1 Corinthians 1

Division 1. (1 Corinthians 1:1-31; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-21; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; 1 Corinthians 9:1-27; 1 Corinthians 10:1-33.)The Church with its one, unique sufficiency excludes all other. The first division, as already said, shows us the all-sufficiency the Church has in Christ, which renders it entirely independent of the world. This is not simply incapable of yielding help to it -it is hostile. The place of the cross of Christ is not merely a wilderness to it; it is an enemy’s country, and its seductions more to be dreaded than its open opposition. This was already proving itself at Corinth; and the apostle’s first work here is to fence off the garden of the Lord, not from the irruption of the wild boar that wasted Israel’s vineyard, but from the seeds of poisonous growths which every wind wafted, and by which the fruits of Christian life would be vitiated and strangled. The wisdom of the world had shut out from it the glory of Christ, and ministered but to the fleshly lusts which evidenced the heart away from God, and seeking its gratification in that which carried it continually further from Him. Over it all a still darker shadow brooded, -that of a “prince of the world” which it had chosen for itself, and whose power depended upon his ability to foster every delusion, increase the already portentous darkness, and with the heavy dreams of a drugged slumber shut out all the realities of God’s own light.

This is the scene in which the Church of God is not merely to remain for the time of her pilgrimage, but to maintain a testimony for Christ which is, by the very fact, a defiance of the usurper of dominion in the creation of God, and therefore certain to provoke the whole power of Satan to deadliest opposition. Blessed to know that greater is He that is with us than all that are against us; but that does not mean that the warfare is not one that will put us to the fullest proof, and call for the utmost energy to gain the victory. The first division, then, deals largely with the foe outside, but with one constantly seeking to gain footing inside; in which also he is aided, alas, by the unfaithfulness of the people of God themselves, which is, indeed, his main dependence. To meet all this the apostle shows the fulness of the resources that are in Christ for His people, and insists upon whole-hearted reliance upon them/ and refusal of all the spirit and moral elements of the world around. Subdivision 1. (1 Corinthians 1:1-31; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-21.)The barrenness of human knowledge, -the sufficiency of the divine. The apostle necessarily begins with what is the first necessity; contrasting the barrenness of human knowledge with the sufficiency of divine. What so many slight as doctrine is thus the basis of all else. So we find the order elsewhere: Scripture is profitable first for doctrine, then reproof, then correction, instruction in righteousness. There must first of all be the light, which shows us the road and whither we are going. And the light must be from heaven, as nature witnesses; in himself man has none, save as the candle which lights up but a few yards round us, and that dubiously. The best natural knowledge is of our own lack of it, the sin that perverts our judgment, the death which we in vain call natural, the foreboding of what is beyond, a God whose handiwork we recognize, yet afar off: why is the Maker of the world so far off practically, as it has to be confessed He is?

Revelation must come in, as the wisest of the heathen recognized, to deliver man front the uncertainty in which he is, and declare to him, what surely there must be, the way of life. Spite of all this, the world congratulates itself upon its wisdom; but “the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.”

1 Corinthians 1:1-16

Section 1. (1 Corinthians 1:1-16.)The Church under Christ the Lord. It is this darkness and uncertainty on man’s part, which could not be but as the result or a moral obliquity, which has turned him from the Source of light and blessing, that has placed him under the control of the “gods many and lords many” that oppress him now. His passions govern him and by the skillful use of these he is turned, as the ship in the master’s hand, “whithersoever the governor listeth.” With the entrance of the light from heaven, this misery ceases; the kingdom of truth has come: one righteous and sufficient rule is discerned and welcomed, which embraces all circumstances, and sets the subject heart at, rest. How completely may it be so for him for whom a Son of man sits upon the Father’s throne, and the crown of glory rests where once was the crown of thorns. It was soon understood of Christians that they had “another king, one Jesus;” whose sovereignty meant freedom in obedience, the sweetest possible despotism of a perfect and divine love. This is what animates the apostle as he addresses himself to the Corinthians now. He is full, as may be plainly seen, of the Lordship of Christ, their Lord and his. Alas, they needed the reminder of what alone set right the whole state of things amongst them. How could they be “frill” and “rich” and “reign as kings” in the scene of His cross, if the sovereignty of Jesus had not been losing its rightful hold upon them? How could they be parcelling themselves off as followers of this and that one among the servants by whom He had ministered to them, if all were serving the Lord Christ with the simplicity they once had? The “day of the Lord,” with its “revelation of the Lord,” did not shine for them as once, with its overmastering display of glory that eclipsed all others with its radiance. Hence his first aim, without any formal argument, which was unneeded, was to remind them of Him they served, To serve Him would soon be proved greater than to reign as kings on. earth.

