THE CROSS AND NEW CREATION
[p. 69] THE CROSS AND NEW CREATION
I have read this scripture with the thought of bringing before you something of the great principles of God’s ways. These come out clearly and prominently at particular moments, but they were always with God, they were not new. You have to distinguish thus between the particular occasions when certain things come to pass, and the principles which are enunciated in these things. Every promise of God is Yea and Amen in Christ. He is the Yea and the Amen, but the promises of God were in His mind always. The promises of God are scattered in detail over the Word, but they form part of the scheme and principle of promise. God may speak about certain things to Abraham, and about other things to David, but all the things of which God speaks form one whole — they are not fragments and detached, having no connection. And the scheme of promises was complete when God brought to light the truth of the church. The church, though not a promise, was, in a certain sense, the completion of all; there were no more promises to come out; God has revealed all, and the church is the crowning stone in the edifice of grace.
But it is not my purpose now to go into the promises of God; I only referred to them as to the principles pervading them. There are two great principles expressed in the passage I read, which are of all moment for us to understand; they are the Cross and New Creation. These two principles are testified in Christ. So the apostle lays, in 1 Corinthians 1, a great deal of stress on the preaching of the cross; it was God’s wisdom and God’s power. And later on you get another thought, “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”. That is the other side of the truth. One side of the [p. 70] picture is the cross, but the obverse is new creation in Christ. “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”. You are not to glory in man, because the cross has disposed of man, as we shall see presently, but you are to glory in the Lord because you are of Him.
I want to speak a little about the cross as the power of God and the wisdom of God, to show what it was in the purpose of God to effect by the cross, and more than that, what God has effected by the cross. I do not mean exactly in the way of the salvation of souls, but as the public testimony of God in the world. Its power is greatly hindered at the present time by the state of Christendom; the enemy has come in to thwart the testimony — and he has succeeded only too well — by corrupting Christianity. It is, however, important to see what it was in the purpose of God to overturn by the testimony of the cross. Anyone acquainted with the history of the world knows very well that Judaism on the one hand, and philosophy on the other, were both overturned by the testimony of the cross. It was light expelling darkness. It was in the purpose of God to do this. No doubt they have reared their heads again, but that is because the enemy has succeeded in corrupting Christianity. As long as the testimony of the cross was maintained here according to God, it effected what God intended it should effect; it overturned every pretension to light that existed, and God intended that it should do so.
The thought of the “power of God” in this chapter is that of a sign of God’s intervention. The Jew looked for a sign, and the Greek sought after wisdom. The Jew demanded a sign; it was so when the Lord was here, they asked for a sign. I suppose they thought themselves entitled to it; one would judge so from their language. A sign was the evidence of [p. 71] divine intervention, like the manna in the wilderness. On the other hand, the Greeks sought after wisdom. The force of the word ‘wisdom’ I understand to be resource; that is, I think, the prominent idea in Scripture in the thought of divine wisdom. Now the point is this, that the cross was both the power and the wisdom of God. It was the sign of God’s intervention, and, on the other hand, it was the resource of God, and why? Because it was the divine means of saving souls. The power of God in the cross was to subdue man, and the wisdom of God was to enlighten man; that is, that man was to be enlightened by what came out in the cross. The cross was thus the resource of God.
Now, there are two aspects of the truth of the cross; there is the divine and the human side. I am not now speaking of the hand that wicked men had in it, but of what the cross was according to the thought of God. I am regarding it as being wholly of God. Christ was crucified by wicked men, but it was not the work of wicked men that accomplished redemption. The cross was the divine way of accomplishing redemption. The passage I read does not refer to the work of wicked men at all. Peter, when preaching on the day of Pentecost, spoke of the part that wicked men had in the death of Christ, and you can understand this, for the Jews to whom he spoke had crucified Christ, and Peter was seeking to reach their conscience. But the apostle Paul looks at the cross as entirely the work of God.
