 1 Cor. 6:9-11. What a cameo they give us of the church there in Corinth! What a cross section of society was present in the church! The backgrounds of some of them, I suppose you could say, had been quite decent and respectable. Pillars of society, they had not touched the depths, they were ordinary decent citizens - and yet outside the kingdom of God. But there were others who were now in the church and that had not been their background at all! You remember how Paul puts it when he speaks of what some of them had been - fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals of various kinds, thieves, covetous, drunkards, slanderers, extortioners. Paul says: 'Such were some of you'.

'What was it that had made the change in your life? Oh it was not the moralism of the Jews. It was not the learning of the Greeks. You would still be where you used to be, if you had been looking to those things for deliverance. No, it was God and the grace of God. "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus". God came to you; God sought you; God touched you; God spoke to you; God did something in your hearts and it is all to be ascribed to the grace and mercy of God.' What has He done? - and here he uses a phrase that is very typical of the Apostle Paul - 'He has put you into the Lord Jesus Christ. "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus."' Now let me explain what I mean when I say that it is something that is so typical of the Apostle Paul. I will read from his letter to the church at Ephesus and I want you to notice this sort of phrase, 'in Christ', 'in Jesus', 'by Jesus Christ', 'in Him', in 'whom'.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise' [Ephesians 1:3-13].

Now you can take this truth and develop it in all sorts of ways. To be in Christ is to be safe. Nobody can harm you, nobody can touch you if you are in Christ. Sometimes we sing hymns, or we read some of the Psalms - they say the same thing - they speak about hiding in Christ. It is a place of safety and security. We can probably think back to our childhood days when we were in trouble. What did we do? We ran to our mother and our father and we felt safe and secure with them. They would look after us - it was as if there was an aura of protection that extended around them and we knew that we were safe. Nobody could touch us when we were with them.

Take that trivial human illustration, multiply it by infinity and that is what happens to the Christian - he is in Christ, safe from all harm and danger; safe there in the love and the fellowship and the mercy of God that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. We hide in Him. A Christian is not ashamed to say that. Christians know that they are totally insufficient on their own. They need someone who can protect them, someone who can bless them. So there is a place of safety in the Lord Jesus Christ - and it is a place of permanent safety. There is a hymn that puts it like this: 'Once in Him, in Him for ever.' You are not 'into Him' and then 'out of Him'. You are 'in Him for ever'. When God by His grace unites you with the Lord Jesus Christ, you are safe for time, you are safe for eternity. It is a place of absolute security, total safety. We were singing about it before the sermon:

For God the Just is satisfied
To look on Him, and pardon me.

But he has not finished - 'who of God is made unto us wisdom'. As I have already suggested, some modern versions probably translate verse 30 in a better way than the Authorised Version. The gist of it runs like this: 'But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, that is to say, righteousness, and sanctification or holiness, and redemption'. In other words those last three things - righteousness, sanctification and redemption - open up to us something of what the Apostle Paul means when He speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ being made to us wisdom.

I read to you from Proverbs 8. It is a portion which is not often read in public. You will have noticed that it is all about wisdom: 'Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?' On and on it goes, verse after verse speaking about wisdom. The spiritual commentators when they come to this chapter have no hesitation about saying something like this: - The writer of the Book of Proverbs cannot possibly be just thinking about the human virtue of wisdom. The sort of things that are spoken of wisdom here, so greatly exceed the greatest characteristics of human wisdom, that there must be something more to it than that. Particularly as you come on to the middle and the end of the chapter you realise that here is somebody who is there with God the Father. He was there from the beginning when He did the great work of creation. In other words it is one of those passages in the Old Testament that really form an anticipation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the New Testament. Remember the God whom we worship, is one God, but He is eternally existent in three persons - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This is one of those Old Testament passages which speaks of the eternal Son of God who is there from eternity to eternity. He is there as the very wisdom of God, and there is this interaction between the Father and the Son.

Now, says the Apostle Paul, 'Of him, by God's grace, you have been made, you have been placed in Christ Jesus, who of God has been made to us wisdom'. Come to the Gospels, for example, and read the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. You do not even have to be a Christian to see how wise they are. There are unbelievers in the world, and I suppose they think that they are flattering the Lord Jesus Christ when they speak in this way, but they speak about such wisdom that was spoken by Him. Indeed that seems to have been the general attitude of most people who heard Him when He was speaking here upon earth. Remember how on one occasion they put it like this: 'Never man spake like this man!' If they had any problem that needed solving, they came to Him. If there was trouble that perplexed them, it was to the Lord Jesus that they came - because here was wisdom incarnate. Of course eventually they rejected it totally and rejected Him - but in His very Person and the word that He spoke, there was this great wisdom of God, seen in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is something that we must always remember about our Saviour; here is infinite wisdom. 'Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God, or by God, is made unto us wisdom.' You can go through these letters of Paul and again and again he comes back to this truth about the wisdom of God. At the end of what some might think are the most difficult chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9 to 11, Paul works up to a marvellous climax and this is how he puts it: 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen' [Romans 11:33-36].

