According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, Christ is our wisdom with respect to righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. As our righteousness, Christ has dealt with our past, which was altogether unrighteous. For our present situation, Christ is our sanctification, and for our future, He is our redemption. For Christ to be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption requires much wisdom on God’s part.
In order to understand this adequately, we need to see the full scope of God’s economy. After the creation and fall of man, God became flesh through incarnation. Then the Lord Jesus went to the cross and there crucified the flesh. After passing through death and resurrection, He ascended into the heavens, then descended and entered into us as the life-giving Spirit in order to enliven our deadened spirit and to regenerate us. Having regenerated us, He now dwells in our spirit as life. In this life, the divine life, we have the law of life, the sense of life, and the fellowship of life. The Lord is also the anointing within us, and daily He is sealing us, saturating us, anointing us, and permeating us. As this takes place, we spontaneously live Him, and He becomes our righteousness. This is God’s wisdom.
Because of His wisdom God can boast to Satan of what He has done with corrupted and ruined man. Therefore, what we are as believers today is of God’s wisdom. Only God has the wisdom to initiate such a wonderful thing, to make sinful and corrupted people the members of Christ.
Through the work of the Spirit of life, a change is taking place in our very nature. It is a metabolic change, a change that sanctifies and transforms us. Thus, Christ is not only our righteousness but also our sanctification. Furthermore, we are daily being redeemed, and eventually we shall be glorified. From this we see that Christ is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, not only in an objective way but in a very subjective way, in the way of mingling Himself with us and changing us metabolically. All this is a testimony to God’s multifarious wisdom. Many aspects of God’s wisdom are manifested in His making Christ our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Our experience of Christ in these matters is according to God’s manifold wisdom.
Eventually, Satan, God’s enemy, will be subdued and will come to know God’s multifarious wisdom. God is not sorry that there is such an evil one as Satan because without such a one God’s manifold wisdom could not be manifested in full. It is through the troubles originating from Satan that God has an opportunity to exhibit His wisdom. The whole universe has been damaged by Satan, but God needs such a one in order that His wisdom may be shown. When all the believers are in the New Jerusalem and Satan is in the lake of fire, he will realize that everything he did actually helped God. In His wisdom God even uses Satan’s evil doings in order to gain the New Jerusalem.
It is through the church as the mystery of Christ that God’s multifarious wisdom will be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies. Ephesians 3:10 says, “In order that now to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the church the multifarious wisdom of God.” The church is produced from the unsearchable riches of Christ, as revealed in 3:8. When God’s chosen people partake of and enjoy the riches of Christ, these riches constitute them the church, through which God’s multifarious wisdom is made known to the angelic rulers and authorities in the heavenlies. Hence, the church is God’s wise exhibition of all that Christ is.
The church is the Body of Christ, the joint heirs, and the joint partakers (Eph. 3:6). The church is composed of those who were once ruined, corrupted, and damaged. Before we were saved, we were dead in trespasses and sins, and we were scattered and divided, utterly unable to be one. We all were in a hopeless situation. Nevertheless, in His wisdom God is able to make us the church. Now we are not only redeemed, saved, cleansed, freed, liberated, and regenerated-we are one with God and with one another. Therefore, we are the church through which God’s multifarious wisdom is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies.
The church through which God’s wisdom is so marvelously displayed is God’s masterpiece (Eph. 2:10). In the eyes of God the most wonderful thing in the universe is the church, for through the church God’s multifarious wisdom is made known to Satan and his angels. The day is coming when, through the church, Satan and his angels will be put to shame. They will realize that everything they have done has given God the opportunity to manifest His wisdom.
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