1 Corinthians 1:30

1 Corinthians 1:30. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, [1] both righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

[1] This is beyond doubt the correct order of the original words, and it is only when they are read in this order that the true sense comes clearly out.

Thus reads this great statement, to catch the true sense of which requires careful attention. It is not four co-ordinate blessings which the apostle says ‘Christ is made unto us' as our Authorised Version represents it, and most modern interpreters understand it. On the contrary, ‘wisdom' stands out here by itself, as all-comprehensive as the one thing which Christ is “made unto us from God” in contrast with all boasted human wisdom. But that we may see how comprehensive this gift is, the apostle makes it branch out into three divisions, corresponding to the three great stages of our whole salvation:

(1) ‘RIGHTEOUSNESS' which brings us into a right relation to God;

(2) SANCTIFICATION, embracing our whole progressive transformation into the image of God; and

(3) that in which this at length culminates, REDEMPTION from all the effects of the fall in soul and body onwards to final glory.

All this, ‘Christ is made unto us from God,' thus precluding all boasting. Still, bad it been left wholly to ourselves to receive or reject it, the thought might have crept into the proud heart, that after all, in the last instance, ‘salvation is of him that willeth' a thought repudiated in Romans 9:16. But to cut off even this last refuge of human pride, the statement opens with these words: ‘OF HIM are ye in Christ Jesus;' that is to say, it is not by a self-originated act that any one is ‘in Christ,' and so partaker of His fulness, but by an immediate Divine operation upon the soul that this vital union is effected, and that in virtue of it, He is ‘made unto us wisdom' in its threefold provision of ‘righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' And the grand design of this entire exclusion of human merit is,