Now, as to the two aspects I spoke of, I think one is the human side, and the other the divine. One side was the demonstration of what man was as before God. In the ways of God it was ordered that there should be such a demonstration. Christ entered into man’s place. Even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that was not a question of wicked men, but of divine necessity. It was necessary, for the glory of God,
[p. 72] that there should be a demonstration before God of the true position of man. In the cross, an expression which you get in the law, was fully exemplified: “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”. The curse had to do with a broken law. The effect of the law on man was that he came under the curse, though he was under death before. The law was the ministration of death, God never intended that the people were to have life by the law. No law was given able to quicken. The law said, “This do and thou shalt live”, but in the divine mind the law was the ministry of condemnation and of death, and death and the condemnation must have been there to be ministered. But the law added this, that those who were under it and did not continue in all things written in the book of the law, came under the curse. Now, Christ was made a curse in the eye of God that there should be a demonstration of the true place of man as before God. We pass over things very lightly and never really understand what we are in the sight of God except as we apprehend it in the cross of Christ. That was our merit, our desert. My own feeling about it is that, in order to apprehend what my true place is before God, I need to learn what the cross was.
Now, there is another side to the cross that we can dwell upon — a very much more blessed side. The cross was the foolishness and weakness of God, at all events in the eye of man. But “unto us which are saved it is the power of God”. The fact is, that the incarnation of the Son of God enabled God to come in testimony into death itself, that He might reveal Himself to man. It may seem a strange thing to speak of God coming into death, but that is the real testimony of the death of Christ. He did not come into it as God, but became man in order that, in the way of testimony, God might come into death. The cross was thus the wisdom of God and the power of God, for it is the unmistakable sign of God’s intervention on man’s behalf. I dare say you remember that when God confirmed to Abraham the promise that he should inherit the land, Abraham took certain animals and cut them in twain, and at dark a burning lamp and a smoking furnace passed between the pieces. God came thus figuratively in testimony into death to give a confirmation of the covenant. It is a point worth pondering over. Considering what man is, I do not think that he can learn anything at all about God except in the death of Christ. The first lesson that God imprints on man in regard to Himself is that of righteousness — for His purpose is to lay in man’s soul a moral foundation. Nothing can be more perfect and beautiful than the work of God in man. He makes it evident to man at the outset that sin is intolerable to Himself and that nothing can set aside God’s judgment of death. It is impossible. Man’s judgment may be set aside; in human things, the prerogative of mercy belongs to the queen, but it is impossible that God’s judgment can be set aside. The righteousness of God is inflexible, and if it were not, you would not absolutely and implicitly trust God. It is the very sense that the righteousness of God is perfect and unalterable which really enables me to trust God. But He has proved this in His Son bearing the judgment which was upon us; the death of Christ is thus the witness of God’s righteousness. It proves both that sin is intolerable to God, and that God’s judgment cannot be set aside, but has been met by One competent to meet it on behalf of man. “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all”.
Now I take another point. Where do you learn the love of God? As we have seen, in the death of Christ. God came down into death, in the way of testimony. Surely the Son of God, who died, had part in divine love. I am quite alive to the fact of His having become Man. There was the setting forth before God in the cross of what man’s state and place were, but at the same time, in that same cross we get the blessed testimony not simply of righteousness, but of God’s love. The death of Christ would scarcely have been a commendation of the love of God if the One who died had not part in that love. And therefore, you can understand that the cross is the wisdom of God; it shows the resource that was with God — the means by which God could reveal Himself in love to man and yet at the same time maintain the inflexibility of His own judgment.
But there is still another thought in connection with the truth that the cross is the power of God: it is the sign, the mark, of God’s intervention on man’s behalf. The first sign that God gave in Christ was in the Babe. The Babe was the sign of God’s intervention on man’s behalf; the Son of God came into the place of the weakness of man, and that was the sign of God’s intervention on man’s behalf. There was no help for man in the strength of flesh. You get the sign again spoken of in John 6. Christ was the living bread come down from heaven, the blessed expression, in humiliation, of the grace of God to man; the humiliation was morally suitable to the grace. The people wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of His mouth; they were food for man. Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”. Such was the pathway of service of the Lord here on earth. But the cross was the greatest sign of all. In it God in testimony came into the place of judgment. Man must go, but the love of God abides. The cross is not only the wisdom of God, but it is the power of God. There is nothing like the cross; it is really God coming in testimony into the very place of man’s judgment, to make manifest beyond all question His thoughts of love. The mighty power of God could not have come in except death had been there to God’s glory. In the [p. 75] resurrection of Christ, the One who was raised had part in the power that raised Him; there could be no attribute of God expressed in the death and resurrection of Christ, in which the Lord Himself had not part as a divine Person, though Himself proving experimentally what those attributes were. You cannot deny His righteousness or His love. The incarnation could not alter that. The effect of all is this, that when the wisdom of God operates in souls, it teaches men, just as the power of God subdues men. There is more instruction in the cross than you and I will ever take in.
