1 Corinthians: Jesus, Whom God Made Our Wisdom

September 8, 2008

When I read 1 Corinthians this morning, I was especially struck by the phrase Paul uses to describe the sufficiency of Christ for us. He says, “He [God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” (1 Cor. 1:30) I suppose that when I think of being Christ-centered, I think of being Cross-centered. To a certain degree that’s how it should be. But the work of Christ and the meaning of Christ is much more than the salvation offered in him (which is often all we think of when we think of the cross). I think the cross is a suitable (possibly preferable) window to view the rest of Christ’s work through.–There we have Christ our priest, sacrificing himself our sacrificial lamb, according to the word that he himself had prophesied through the prophets of the Old Testament and in his own earthly person, because of which we honor him as our king by lives of obedience.

So today, I am enchanted with the idea of the cross as the symbol for our wisdom. In the verses following the one I quoted, Paul goes on to give his discussion of the wisdom of Jews and Greeks, his explanation of how he demonstrated to the Corinthians the truth of the gospel with “demonstrations of the Spirit and of power”, and his promise that there is more–a “wisdom of God”, in contrast to the wisdom of this world and its rulers. This passage has been abused in the history of interpretation–notably by Clement, who took it as the basis for his semi-gnostic aspirations.

I don’t pretend to have a handle on the wisdom of God made available to mature Christians, but something I heard yesterday in church, and connected with a whole host of former encounters in spiritual literature, seems to be a hint toward that kind of wisdom, not available to “infants in Christ”.

My pastor, Brian Janssen, was discussing What We Gain in Christ. And his final point was the perhaps surprising point that the suffering we experience for Christ is one of the wonderful things we gain in Christ. That’s right–suffering is not something to be endured in hopes of redress and reimbursement, but an end and glory in itself when experienced for the glory of Christ. Now there’s an ethical principle contrary to received wisdom. Yes, in Philippians Paul actually lists sharing “his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” as one of the things he gladly gains in Christ (Philippians 3:7-11).

That’s something I at least need to take more seriously. It’s a high mark–but I often find, especially in personal straining towards holiness, that aiming higher makes formerly difficult forms of obedience easier. How much would grumbling and fear and indifference decrease if suffering for Christ became our goal?

Some books to read on the subject if you feel so inclined: