In the foregoing message we saw that we may experience Christ in His experiences of being brought to the slaughter, of being slaughtered, of being skinned, and of being cut into pieces. In this message we shall consider further aspects of our experiences of Christ in His experiences as the burnt offering to God.
First Corinthians 1:30 tells us that Christ has become wisdom to us from God. In Leviticus 1 Christ’s wisdom is typified by the head of the burnt offering. We need Christ’s head; that is, we need His wisdom.
If we would take Christ as our wisdom, we must live Christ. The proper Christian life, a life of abiding in the Lord that we may enjoy His life, is a life of doing things not by ourselves but by Him. As long as we do things by ourselves, we cannot have the wisdom of Christ and He cannot be wisdom to us. For example, if you speak to your husband or wife and to your children in your self and by your self, Christ will not be wisdom to you in your speaking. If we would speak and do all things by Christ, we need to pray, “Lord, live in me. I have been crucified, and it is no longer I who live. Lord, I don’t want to do anything by myself-I want to do everything by You. Actually, Lord, I would let You live in me and do everything for me.” When we let Christ live in us and do everything for us, He becomes our wisdom.
Our problem today is that we want to live a victorious and perfect life, yet we do not live and act by Christ. We have the heart to live by Christ, even to live Christ, but we are not accustomed to doing this. On the contrary, we are accustomed to living ourselves. We spontaneously live ourselves without trying to do so and without deliberately exercising any part of our being. However, in order to live Christ, we need to exercise our entire being.
Concerning the matter of living Christ, the question is not whether or not something is sinful but whether or not we are the ones who are living. We usually consider whether or not a certain thing is sinful, but God considers whether we are living by ourselves or by Christ. When we lose our temper, we do something sinful. However, even if our behavior does not seem to be sinful, if we live by ourselves and not by Christ, sin will issue forth. When we live ourselves, we eventually do something sinful, simply because we are the ones living. But if Christ lives in us, we shall be victorious, and He will become our wisdom.
If we live Christ in our married life, Christ will be not only our life but also our wisdom. Whenever we find it difficult to deal with our husband or wife, we are short of Christ as wisdom. If we do not live Christ, we shall have trouble in our married life. The way to avoid trouble with our husband or wife is to live Christ and thereby have Him as our wisdom.
Christ is very wise. As He lives in us, He repeats in us His life of wisdom. In this way we experience Christ in His wisdom and live a life with Christ as our wisdom.
Concerning our experiencing Christ in His wisdom, Paul says, “We speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which God predestined before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7). God’s wisdom is Christ (1 Cor. 1:24), who is the hidden mystery (Col. 1:26-27), predestined, predesignated, and foreordained before the ages for our glory. Christ is the wisdom of God, and He is the wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, and the One predestined by God before the ages for our glory. We may think that this glory is something only for the future. However, if we live Christ and He becomes our wisdom in our living, we shall experience a little of this glory even today.
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