First Corinthians 1:24 says, “To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Here those who are called refers to the believers who were chosen by God in eternity (Eph. 1:4) and who believed in Christ in time (Acts 13:48). To these called ones, the crucified Christ preached by the apostles is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It seemed to both the miracle-seeking religious Jews, who require signs, and the wisdom-seeking philosophical Greeks that Christ was crucified as a fool (1 Cor. 1:22-23). Because both to Jews and Greeks Christ was nothing, they rejected and despised Christ. To the Jews, the crucified Christ was a stumbling block, and to Greeks, He was foolishness. But to those who believe in Him and call upon His name, He is the power of God and the wisdom of God for them to be delivered from all negative things.
Christ crucified is the power of God for saving us and the wisdom of God for fulfilling His plan. In order to achieve anything, we need both power and wisdom. Power is the ability, and wisdom is the way. Christ is first our power, and then He is our wisdom, that is, our way. Christ is the power of God to carry out God’s economy, and He is also the wisdom of God, the way of God, to carry out God’s economy.
Christ as the power of God strengthens us with a dynamic power, supplying and sustaining us in what we are and what we do. In all our circumstances and conditions, Christ as the power of God enables us to suffer, to bear burdens, and to stand firm. He also sustains us to the point of being unshakable. For this reason, Paul declared, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me” (Phil. 4:13). Christ as the power of God is daily supplying and sustaining us through His divine dispensing.
Christ as the wisdom of God flows unceasingly from God to us to be our present and practical wisdom in our experience. As we face certain problems and realize that we do not know how to handle them, we should apply Christ as our wisdom. If we remain with the Lord to receive His dispensing, He will be transmitted into us as the wisdom to handle all kinds of problems and matters. This is to apply Christ as wisdom in our daily life.
Wisdom may be understood as the way to do things. If we have wisdom, we will know the proper way to do things, but if we are not wise, our way of doing things will be foolish. In order to have the best way to do things in our daily life, we must have wisdom. Christ as wisdom to the believers is actually the divine way. Hence, wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1:30 is equal to the way in John 14:6, a verse in which the Lord Jesus says, “I am the way.” God’s way is His wisdom. If we enjoy Christ and participate in Him, we will have Him as our wisdom, as our way. This wisdom comes from our enjoyment of Christ. Day by day and hour by hour we should live in the spirit and exercise the spirit to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. If we do this, we will enjoy Christ and have Him as our wisdom, that is, our way of doing things.
Christ has become wisdom to us from God. In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul says, “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” In this verse Paul does not say that Christ became our wisdom; instead, he says that Christ became wisdom “to us from God.” The expression to us from God indicates something present, practical, experiential, and ongoing in the way of transmission. For Christ to become wisdom to us from God indicates that there is the transmission of Christ as wisdom from God to us for our daily experience. Paul composed verse 30 in the particular way he did in order to point out to the believers that Christ should continually become wisdom to us from God.
God has never given us wisdom as a thing apart from Himself. Rather, God Himself in Christ is wisdom to us, constantly transmitting Christ, His wisdom, into us as the divine element that constitutes us wise persons. In this transmission, Christ as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption is transmitted into our being.
Christ became wisdom to us from God as three vital things in God’s salvation: (1) righteousness (for our past), by which we have been justified by God, that we might be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life (Rom. 5:18); (2) sanctification (for our present), by which we are being sanctified in our soul, that is, transformed in our mind, emotion, and will, with His divine life (6:19, 22); and (3) redemption (for our future), that is, the redemption of our body (8:23), by which we will be transfigured in our body with His divine life to have His glorious likeness (Phil. 3:21). It is of God that we participate in such a complete and perfect salvation, which makes our entire being—spirit, soul, and body—organically one with Christ and makes Christ everything to us.
On the one hand, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption cover three stages of God’s salvation: regeneration in the spirit (for our past), sanctification in the soul (for our present), and redemption in the body (for our future). On the other hand, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption refer to three aspects of the nature of God’s salvation that we need to experience daily in our Christian living and work. Today in our living and work we need Christ as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Every day we need to be righteous, we need to be sanctified, and we need to be redeemed in all matters of our living. Christ, the wisdom of God transmitted into our being, is doing everything within us to make us righteous in our deeds and to sanctify us in our nature. Hence, whatever we do must be righteous and holy. Not only so, Christ as the wisdom of God redeems us from all things other than God (1 Pet. 1:18). Every day our living and work must be righteous, holy, and redeemed. Even our entire being should be righteous, holy, and redeemed.