What is meant by "Christ is made our wisdom"?

What is meant by "Christ is made our wisdom"? Let us at the outset more accurately re-punctuate the second part of 1 Corinthians 1.30. In accordance with the original text, a colon may rightly be placed after "wisdom from God"—thereby conveying the thought that wisdom includes the three things which follow: namely, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Chapters 1-3 of 1 Corinthians deal persistently with God’s wisdom versus man’s wisdom. We accordingly consider wisdom to be the general topic, while righteousness and sanctification and redemption can be viewed as explaining how Christ is made our wisdom.

In order to understand what is meant by "Christ is made our wisdom", we must first be clear what life is. When, for example, temptation comes to stir you up, you know you should be patient. But whence does your patience originate? It may be said that what supplies you with patience is actually your life. You need to exercise your life to be patient. Apart from your life you are dead, you cannot be patient. You need to mobilize your life to supply yourself with patience. Or, you feel you should not be slothful but diligent. To be diligent your life has to supply you with it. Or, when someone is in trouble, you know you should show love and be helpful. But where does your love come from? It is your life that causes you to love. For this reason, whenever we are faced with something, the first reaction which is produced within us is the manifestation of our life. All these reactions flow out from our life. What precipitates these reactions is life. Without it there can be no reactions of this kind. Life produces these reactions. We face situations all the time, and we react all the time. We exercise our life to meet outside demands on all occasions; there is not an instance when we do not use our life.

Now God gives Christ to us that He may be our life as well as our substitute on the cross. Previously we reacted to all outside demands with our own life. If our own life was adequate, we did well; if inadequate, we did not do so well; and if totally incompetent, we simply failed. We always used our own life to react to and to manage all affairs. But today God has given Christ to us, and He wants Him to be our life. Before we received the Lord Jesus, we lived by ourselves; but after we receive Him, God purposes to let Him live for us. Since the Lord Jesus Christ dwells in us to be our life, we need no more to depend on our former life to live. Not that the Lord Jesus gives us so many commandments, shows us so many ideas, and tells us so many doctrines for us to comply with; but that He himself is in us as our life to do everything for us. Hereafter we should live by the life of the Lord Jesus. Formerly we reacted to all outside demands with our own life, hereafter we ought to let the life of Christ take over.

Knowing what Christ our life means, we can now proceed to explain how God makes Christ our wisdom. Now you have been a Christian for a long time. Aside from your own wisdom have you ever experienced the Lord Jesus as your wisdom? How much do your really know the Lord Jesus? This is a basic question.

Let us be quite clear: It does not say here that the Lord Jesus gives us wisdom, nor does it say that God gives the wisdom of the Lord Jesus to us as though we are rather foolish but that now with the wisdom God gives us we begin to know how to speak and to act. No, the Bible never puts it that way. What it says is that God has made Christ our wisdom. "Was made" are two very important words here. None can be better than these two words.

Let us illustrate this with Moses and Aaron. Moses would not go to the children of Israel and speak to them, fearful lest his eloquence be inadequate. He said he was slow of speech, therefore he dared not go. How did God answer him? "Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite? . . . He shall be thy spokesman unto the people; . . . he shall be to thee a mouth" (Ex. 4.14,16). Now was it because Aaron had become a mouth to Moses that therefore the eloquence of Moses was suddenly increased? Not at all. Aaron became a mouth to Moses, but Moses remained the same (How well Moses spoke later on, of course, is another matter). Whenever Moses’ eloquence proved inadequate, he could call on Aaron to speak for him. And this was how he became Moses’ mouth. The eloquence was still in Aaron’s mouth, not in Moses’ mouth. Moses needed Aaron to be his mouth because his own was inadequate. Yet Moses’ mouth did not become activated because he had accepted Aaron to be his mouth.

Thus can we understand how God makes Christ our wisdom. It does not mean that Christ has made us wise; it simply means that recognizing our own foolishness we cease to move ourselves but allow the Lord to be our wisdom. Formerly, whenever there was outside demand, our own life would rise up to react; today when there is such outside demand we know how inadequate we are, and so we let the life of the Lord react instead. Not that we ourselves have then become adequate, but that the Lord comes in to live for us. Not that Moses’ mouth has improved in eloquence, but that Aaron had replaced him as his mouth to speak for him.