1. Paul reminds them also of his own call as an apostle by the will of God, which had wrought in spite of the opposition of the human heart in his own case, as in that of “Sosthenes our brother,” whom he joins with himself in his epistle, now a “strong helper,” according to the probable meaning of his name, as he seems to have been, in the time of the apostle’s earlier labors at Corinth, a strong opposer. The brief way in which he is mentioned here, though the name itself may not have been an uncommon one, suggests that he was known to the Corinthians as the former ruler of the synagogue would be. It is certain he would not be brought forward in this way without some reason for it. Thus divine sovereignty had wrought for Christ, as it had wrought in the self-same grace toward every one of those Paul addresses here, if not so manifestly. He does not fail to assert this presently in direct terms where he presses upon them their own knowledge of their calling (ver. 26). Here too he addresses them (as before the Romans) as saints by calling -God’s creative call (Romans 8:30) -as he an apostle. The assembly is also by its designation as such a company “called out,” which expresses in this application a body separated from the world which has crucified the Son of God, and to which every one who believes in Him is crucified in His cross. The two epistles to the Corinthians are the only two written to the assembly of God as such, -that is, in true church-character. “The assembly of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father,” is, as we have already seen, different in its suggestion; while “the assemblies of Galatia” shows by its plural form that “the Church which is His body” is in no wise the thought, but it leaves room for question -too much in accord with the condition shown in the epistle -whether they have in fact a divine character at all. “I stand in doubt of you” is written upon the very opening of it. Ephesians gives us most fully of all the doctrine of the Church; but it is not written to the Church, but to the saints; and so we may say of Colossians. They are for individual faith and conduct, and not directions for the regulation of the Body as such. Corinthians is, without doubt, all that is written directly for this purpose, by him who was the special minister of the Church (Colossians 1:25). To the assembly, then, he writes, characterizing it first as that of those sanctified (or set apart to God) in Christ Jesus. The place they had in Him was necessarily, as that, a place, not of negative separation merely from this evil or that, but a separation in which God was distinctly before the soul, according to the perfection of His holy nature. “In Christ” was the accomplishment of this: He being both in His atoning work our deliverance from the distance which sin had brought in, and in the power of His glory transforming to His likeness the one in faith beholding it (2 Corinthians 3:18). Saints, therefore, we are by calling; for it is a “calling above, in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). We are called out of a fallen world to a portion in Christ, with Him where He is. Our faces there, our backs must be here. There is our goal, our prize, the home of the light which brightens all our journey thither. It is to the assembly of God in Corinth that Paul specifically writes: and this gives its character to the epistle, as has been said. But he is far from desiring it to be thought that it is on that account in any way restricted to a mere local interest. On the contrary, it is most instructive to see his earnestness to have it understood that all Christians are concerned in and addressed in it. He adds, therefore, to the specifically named Corinthians, “with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, -theirs and ours.” Thus there is the widest possible appeal to attention, as afterwards the strongest claim to divine authority for all that is not expressly excepted from this: “If any man be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 14:37). The “calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” is bowing to authority in the hands of the divinely appointed Ruler. To “call upon the name of the Lord” is the pass-word of salvation; and the apostle has no thought here of a mere lip-confession, although, of course, there may in fact be many who say, “Lord, Lord,” while the heart knows Him not. But he credits all with their responsible profession, and from his inmost heart he desires for all that “grace and peace” which have but one source, one channel, -our Father God, and the Lord our Saviour.
2. He starts at once with what we have seen to be his subject here, by acknowledging what God’s abundant grace had done for them, and the witness-place for which God had furnished them. They had been enriched by grace in all utterance and in all knowledge -in what was communicated to them, and in ability to communicate it to others. The testimony of Christ which had been brought to them in the gospel, had thus been confirmed in them; God was thus glorifying Him in whom He had been glorified on earth, in those endowments which we have soon to see were being perverted by the Corinthians to the glorifying of themselves -in fact to their own dishonor. As far as they were concerned, the gifts were those of grace only, -grace which had decorated the poor human clay in those who were but the “base things of the earth,” and still as earthen vessels in which the treasures of heaven had been received. They lacked in no gift: God had kept back nothing that could be needed by them for the setting forth Christ, while the day of His revelation tarried, for which they were waiting; and by this would establish them also, that in His day they might be without blame.