The Apostle is taken up with this wisdom that there is in God. I quoted from the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Had I read on a little further in the chapter I could have read to you this verse - he is praying for them that :'That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:' [Ephesians 1:17]. Or in the third chapter he is speaking about this great plan of God and he is saying that it is something that baffles even the angels; they do not understand it, it is beyond them; and he speaks of the church as being the supreme demonstration of the wisdom of our God. 'God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places (the angelic hosts) might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:' [Ephesians 3:9-11]. Then again in the Epistle to the Colossians, he speaks about Christ: 'In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge' [Colossians 2:3].

So when Paul says here: 'Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom', he is speaking about that wisdom, that knowledge, that supreme understanding that you see in the Lord Jesus Christ. 'You are in Him', he says. 'He is there for you. God by His grace has come and has sought you out and has placed you in the Lord Jesus Christ.' Of course the wisdom of God is seen supremely in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is why Paul speaks in this way. It was the death of Christ that was causing all that trouble in Corinth. The Greeks with all their philosophy and their learning were saying, 'Do you expect us to believe that this person, whom you call the Son of God, died and did something about our sins in dying? That is ridiculous! It is too simplistic. You cannot expect sophisticated people like us to believe that!' Or the Jews, do you recall that they could not put these two words together, adjacent one to another, 'Christ crucified'? If Jesus was the Christ He could not have been crucified. If He was crucified, He was not the Christ, for that was a sign of weakness. Yet Paul says, 'Look here, in Christ crucified you have the supreme wisdom of God and the magnificent power of God.'

Let me put it to you like this: how could the problem of man's sin be dealt with? That is the greatest problem of the whole of human history. Here is man in a state of sin and rebellion against God. But who is God and what is God like? Well here you have to think yourself out of the mindset of contemporary society insofar as it believes in God at all. God is not some sort of benign old grandfather who is not concerned about anything that you do that is wrong. God is a holy God, righteous, just. God cannot just banish sin by a word. God has this great problem with sin. Sin has to be judged.

So here is the predicament: man a sinner, totally in rebellion against God, the God whom one day he has to meet and to whom he has to give an account of his life and every word that he has spoken. How can there be anything else but a terrible collision between God's justice and the sin of human beings? It is no good saying, 'Well, God can simply pardon sin. He cannot. He would cease to be God then, because it would be something that would be unjust, unrighteous; there would be no ultimate principle of justice in the universe. So here is the problem, here is the predicament - God at the same time is love, He is gracious, He is kind, He is merciful. So how can that mercy and that kindness and that grace be reconciled with the justice and the righteousness of God? It is here that the wisdom of God comes in!

We can put it in the words of a hymn, 'God first devised a way to save rebellious man'. Back in eternity He planned it. Ephesians 1 shows us how God came up with a plan, and this was the plan - He would send His own Son, the second person of the Trinity, into the world. He would come gladly and willingly; He would live the life that we should live; He would be tempted in every way, just as we are tempted, and yet He would triumph over all those temptations. Then at the end He would be taken and He would be killed in that terrible way of crucifixion, but as He was dying, He would offer Himself as a sacrifice to atone for our sins and to propitiate the wrath of the justice of God.

That is the wisdom of God. None of the other religions ever came up with anything like this. They could not do so, of course, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has done so. Christ is made to us wisdom. 'The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old' [Proverbs 8:22]. So here is the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom. And instead of glorying in the wisdom that is there in the Lord Jesus Christ, these foolish Corinthian Christians were running away from it. They were saying, 'Oh, we do not want to mention this. We think that it is an obstacle to the Greeks believing, or to the Jews believing'; and Paul says, 'No! This is the thing that men need to hear. They need to hear of the wisdom of God, they need to hear that God in His grace and in His mercy is able to forgive sinners and yet at the same time He is able to uphold the absolute principle of justice and righteousness. Sin is punished - but it is punished in the person of His own Son. There is love, there is righteousness. It is as if these two things have come together and they have embraced one another and they have kissed one another.

And heaven's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.'

