GOD'S WAY
GOD’S WAY
In what I have to say on this chapter I have no desire to bring forward anything that is particularly interesting or attractive to man; all that I desire to do is, in some little measure, to open up God’s word so that every one may understand it. The direct effect of understanding God’s word is that we are found in the path of His will while here in the world. There is a way through this world. I look upon the world as being a wilderness morally; it is no small difficulty to find a way through it; the only way that I know of is the path of God’s will.
The world is a scene of moral confusion, where good and evil are mixed up together, hence the difficulty of finding a way through it; the proper path is in avoiding the evil and cleaving to the good, and this is impossible for man apart from God. The grace of God has made a way through the perplexities and difficulties of the world, and that way is the path of God’s will; it is a path of security that shines more and more unto the perfect day. It is a great thing to find that path and to be walking in it; that is what I would desire for everybody.
Now my present object is to shew God’s way. If we understand God’s way we are not long before we find out the path of His will. It is not in the course of the world. There is a remarkable statement at the close of the chapter: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise”, etc. (verses 27 - 29). I think that all will readily see that the world is a great system; it seems, in a sense, to grow greater and greater; but what I apprehend is that God will not [p. 295] bring to naught the great things of the world by the great things of the world, but He will bring to naught the great things of the world by the despised and base things. God will bring into operation forces of which men do not take much account, the weak things, the base things, and things that are not, He will bring into operation to overturn the things that are, “that no flesh should glory in his presence”.
May every one of us be enabled to see that God puts no sanction on the greatness of the world; it is nothing in His sight, it is not founded on moral foundations. You may be certain that nothing can be great for God unless resting on moral foundations, and no thoughtful person could say for a moment that the glory of this world, or indeed of any nation, is established on a moral basis. Nations may become great in the providence of God and exercise great power in the world, but if you could search into their origin, which is a point of very great difficulty, I doubt if you would find that much of the greatness has any real moral basis.
I have said so much in connection with the thought that God would not put any sanction upon the greatness of the world. There is no doubt that Christianity has become a great force in the world; but it is not what God intended it to be; Christianity started with a babe born into the world and laid in a manger because there was no room for Him in the inn. The next great step in Christianity was a hundred and twenty persons of no account whatever in Jerusalem brought together by the testimony of Christ’s resurrection, endowed with the Spirit of God; that was the true beginning of Christianity, but that was not a matter that entered into the account of the world.
That brings me to this chapter, and I want to speak of the wisdom of God as presented in this chapter. God does not take account of the wisdom of man; Christ is the wisdom of God. I think I understand the idea of human wisdom; I have a kind of notion [p. 296] of the principle of philosophy; but God does not touch the wisdom of man. All is summed up here in a word, namely, that in the wisdom of man the world by wisdom knew not God. Philosophy never taught man the knowledge of God. It has been said there cannot be philosophy, for if you bring the light of God into it it becomes religion; on the other hand, if you leave God out it is not wisdom at all, for there is no real wisdom in that which leaves God out. As a matter of fact, the world by wisdom knew not God, and it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. That is, God brought into this world salvation by faith, the fruit of His grace, established in His kingdom; He has established grace and salvation for man, and the preaching has become the means by which man is saved from all that which by nature he is held in bondage.
Christ is said to be both the wisdom and the power of God. This is in reference to what the Greeks and the Jews sought. The Greeks sought wisdom; their minds were in the line of philosophy. The Jews, not on the line of philosophy, sought as a privileged people a sign, a token of the intervention of God. When the Lord Jesus Christ was here they demanded that. In answer to all that Christ is said to be the wisdom of God, and the power of God. He was, had they known Him, the sign of God’s intervention for Israel.
I want to shew you how it is that Christ is the wisdom of God. He is also made of God unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”. He is the wisdom of God, and He is wisdom to us.
I think the point to be solved in the world by God was this: God loved man, but the world having come under the power of sin and the consequent judgment of God, how was God to make His love known? That was the point to be solved. In the presence of [p. 297] the difficulty of which I speak, I see Christ as the wisdom or resource of God. So far as man was concerned, there was nothing to be done through him; his will was against God. You cannot read the Old Testament without seeing that. Man’s will was opposed to God, and he was determined in the absence of God to work out his own will in the world; and how was God to make His love known to that man consistently with the fact that he was under sin and the judgment of God?
In this Christ was God’s resource. It was in Him that God intended to come in; He was the sign of God’s intervention. How has all that come about? You have to apprehend Christ as the Son of God. He became man, and as such the Head of every man. Naturally Adam was the head of every man; he was the first man, and the head of the human race. If the Son of God became man, He must be greater than Adam. And, in fact, Adam had died out; the Son comes in as the head of every man.
The next step was that the man who had sinned against God should be removed, with the liabilities under which he lay, vicariously from under the eye of God, in order that God’s love might be made known to man. The question was of what was suitable to the glory of God, and what was suitable to the glory of God was the removal of the man who had sinned.
The Son of God was not liable to death, death was not upon Him. He was the Prince of life, the Head; but He entered into death, the judgment which God had pronounced upon man. It was in order that that man might be removed vicariously from under the eye of God, so that in the removal God might make known His love to man. So long as sin and the curse and death were under the eye of God, and upon every man, it was impossible for God to make His love known, but He intervened in the Person of His Son to remove all that had come in by the man that had [p. 298] sinned against Him, in order to make His love known. Hence it is that you get righteousness perfectly reconciled with love.
What was offensive to God has been removed entirely and eternally out of God’s sight, and the love of God toward man remains. That is the wonderful result that has come to pass, and that love is to be taught to man, so that the “whosoever” might enter into it. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”, John 3: 16.