Paul assures them, therefore, of the faithfulness of God, who, having called them to the fellowship of His Son, could not repent of what He had thus done. Every one so called will, therefore, in like manner be confirmed, and so be found blameless in the day when divine grace shall have perfected its work in them, and the robes of their righteousness will be seen as washed white in the blood of the Lamb. But there is a way by which such an end is reached, as surely as there is the end also to which it leads. Both are alike ordained, and not one without the other. With these reminders and with this encouragement, Paul appeals to them now by the name of Him whom they called their Lord against all division of spirit, and even of mind. The name of Christ is that which is named upon us all, and will have power, as the glory of it is realized, to unite us thus together. How can the servants of the same dear Lord fail to be united in a common obedience? It may be said, “They may misconceive what that obedience is.” True; how much of this, in fact, there has been. And yet the correction of it is in the same spirit provided for: for the Lord Himself has guaranteed that “He that will, do His will shall know of the doctrine;” and that is a principle, surely, of the most far-reaching significance. It may be questioned or denied, except as to some things of main importance; but what does it mean, to deny it? Is it to he supposed that, in matters of practical moment, He will allow the one who with downright simplicity desires to know the path, prepared at all costs then to walk in it, yet to be without the knowledge that he seeks; and so to err in that way of holiness of which it is written that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein?” It is quite true, again, that in all such texts mistakes may be made, and are made. The wayfaring man, so marked, is not the idler by the way, -not the one who believes that the intelligence of divine grace means taking things easily, and being as little as possible exercised about anything. He is not the man who little consults his road-map, is little interested in communications from the place to which he is going, and who, passing through an enemy’s country, sees but little evidence of danger anywhere, and finds the proof of the world being improved in the monuments of the prophets built by the children of their persecutors. These are they who naturally take the distracted state of Christendom as an infallible argument of the uselessness of expecting positive certainty about anything beyond a few cardinal points of doctrine, and who yet think Scripture plain enough for all practical purposes. No! it is deep enough to exercise thoroughly every earnest student of it, and profitable for the “man of God” alone. And how many are the men of God? How many are they who are set absolutely to follow all that Scripture sets before them, and never balk the light because it searches them too much? The “secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him” thus, and none of these will find Scripture disappoint them. But they will find it immensely large, and ever beyond them, -leading them on, therefore, to the invisible, the heavenly, the eternal; while giving them practical wisdom without limit with regard to all that meets them by the way. Christian reader, is this your character? and how does your experience agree with this? It is no wonder then that what the apostle appeals to the Corinthians by, against their divisions. is the Name of a common Lord, -that Dame upon which they call as owning subjection to Him whose name it is. We find directly how far they had gone astray from the simplicity of this obedience; even to the ranging themselves as disciples under the various teachers which God had given them, as one of Paul, and one of Apollos, and one of Cephas, and one even -as if putting His teachings in contrast with those of His (even inspired) servants -of Christ Himself! How ninny since have sought to make such a distinction! perhaps to refer us for their creed to the “sermon on the mount”! And one whole school of recent date, among the many monstrous births with which the degenerate universities of Protestant Germany have afflicted the church, has for its cardinal principle the opposition of Paul to Peter, and Peter to Paul, from a compromise between whose followers came the Catholic church! There is no need for us at present to concern ourselves with such grotesque heresies, and it will be of more profit to think of things that more nearly touch ourselves. We no doubt believe that all the inspired writers are to be listened to as the mouthpieces of the Spirit of God alike; whatever may be the differences in their respective lines of testimony.

It is to be feared, however, that for most of us some of these have written almost in vain. The want of balance of truth may thus be very great, and the result more than a defect in knowledge. Scripture is a living organism, in which each member ministers to the rest, and if one member suffer all the members suffer with it. Prophecy roots itself in history, which again is the birthplace of every great doctrine. Doctrine controls and models practice. To suppose that any part of the word of God may be slighted with impunity is to come near to accusing God of having spoken idly in it; and it is not the knowledge of it, but the want of knowledge -its power and preciousness not being realized in the soul, that makes men ready to yield it up to the unsparing hands of the (falsely called) “higher critics,” whose every effort is to debase what they do not understand. But this works also in other ways which may once more come closer home to us. What is it that makes people sit at the feet of men who can be but, at best, interpreters after an imperfect fashion of a book which is in all our hands, and the One infallible Interpreter of which is given to all Christians, with deference often abject to the authoritative exposition of those who know, or ought to know, as those occupied so much with the things of the world, and destitute of needful training, cannot be expected to do? Let it not be thought that it is meant that we can receive no help from teachers; or that there is not to be a due recognition of whatever help the Lord would give us. His way is to use us to one another, and the pride of independency is sure to reap its reward. But the opposite error is at least no less; it is a false, because extreme, confidence in any teacher, however pious, however gifted, which as little really honors the teacher as it even establishes in the teaching, or builds up the soul therefore before God. Such disciples of men are like a house upon the sand, when the storm of trial comes; while, as the Lord says, “He that heareth His words and doeth them,” his house shall not fall, because it is founded upon a rock.