So Paul does not back off. He does not apologise. He does not in any way trim his argument. He says, 'This is the thing that you have to boast of - Christ our wisdom! And if you ask me what do I mean by wisdom? I will spell it out in these three terms: righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' Righteousness: that is what the sinner needs before God. By nature we are not righteous, we are sinners and rebels before God. We are guilty in God's sight. We need righteousness - we do not have it - but in Jesus Christ that righteousness is available for the sinner. He is our righteousness; the perfect life that He lived is laid to the account of the sinner who trusts in Him. And the sins of that sinner were laid to the account of Jesus, as Jesus died upon the cross. 'Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness'. It means that as we come to and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, to use another biblical term, we are justified. God reckons us to be righteous, so this great obstacle is dealt with. Christ then becomes the very ground of our assurance. It is not that we reckon ourselves to be a cut above other people in the world. No, it is that Christ is our Saviour. He has lived the life that we should have lived, and have not done; He has died the death that we ought to have died and thank God we do not have to - because He has done it for us. Christ our righteousness - made unto us wisdom, that is to say, righteousness.

But these three words take you right through life and on to glory. It is from here to eternity. Here it is at the beginning, righteousness, the justification that comes to the sinner the moment that he trusts in Jesus Christ. But what then begins? Well it is a life in which God, by His Holy Spirit, works in the heart of that individual Christian. He is fashioning him or her, more and more in the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, reproducing the image of Christ in the sinner. It is the work of sanctifica tion or holiness. It ought to go on in a smooth and unimpeded way, but in actual fact because of our sin it does not do that. Sometimes we take three steps forward and two steps backward, but over all God is at work and He is producing this greater conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. 'Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, that is to say, righteousness, and sanctification'.

But where will it end? Redemption. That is a word that means deliverance. It was the word that would be used, for example, if a slave was able to purchase his freedom; or if somebody had been captured and was being held to ransom and the ransom was paid then that captive was set free. It is a word that in one sense can belong to the beginning of the Christian life - but that is not how Paul uses it here. He throws it down to the other end, the time when we are going to be completely delivered from all the shackles of sin. All the limitations of our sinful human nature finally will be done away with. To put it in terms of the language of another Apostle, John: 'but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is' [1 John 3:2]. He is speaking about glorification, our entrance into heaven.

All of it is dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ, upon the wisdom of God that is there in Him. The start of our Christian life, the progress and the development of our Christian life, and then the culmination and the glorious conclusion of our Christian life as we come home to glory. It is all in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is all in Christ crucified. Therefore says the apostle Paul, 'Oh, you Corinthians, you must not be ashamed of Him! You must not back off from Him. You must not become embarrassed and apologetic about Christ crucified. Of course not! You glory in Him!' And He quotes to them something that comes from the Old Testament: 'That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.' It comes from the prophecy of Jeremiah: 'Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD' [Jeremiah 9:23-24].

You see what you are not to glory in: 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom'. I think of a particular instance of this. One of the wisest men that I knew, a man who was my professor in University, ended up with Alzheimer's disease, dribbling at the mouth and babbling incoherently. He could not remember anything. It was a sad state for him to come to. His wisdom? Gone! 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might.' I noticed in the paper recently a picture of Mohammed Ali, the great boxer. But He is not a great boxer now. All the pounding he took to his head has done something to him. He trembles and is almost incoherent. 'Let not the ... mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches'. They are so uncertain, are they not? Here today, perhaps gone tomorrow - or if they are not gone from you, you will be gone from them one day when you have to leave them all behind. Naked you came into the world, naked you depart from it.

'But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD', '... according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord'. What do you boast of today, my friend? Your achievements? Your track record behind you? Your intelligence that marks you off from some other people whom you could mention? Even the position that you have achieved in life and society? All of these things are nothing. The only thing to glory in is in knowing the Lord. Can you do that? You see this is really one of the great invitations of the New Testament. In Christ is everything that we can ever need. He will take us from where we are, right on one day to be with Him in glory.

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find;
Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick, and lead the blind:

Just and holy is Thy Name,
I am all unrighteousness;
False and full of sin I am,
Thou art full of truth and grace.

Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin;
Let the healing streams abound,
Make and keep me pure within:

Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity.

Have you come to Him like that? Have you cast yourself upon Him? Or are you looking to your wisdom, your status, your power, your influence. One day all of those things will be history. But if you are able to glory in the Lord you will say, 'Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption'. And although people will laugh at you, it will not embarrass you; it will confirm you in the reality and in the truth of the gospel, so that you will glory in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen
 
 

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