In presenting God and His thoughts toward man, what we see is that through love righteousness has been vindicated and declared; God has no demand to make upon man, but on the contrary works to make His love known. He has removed every obstacle out of the way; sin, the flesh, and the curse have all been removed in the sacrifice of Christ, and the work of God is so to make His love known to man as to gain the heart of man for Himself. That I believe to be the attitude of God towards man, and in that sense Christ is the wisdom of God; that is, His resource, what God had in reserve — the One who in due time came forth in order that God might be glorified. The Lord refers to this in John 13: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”.
There was no moment when Christ was so glorious as when upon the cross; He was put to shame in the eye of the universe, but glorious in God’s eye. God was completely glorified, and the One who glorified God is now at the right hand of God; God has glorified Him.
I come now to the latter part of the chapter. We read: “that no flesh should glory in his presence. 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 [p. 299] that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord”. The apostle is speaking now of Christians. It would not be true of those who are not in Christ. What we get is this, that Christians, as in Christ Jesus, have derived their origin from God; they are born of God. “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”. Adam was of God, was made of God, was the head of man. Now Christians are of God, but not in Adam, they are of God in Christ Jesus. That is, they begin, as it were, from Him; they are of another stock, by the grace of God. It is brought about experimentally by two things: one is the faith of the Christian, and the other the gift of the Holy Spirit. If in any one there be faith in the cross of Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit, then it is true of that one that he is of God in Christ Jesus. You apprehend your origin as, so to speak, from another stock, not of Adam. “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus”. Then it goes on to say, “who of God is made unto us wisdom”. Hitherto Christ had been presented as the wisdom of God, but now He has become to us wisdom. He is resource to us; that is a most wonderful thought.
Do you want to be intelligent? to be able to meet difficulties down here? The more you know of Christ, the more able you will be to cope rightly with difficulties down here. I do not care what the difficulties may be, but I feel confident that the better acquainted a soul is with Christ the better able that soul is to cope with difficulties. It is by Christ that God has overcome every difficulty for Himself, and He makes Christ to be wisdom to us, that we may have resource in the presence of difficulty. We can afford to let self go.
Christians often attempt to meet difficulties in human ways, but it ends in failure; they neither please God nor man. On the other hand, when Christ is wisdom, a man is able to meet them according to God. I do not believe that a man can be wise for [p. 300] two worlds; one that is wise in this world cannot be wise for God. If he is wise in this world, he has to become a fool that he may be wise for God. On the other hand, if Christ be wisdom to us, it will not profit us much here. God will take care of us, but we may not be prosperous in this world.
The next thing is righteousness. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, so that we might have no difficulty in regard to righteousness. I do not trust my own righteousness; in fact, I have none to trust; but Christ is righteousness to me. When God makes manifest the world to come, which He will do, I shall have a place in that day. That is what Christ being righteousness to us means. There is a world before God. The moment sin came in, it spoiled this world for God, but there was another world before God, and for Christ to be righteousness to us means that we are approved of God for the world to come. Whenever God brings that world into view everything in this world will be overturned. In this world, in a certain sense, you do not need Christ for righteousness, you want practical righteousness, but for God’s world you are righteous; He is your righteousness.
It has been in principle the case with saints of God from the beginning of the world. Christ was righteousness to Abel, to Abraham, and to Moses, and so all along the line of faith. Christ is righteousness to all the saints of God, and they are approved for the world to come. Every one will come out in the world to come. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David will all sit down in the world to come, and it will be seen then that Christ is their righteousness.
Now mark the next point — sanctification. I understand that this lies in the apprehension of what we are. Sanctification is that you are set apart as priests for God; sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and thus qualified by the knowledge of God for priestly service.
Christ is the expression of God’s pleasure in regard to us. To understand God’s mind as to my place before Him I need the apprehension of the place God has given to Christ as man. He has become not simply righteousness, but sanctification. My place before God as a Christian is not simply that of a saved sinner, but that to which He has called me — a son and priest, and in the apprehension of Christ I learn my place before God.
This is a large subject. It fulfils the type of Aaron and his sons; that is, Christ, the true Aaron, the saints as the sons of Aaron, to be in the presence of God as a priestly company. This is sanctification. “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”.
So Christ is not simply resource for God; He is resource to us; He is righteousness to us; our title, in that sense, to the world to come. He is sanctification also. He is the expression to us of God’s mind as to our present place before Him, as priests having access to the living God. “Through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father”. That is our sanctification.
Then He is redemption; we wait for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour from heaven, “who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself”, Philippians 3: 20, 21. The moment Christ appears we shall be fully taken up by Him, and that will be final and complete redemption. We are waiting now in hope of the redemption of the body. When Christ rises from the right hand of God the first expression of His mighty power will be to change us completely into His likeness, and that is redemption for the saints. It does not mean redemption in its application to our souls; it is final redemption of the saints at the coming of the Lord.
[p. 302] If you have followed me you will see that the passage presents Christ in two ways: what He is for God — He is wisdom and power for God; and, on the other hand, what He is by God’s abundant grace for us; and Christians are in this world begotten of God in Christ Jesus. They cannot be apart from the Head. That is, Christians have the source of their moral being in God Himself, but not apart from the Head, that is, Christ Jesus, who “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”. And what are we? If one were the greatest in the land, one would be nothing in the eye of God any more than in the eye of death. If a man can accumulate millions, can he ward off death ten years? can he add a cubit to his stature? With all the wealth in the world man can do neither. What is the good then of glorying in man? If he is rich, he has to leave all behind he grows old in spite of all the doctors in the world; he cannot evade sickness or death. Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; and when redemption comes in there will be an end of death. He will take us out of the scene of sin and death to be with Himself in the Father’s house. He is redemption to us; and therefore we look for Him from heaven as Saviour. We look for Him as the Saviour of the body. He will bring our body into complete likeness to His body, His glorious body.