And be it the truth one builds on, but receiving it as the word of man, without having searched out all before God, except His mercy avert, the sand that is over the rock may cause its fall as easily. Who that is a teacher indeed can be satisfied with less than divine authority for himself, or therefore allow others to be satisfied with less?

The mind may wander through imaginative realms of fancy at its will, but the conscience is that which has to do with God alone, where no one of us all can answer for another. Yet how many grow up in the faith of their parents simply, without ever having examined it! or in the creed of a church certified to them by a multitude of respectable names, and thus are walking by the faith of others, and not their own! And thus we have come with the weight of centuries upon us, down to a systematized Corinthian condition, in the easiest and most natural way possible to be imagined. Alas, too natural; what more so than for Abraham to desire to carry his father with him into Canaan? Yet he only kept himself out of it till his father died. And we, what wonder that we have not much need of a text to teach us how to know of the doctrine, we who succeed to our fathers, doctrines just as to any other part of their estates, and would think it a dishonor to their memories to act as if we were wiser than they, except as perforce we are carried on with the progress of the generations, mostly scientific as it is, and thus are compelled to realize that Darwin has come, and Darwinism in religion, while they and Moses had the misfortune to live before his time. One would think that this principle of science with its professed call for “verification,” would suggest at least no less than the verification by our manual of instruction, of all that we hear from those who professedly are teaching from it; but men are men, and sinuosity still marks “the worm Jacob’s” course. How many verify their scientific text-books? And in religion, how shall these hard-worked business men sit down to verify the sayings of those whose business is to give out that which by long labor they have acquired? They may change their teacher, if they are unable in the main to go with him; but the method is harder to change. Until, indeed, the invisible things become for them the deepest realities, and the spoon fashion of feeding no longer is found to meet the demands of a sturdier life. With the Corinthians things had not gone on in any wise so far as this, but the same causes were at work, and the people of God were already becoming such or such a teacher’s people. The apostle meets it with the utmost vigor, according to his wont. “Is Christ divided?” he asks: are His words in contradiction to those inspired by the Spirit since He went on high? “Was Paul crucified for you?” so that you should be the people of Paul? “Or were you baptized to the name of Paul?” -as people are baptized into this or that church now. “I thank my God,” he adds, “that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gains, that no one may say ye were baptized to my name. And I baptized also the house of Stephanas; for the rest, I know not if I baptized any other.” “Under the old dispensation,” says Hodge, “whenever any one professed Judaism, or entered into covenant with God as one of His people, all his children and dependents, that is, all to whom he stood in a representative relation, were included in the covenant, and received its sign. In like manner, under the gospel, when a Jew or Gentile joined the Church, his children received baptism and were recognized as members of the Christian Church.” I quote this because of some common but important errors in it, which need to be separated from the truth which is contained. The “baptismal covenant” is a very common doctrine in much of Protestant theology; having its main support from its analogy with the Israelite “covenant of circumcision “by which the seed of Abraham according to the flesh” stood in acknowledged relationship to Jehovah, their covenant God. But while conceding fully the analogy, we have carefully to remember the difference between a nation in the flesh and under a covenant of law, and the Church as the Body of Christ, indwelt of the Spirit. Into this Church no ordinance can bring, but the baptism of the Spirit only (1 Corinthians 12:13). The confounding of this with water-baptism, and of the Body of Christ with the Kingdom of heaven is one that has led largely to the ritualism with which the professing church is afflicted today, and from which the Reformers themselves, with but a few exceptions such as Zwingle, were by no means fully delivered. But while there was a “throne of the Lord” in Israel, where Solomon sat as the viceroy and representative of a higher power (1 Chronicles 28:5; 1 Chronicles 29:23), the sign of whose Presence was the Glory over the ark of the covenant in the innermost holy place, yet the difference is even thus apparent. And if Israel were thus a kingdom of the Lord, and might have been, had they stood to the terms of their covenant, “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) in nearer relationship, yet members of the Body of Christ they never were -not even that remnant according to the election of grace which has been ever among them.

