The wisdom of God is a wonderful thing. It must put things in their place, or it is not wisdom. That the cross does. We are sinners. We must come as such. All then is changed. Yet all is manifested, what sin is and what holiness, what hatred and what love, what man, what God, what the world and its prince; but this by the by. We come as sinners, and love meets us there. So Christ always drew out what people were, and met them divinely. For surely here is wisdom too. Christ in life and in death is God suiting Himself to man and drawing man to Himself.
Now, philosophy assumed the competency of man, and to make even God the subject matter of its judgment and thoughts. This was necessarily false. It either left God out, and all was clearly wrong; or it brought God in, and it was worse, because God and man were both out of their place. They are in it at the cross. But there, further, the saint becomes nothing, and God—Christ—all. This is just right and the very fullness of blessing—to have done with self and have the fullness of God to dwell in and enjoy. And here is the daily process. It is done completely in principle at the cross; it is wrought out practically by all the discipline of God. But then, when we have got this place of nothingness of self, there is divine wisdom unfolded to us.
All things were made by Christ and for Christ. All things are to be gathered together in one in Him, and to be reconciled all to the eternal fullness of God—all that is in heaven or on earth. The result is purposed before the foundation of the world; but in the world, in the creature, responsibility has come in. We are guilty and all is defiled.
But it was all ordained before the world to our glory. Christ has perfectly glorified God morally, and brought out what He is as nothing else could have done. Redemption and grace have a glory, and that through perfect separation from evil, and perfect obedience of man in the midst of evil, which is all its own. As it is done for us we have a part in the glory which belongs to it—the glory of God; we are the firstfruits of it, the inner circle round the blessed and glorious center in which God is displayed, even Christ. Then all things will be gathered round as a redeemed and reconciled creation to the praise of His glory, the glorious result of the hidden wisdom ordained before the world to our glory. Jesus Christ will be displayed as the power as well as the wisdom of God.
Finally, the great center, the moral center, is the cross—redemption; where (in the weakness of the creature and the fullest effort of the power of evil, and display of evil and its present effect—death) good triumphed. Its weakness was stronger than the power of what was against it. It was really divine power, but in the weakness of the creature—at least of what was of the creature though divinely, for creature it could not be rightly called. Death was the end of the creature in itself, the birth-place of the new creation as leaving the old wholly behind. I speak of its effect; for none but a divine person could have done it. It is Christ, and He crucified, in the lowest place the creature, man, can be brought to, but Christ the wisdom of God and the power of God. Then we can have a place in the glory itself—the glory of God, because He is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption—not power. We are brought before God, and intelligently according to what God is. We are always dependent and subject: such only is our place as really with God, and our blessedness. To be out of that place is perfect and everlasting misery. The pretension to power is man's folly in assumed independence, which is sin. We are of God. This is our nature and actual condition in Christ Jesus, and He is of God wisdom to us and righteousness, &c., so that we glory in the Lord. Power remains in His hand. We may and shall be instruments of it hereafter, and spiritually may be vessels of it now, as emptied of self.
The great point is the place wisdom has, subjection and nothingness, beginning with the cross for the sinner, which is deliverance, Christ being all. We know perfect love. We know the counsels and purpose of God; we have Christ's mind; but we are as soldiers in an army who do not know the bearing of each act in carrying out the plan in presence of the enemy. Marching right and left is all they have to do, and perfect wisdom is in each step of obedience, and inward wisdom in restoration. For each of us is thus in his place with God, and in motive; for it is love to the commander and confidence in him, as well as obedience. All thus becomes right.
The cross is the end of flesh and of the world—death to the one, the deepest possible shame and ignominy to the other. Flesh is wholly set aside, and now folly is written on its wisdom. No flesh is to glory in His presence. He that glories is to glory in the Lord. Flesh cannot glory before Him. We are to glory in Him. But then the whole being of man in the flesh, morally speaking, has ceased for the Christian. Of Him (God) are ye in Christ Jesus. And Christ Jesus is made to us wisdom from God (for this is the main subject here), and then righteousness, sanctification, and final deliverance or redemption. We glory thus in Him.
This gives a peculiar place to men, which does not hold with angels. Man—the old thing—is entirely done away with, not restored or remedied and set up again. God is substituted for it: often we see the Second man, Christ, taking the place of the first; but here God Himself and what is of Him. We are of God in Christ Jesus; and Christ of God is made unto us wisdom, &c. What is in contrast with flesh is not another kind of man, but what is of God Himself: so all that constitutes our position and the power of it. Angels have been kept in their first estate: man lost his as did the fallen angels. But as to man this is wholly set aside: death comes in Christ, and it is ended. And what takes its place? “We are of God,” and all our title and place is in Christ who of God is for us all we are before God.
The whole thing is new. (Chap. 2) There is a purpose of God for our glory, a purpose before the world. The highest in this world knew nothing of it; if they had, they would not have crucified the head of it. This is revealed to us by the Spirit. Man's heart has not conceived it; but God's heart has revealed it, and this is the Spirit the apostle had, as we too have in our place. Then the same Spirit gave the words which were the medium of communication; and the same Spirit enables us to receive it. No one can instruct the Lord; but we have the mind (νοῦν) of Christ, in whom all this wisdom is.
So it is a wholly new sphere and form of wisdom which is in this purpose of God, the hidden wisdom, before this world of responsibility, and failure, and sorrow. But note: it was the princes of this world not knowing it, which, as to means, brought about that on which its accomplishment is founded, the cross.
Observe too that a positive fresh revelation is in question, not anything discoverable by man's mind. A man's spirit, and none else, knows what is in him. God's Spirit, and none else, knows what is in His mind, even this purpose which was before man or the world existed. And it is revealed and communicated, not by man's wisdom, or in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches.