According to 1 Corinthians 1:24, Christ is God’s power. He Himself is the saving power. To those called by God, the crucified Christ is God’s power for carrying out, for accomplishing, what God has planned and purposed. In salvation Christ is the power of God.
We see God’s power in the cross of Christ. It takes the power of God to defeat through the cross of Christ, 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 of God exercised in creation. Rather, it is the power of crucifixion, the power of the wonderful death of Christ. This means that the crucifixion of Christ 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. By this power God is able also to solve the problem of the ordinances. 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 to carry out His plan.
Christ is not only God’s power, but also God’s wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24). He has been made wisdom to us from God (1 Cor. 1:30). Wisdom is for planning and purposing, whereas power is for carrying out and accomplishing what is planned and purposed. In God’s salvation Christ crucified is both God’s power and His wisdom. We need Christ as both power and wisdom.
First Corinthians 1:30 says, “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” “Him” refers to God. What 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, transferring us from Adam into Christ. It is God who has made Christ wisdom to us. God has put us into Christ, and now we are in Him. Formerly, we were in Adam, but we have been transferred out of Adam and into Christ. This was not an outward transfer; it was an inward transfer of life. In life we have been transferred from one realm into another, from Adam into Christ. We are now in Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God, and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul does not say that Christ became our wisdom; he says that Christ became wisdom to us. For Christ to become wisdom to us is different from His becoming our wisdom. Day by day, we need Christ to be wisdom to us. Christ being our wisdom is rather general, not experiential. But when Christ becomes wisdom to us, we experience Him.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 the phrases “to us” and “from God” are crucial. Christ became wisdom to us from God. The expression “to us from God” indicates something present, practical, and experiential in the way of transmission. Continually Christ should become wisdom to us from God. This indicates a living, ongoing transmission.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 both the punctuation and the grammar are significant. After the phrase “from God” there is a colon. This indicates that wisdom includes the three items which follow the colon, that is, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. According to Greek grammar, the word “both” here is used with respect not to two items but to three. Although this is awkward in our language, the translation is accurate according to the Greek. In this verse Paul definitely says that Christ “became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” This wisdom implies righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Christ was made wisdom to us from God as three vital things in God’s salvation: righteousness for our past, by which we have been justified by God so that we may be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life (Rom. 5:18); sanctification for the present, by which we are being sanctified in our soul, that is, transformed in our mind, emotion, and will, with the divine life (Rom. 6:19, 22); and redemption for the future, that is, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), by which we shall be transfigured in our body with His divine life to have His glorious likeness (Phil. 3:21). For us to be fully saved, we must pass through these three steps: regeneration in the spirit, sanctification in the soul, and transfiguration, redemption, in the body. When this process is complete, we shall be the same as the Lord Jesus (1 John 3:2). It is of God that we participate in such a complete and perfect salvation, a salvation that makes our entire being—spirit, soul, and body—organically one with Christ and makes Christ everything to us. This is altogether of God, not of ourselves.
Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption refer not only to three stages of God’s salvation, stages related to our past, present, and future, but to three aspects of the nature of God’s salvation that we need to experience daily. Every day we need Christ as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We continually need Christ as our righteousness so that we may be fully justified by God. We need Him as the sanctification of our soul, the sanctification of our mind, emotion, and will. Furthermore, we need Him as the redemption of our body. Strictly speaking, the redemption of the body will take place in the future. Nevertheless, we need and can enjoy Him as this redemption today (Rom. 8:11).