To urge, as so many do, that they were the “assembly,” (or “church”) of the Lord, as we are, is to mistake the whole matter, and substitute a false issue for the true one. The question is in no wise one of the assembly of the Lord simply, which no one could deny them to have been, but of “the assembly which is His Body” (Ephesians 1:22-23), which could not exist before there was a Head in heaven, or a baptism of the Spirit to form the Body. The Kingdom it is which, in whatever different forms, existed, and exists all through; and in Israel the house of God was its centre; in the Kingdom, but of course distinct from it. And so again, the Church is now the House of God by the indwelling of the Spirit; in the Kingdom, but distinct from the Kingdom. It is only the confusion between Israel as the assembly of the Lord, and the assembly which is Christ’s Body and the House of God, that makes this other confusion between the Kingdom and the Church. And it is true that “He hath made us a Kingdom, priests to His God and Father,” as the book of Revelation says (Revelation 1:6, R.V.); but this is another of the many blessings which are ours in Christ. This distinction clear makes clear many another thing. It is on this lower ground that Israel and the Church are in some sense one. It is here that the analogy between circumcision and baptism finds its justification, and the whole ritualistic argument as to the latter is swept away. Baptism is into the Kingdom, not the Church; it is, as we have elsewhere seen, one of the keys of the Kingdom (see Matthew 16:19, notes), and one of the modes of discipling into that which is a kingdom of truth (Matthew 28:19, notes). On this ground all the blessing is governmental, conditional, and (however it may look on to eternity,) secures nothing there. It is a remission or washing away of sin which is hypothetical necessarily, as done by those who cannot know infallibly the hearts of those who come to their baptism, and cannot cleanse those whom God has not cleansed; any more than the water which they use can cleanse the soul (see Acts 2:38, notes). Nor does God work magically, as men would have Him, by means unsuitable to the nature He has given us. If we understood that baptism is just the solemn admission to the Lord’s school on earth, the difficulty as to the admission of a believer’s house to this along with himself would be at an end; and the reason would be apparent for the distinction to be made between the child and the adult. God would of course have reality, and he who owns Christ Master and Lord, coming to sit at His feet and learn of Him, must come in faith or he does not come; while on the other hand the arms of divine love are ready to encircle the babes brought to Him, and His own word bids those to whose responsibility they are committed to “bring them up in the nurture and discipline of the Lord:” -that is, as disciples. Thus the assurance that “of such is the Kingdom of heaven” is as plain as need be and as encouraging as plain. There is no bringing into a place those who have no proved fitness for it; no bringing into the professing church at all; while in complete harmony with the principles announced by God in Abraham, the family ties are owned of God in blessing wherever a faith like his may lay hold of the promise, “Bring up a child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Here therefore, the apostle plainly distinguishes between the only two of the assembly at Corinth whom he had baptized -“none of you, except Crispus and Gaius;” while of the baptized households he had baptized but one, as far as his memory served -“the house of Stephanas.” Here it was not so important to remember; for it was not the children who were distracting the church by their divisions. It was sufficient, therefore, to say here, “for the rest, I know not that I baptized any other.” \

1 Corinthians 1:17-31

Section 2. (1 Corinthians 1:17-31.)The Cross in its twofold aspect. The apostle now enters at once upon his theme, Christ, unknown by the world, the cross His emblem, whom it was impossible to commend to the world, therefore, by any means other than the “demonstration of the Spirit” to the convicted soul. Yet this Cross is at once the inlet of all wisdom to him who understands it, -the knowledge of itself and of God; the actual meeting of the need which it has discovered. Thus it is true wisdom, -not that barren wisdom of the world which fails man just where needed most, but that which under the severest test becomes the most conspicuous.