Now, I want to say a few words as to the purpose of God. This was, by the testimony of the cross, to overturn every pretension to light that existed; that is, on the one hand Judaism, and on the other hand heathenism. The heathen were at the time of the gospel dreadfully debased, but religious pretension, and the pretension to wisdom, were found in Judaism and philosophy. The Jews demanded a sign, and the Greeks sought after wisdom, and it was the purpose of God to bring both to nought by the testimony of the cross, and this was done. I do not doubt that if Christianity had not been corrupted by the artifices of the enemy, the effect of the preaching of the cross would have been far greater even than it was. In our day, the principles which God intended to overturn by the testimony of the cross, have reappeared in the name and under the guise of Christianity. The great evil of the day is in the accommodation of Christianity to Judaism and philosophy. They have reared their heads in the midst of Christendom, and the power of the testimony has been greatly neutralised. The point for us is to get back to the cross. It is God’s testimony as to Himself on the one hand, and as to man’s state before God on the other. We see in it the revelation of God in the very place of man’s judgment. What a wonderful exchange the believer makes, in his thoughts, by the cross; he exchanges himself for God, he gets the light of God’s revelation in place of himself that was under the curse. Instead of seeking to improve himself, or vainly imagining that there is some fountain of goodness in himself, he is in the light of God’s goodness. God, in His grace, has given him an appreciation of Himself. Nobody has this naturally, but the Christian has it through the light of God having shone into his heart.
I add a word or two as to the closing part of the chapter, just to present the other side of the truth. God’s ways were so ordered that no flesh should glory in His presence, but then, in the last two verses, we have the truth that we are of a new stock, of which God is the source: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”. It is of all moment that the Christian should take account of himself as being of another stock. If Scripture speaks about what is of God in Christ Jesus, it evidently refers to Christ Jesus risen, and He is the source and spring of the Christian; you are of God. I suppose it may be spoken of as new creation, and He (Christ) is made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. It is difficult for a Christian to take account of himself as being of another order, because the order of Adam and the order of Christ do not correspond. When Christ became Man, He came into the order and place of the first man, but, raised again from the dead, He is eternally separated from that order, and is the Head, the Beginning, of a new order. It is most important to take into account, in our minds, what we are in Christ Jesus as outside of what we are in the flesh. In the flesh, there are many things which pertain to us which can have no connection with what is in Christ Jesus, such as natural relationships, and the like. In Christ Jesus there is not the distinction of male or female, on which relationships down here are founded. All is very different from that of which you have experience. But what we are in Christ Jesus takes [p. 77] precedence of what we are in the flesh, and therefore it has to be more important in our eyes. We often fail there, and put what we are in the flesh first, and what we are in Christ second. But to put it in the language of Scripture, we have to “put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, ... and ... put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”. That is what is to rule in my ways and conduct down here. Paul says to the Galatians, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God”. When I talk of Christ Jesus, it brings before me at once the thought of a new order, and so of a new system of relationships. There is a system of relationships connected with man as God made him, and there is also a system of relationships connected with Christ Jesus, and these relationships, with the Christian, take precedence of the relationships after the flesh. The Christian has to take account of himself as of God in Christ Jesus.
Then the apostle goes on to say, “Who has been made to us wisdom from God”. The object of that is to render us independent of man and man’s pretension to wisdom. We know the resources of God in Christ Jesus. But He is also made unto us righteousness; Christ is our righteousness. He is further made unto us sanctification. How is sanctification to be effected? It is as you are conscious of being in Christ, and grow in grace. You have not sanctification as a matter of faith; such an idea is a great mistake. Christ is sanctification to us, that is, as having Him for an object. Then follows the closing word, that He is made redemption to us. All culminates in redemption. The force of the passage is to make nothing of us, and at the same time to make us independent of all the [p. 78] pretension of man. The Spirit of God presses home these things, the testimony of God on the one hand, and on the other hand His work in us. We stand in a new order, and in that order Christ is everything. How far is that verified in you and me? We turn, I fear, to a great many things. Reading is sometimes a great snare to Christians; they read all sorts of things, and the things which they read are to a large extent the creation of man’s imagination. I do not think such reading profits. If you want wisdom, Christ is God’s wisdom, the One by whom God is going to accomplish everything for His own eternal glory. He is wisdom to the Christian, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, objectively.