1. The apostle’s disclaiming here of being sent to baptize is in perfect harmony with what has just been said of the connection of baptism with the Kingdom rather than the Church. Certainly those who received their commission from the risen, but not yet ascended Christ, could not have spoken in this way. Sent to baptize they were, and by Him who grounds it upon all power committed to Him, that is, upon the Kingdom that is His (Matthew 28:18-19). He who was distinctly sent from Christ in glory, and declares himself to be in an especial manner the minister of the Church (Colossians 1:25), to whom was committed the administration of that till then unknown mystery (Ephesians 3:6-9), expressly denies baptism to have a place in that distinct commission! And this is the more noteworthy, because with regard to the Lord’s Supper, which he might have received, like baptism, from those who were apostles before him, but which is plainly connected with this administration, he says emphatically that he had “received from the Lord” that which he delivered to them: this too in this very same epistle in which he denies his having received baptism in this way from Him, and which is an epistle for the authoritative regulation of the Church on earth (1 Corinthians 14:37). But he was also minister of the completed gospel (Colossians 1:23); and this is what he turns to speak of now. Christ had not sent him to baptize, but to preach the gospel -the glad tidings of a love now going out towards all, and in which his own heart went out in sympathetic gladness. Yet here it was the word of the Cross he carried, an ominous word of humiliation, suffering and penalty endured; and which, if endured for men, yet declared their condition who could be saved only by such a sacrifice. Here, therefore, no mere wisdom of words would suffice. That would be ignoring the very condition for which the Cross was alone the remedy. It was not a mere misunderstanding which wise words would remove, but a heart away from God which had declared itself in lace of the wondrous revelation of God in Christ: men have both seen and hated both Christ and His Father. And men, according to Scripture, are the same everywhere; this condition is not an exceptional one, but, “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.” What use, then, of mere appeals to man, when Christ has Himself appealed, to get no answer but the Cross? The very “word of the Cross is to those that are perishing foolishness;” while indeed to those who are being saved “it is the power of God.” Yes, the power of God; but then this alone can be trusted to work in it. The wisdom of the wise is brought to an end; the understanding of the man of understanding set aside: did any of them, with whatever wisdom they might have, excogitate the gospel? or produce any equivalent to the gospel? They had had ample time to do it, if they could. The nations that had once known God, had, in fact, spite of that knowledge, glorified Him not as God, nor been thankful for the knowledge, as the apostle tells the Romans; and this was the secret of the idolatry which covered the earth with hideous forms, the reflection of the lusts which warred in their members. What could be expected of those who had thus turned their backs on God, and conjured up gods not to meet the need of conscience, but to satisfy the impulses of their depravity? God indeed, as we know, never left Himself without witness, -never meant to leave man to the mere blind gropings of a darkened intellect. Apart from the witness of external nature which is everywhere, somewhere the light was shining all the time. In the midst of the most cultivated nations of antiquity, and at the headquarters of their commercial traffic, -in close intimacy with Egypt, (upon whose bestial gods was executed once a judgment which resounded far and near,) -and in turn with Phoenicia, Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, there was a people who held in their hand the revelation of God, progressing with the onward march of the generations that went by. But this was not what they craved or would receive. Thus in the self-chosen darkness their wisdom ripened till in Greece, the land of the typical Gentile, in the midst of those who professedly sought after wisdom, it produced its fairest blossoms and its ripest fruits. The wisdom of God was pleased to give ample time for the development.

As in Israel under law it was to be proved that man was without strength and ungodly, so amongst the Gentiles was it to be proved that the world by wisdom knew not God. Then, when the need was fully shown, which could not else be met at all, “it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching” -not of preaching as a method, but of the thing preached in human estimation -“it pleased God to save those that believe.” 2. Not merely to Gentile philosophy, which in its very designation was a “pursuit of wisdom,” but to the legal Jew no less, the cross was naturally the very opposite of what he looked for. The Jew, as we see in the Gospels, demanded signs -significant wonders. And such indeed was the Cross, the mightiest that could be; but what child of the law could accept one in which the law itself was against the sufferer, -the curse of the law upon him? Doubtless they had read of One despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, upon whom Jehovah laid the iniquity of others, and with whose stripes they are healed. Yes, but was not that Israel suffering for the sins of the world?

So have they turned the edge of conviction from themselves to weave out of texts like these a subtle web of self-righteousness in their own defence. But how indeed could they think of their glorious Messiah as in the place of one made an offering for sin? How little could they imagine that in all this reasoning they were but fulfilling the prophecy they were perverting, -“He was despised, and we esteemed Him not!” The reason why to the Greeks it was foolishness was at bottom the same -intense blindness as to man’s condition and the enormity of sin before a holy God. Their gods came down to earth indeed, and in forms lower than the human; but it was in pursuit of their own lusts and passions, as vehement and unrestrained as any that could be found in man. Here was a setting forth of “new gods” indeed, which at once proclaimed a new estimate of sin, and swept aside under its condemnation all their rabble of dishonored deities. Were indeed all these to be replaced with that gaunt Figure of rejection and death, outcast by these contemptible Jews themselves? But if such then were the message, what hope in announcing it? None but in God’s new-creative call, the call of the gospel certainly, but the gospel made good in the soul by the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit. Many heard and hear the universal gospel-call, only to reject it; but to all those called according to the word of the apostle here, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. It is a call effectual as God can make it, -“not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Thessalonians 1:5); the result being a veritable new birth: for we are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you” (1 Peter 1:23; 1 Peter 1:25). Thus the “foolishness of God” -what with men may be considered that -approves itself by its blessed fruit in those in whose hearts, opened by divine grace, it has been received effectually, an incoming of light and joy and peace which nothing else can avail to bring. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men,” whatever may be the form of the philosophy he favors; and the “weakness of God,” -Christ “crucified through weakness,” -“is more powerful than men.” 3. If such then is the true character of world-wisdom, such its contradiction to all that is genuinely this, it is but the consequence to be expected, that the calling of God will not be characteristically of those wise according to the flesh, or mighty, or noble. He has, in fact, put upon the most conspicuous developments of the world-spirit the brand of His reprobation. He chooses the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and its weak things to shame its might, and things ignoble and despised, things that are naught in men’s eyes, to bring down to naught all things in the world together, that no flesh may glory in the presence of God. Alas, it is this “great Babylon that we have builded” that exalts man to his shame, and drives him out in result among the beasts that know not God, to be more bestial than they. We must accept this abasement that God may be able indeed to exalt us, and enrich us in our poverty with the riches of One self-impoverished to enrich us. In this way man is blessed indeed, and God is glorified. We who believe are in Christ Jesus, -filled up in all His fulness; and the wisdom which here we find manifests itself as truly that by its power to meet and put away all the disastrous consequences of the fall, and bring in an overcompensation of blessing that is indeed divine. And this is what the form of the sentence here conveys; “righteousness, as well as sanctification, and redemption,” being the distinguishing blessings that are found in the wisdom that is from God, and which manifest its truly divine character.*
It will be found also upon examination that the words stand in the order needed to bring out their relation to the fall; to that, let us remember, which began man’s pursuit of wisdom, away from God. Still, “vain man will be wise, though be be born a wild ass’s colt.” No wonder if he should sadly lose his way. Yet in all this, supreme above it all, God works out His purposes of blessing, using even the evil itself to do so. For, if wisdom were hoped for by man from the knowledge of good and evil, this (which indeed was always designed for him by God, and which he had no need to take from Satan) is in fact overruled in such a way as to give him the deepest possible apprehension of these that (one may suppose) the creature could have; and thus, in the redeemed, to bring about a fuller conformity to the mind of God, than perhaps a being unfallen could attain. No angel could in this way by reason of use have his senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” And the very presence of the evil in us after new birth is a fact whose import seems to lie in the same direction. At the best, a wisdom of this kind could not, however, by itself solve any one of the most serious questions which perplex men, and will perplex them, apart from revelation. And this is what distinctly the book of Ecclesiastes is designed to show. Wisdom there is the object of the most earnest search by one who had special human wisdom given him by God, so as to be wiser than all men beside; and with riches and power back of it all, to carry out, as far as mail might go, his experiments. But the wail goes up from this eager seeker of what he prized and longed for: “I said I will be wise, but it was far from me.” Death baffles him. The seal upon a fallen condition cannot be broken by that which induced the fall. “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward? or the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? . . . As thou knowest not the way of the spirit . . . so thou knowest not the works of God that worketh all.” Revelation must come in then; and here what joy to realize how it has indeed come in! Christ is made unto us wisdom from God; and thus with Christianity, for faith, every cloud is lifted. The wisdom that is from God is a casket of priceless jewels; in which the redeemed one finds, not only liberty, but marvelous enrichment. How much is contained in just those three words, “righteousness, sanctification and redemption!” And they are in an order of progressive fulness, as we shall see, by which we enter more and more into the heart of God. Righteousness is the first need of the sinner, and which we see symbolically met in that robe which death furnished to cover the nakedness which was the first felt need in Eden. “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Yet God had made him naked, not like any beast of the earth with its protective covering, but safe in the purity of his uprightness, open to the light and not ashamed. How all was altered now! The consciousness of guilt was upon him: the law of sin was already in his members; and God Himself recognizes the impossibility of restoring that lost innocence; he must have a covering, and a better one than any that he can invent with all his power of invention. Who could imagine that death, the penalty upon him, was to be that which should provide him with this? Yet we know that this is indeed the truth. The penalty must be endured, if the sinner is to be justified before God.

Righteousness for him is not in any impossible work of his hands, or new life lived, but in the first place by the death of Him of whom all the sacrificial law spoke -whom it foreshadowed. The blood of the sacrifice -token of the life poured out -was that which was offered to God for the acceptance of the offerer; and we are thus “justified by His blood,” every charge against us is refused, His resurrection from the dead being the assurance of the demand met, and thus the public sentence of justification of every one that believeth in Jesus. But this is negative merely, -there is no imputation of guilt, and that is all; and it is not all that God has done for us; we have not in this yet reached the robe of righteousness, which death indeed must obtain for us, but which goes beyond the mere putting away of sin, and gives us a positive standing in the presence of God. Christ is not merely negative but positive righteousness to us. We stand in Him, in the value that He has for God, who has achieved, not merely for us but for Him also, that which has glorified Him in all His attributes. In His death all that we were by nature and practice both was branded and set aside, -“our old man crucified with Him,” -and we are accepted in the Beloved, in that unchangeable perfection which is His, living because He lives. He is the Priest that offered for us, to whom belongs the skin of the burnt-offering (Leviticus 7:8); and here we are brought back as it were to Eden, to see whence those skins that covered the first sinners of mankind were derived. How from the beginning did the eye of God contemplate the coming Redeemer in His sufferings and the glories that should follow! Yet, however wonderful this righteousness, more is needed and more provided for us in Christ. God could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner, while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man fallen was corrupt as well as guilty; and Christ is made unto us not only righteousness but also sanctification. Now sanctification is spoken of in two different ways in Scripture: we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically, -by the blood and by the Spirit of Christ; as the blood with the oil upon the blood consecrated the priest of old (Exodus 29:20-21). Positionally, as is evident, it is the blood of Christ which has set us apart to God. And this is what sanctification means, setting apart to God. The Lord thus speaks of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God: “For their sakes,” He says, “I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17:19). This was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think; it was simply a new place that He was taking for us God ward. Upon this too our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends.

He is gone in to God as Man. Entitled ever to such a place by virtue of all that He was, His own personal perfection, He is now gone in for men; and therefore, “By His own blood He entered in once into the holy place. having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). Thus He enters as our Representative, and the blood that He has shed sets us apart, or sanctifies us, to God, in the power of His finished work, “we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Thus the conscience is effectually purified, the worshiper once purged having no more conscience of sins (Hebrews 9:13-14; Hebrews 10:2); a thing how absolutely necessary for practical sanctification, for which we must be near to God: there is no possible place of distance from sin but in nearness to God. Practical sanctification has its two factors in the new birth, and the operation of the Spirit through the Word upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. In new birth Christ is our life, and thus we have a nature capable of responding to the Word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit’s work is necessary to make the Word good in the hearts of the children of God. But being born again, it is Christ once more, as apprehended by the soul in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power for sanctification. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. He who has put away our sins and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself and for God, revealed in Him, for ever. Christian life -what only can be called so -is thus love’s free and happy offering to Him who has loved us: “He died for all, that they which live should no more live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again.” Let us notice that “rose again;” for if our hearts are thus Christ’s, where is Christ? In heaven. And where then are our hearts? That is the power for practical holiness, an object -the Object -for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in the world, to see what of good we can perchance find in it: Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness. How simply and in what perfect wisdom has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the Object withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim’s heart and a pilgrim’s steps! And now, finally, what is “redemption”? This is the last of the three things found, according to the apostle, in this wisdom. of God in Christ. What then is redemption? It is God’s love acting from itself, and for itself, to satisfy itself at personal cost, in getting back that which has been alienated from Him, and which yet He values. It is more than purchase, or even repurchase; for this might be, not because of its value to myself, but to give it away again, or for some other reason. But redemption is for oneself, the getting back for oneself what one’s own heart values, -the value of which is known by the price that one is willing to pay for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer. And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learned to suspect the goodness of God. There and then he had lost God: for He is not God, if He is not good. Since then, naturally, “there is none that seeketh after” Him, -that believes there is anything in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and self-interest only, and men’s gods are the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and how gloriously has He done this! Not goodness merely to man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” Christ is the redemption-price that shows the heart of the Redeemer; this wondrous gift, the Father’s heart told out in transcendent righteousness, and holiness, and love. Nor can we forget that redemption has yet to show its power in the transformation of the body itself; that in the image of Christ fully we may enjoy the blessedness that is ours in Him for ever. Then indeed shall he that glorieth glory in the Lord; and the full blessing of the creature shall be found when He alone is glorified by all.