First Corinthians 1:29-31 Having, then, everything in Christ, and nothing in man
1 Corinthians 1:29-31 · Mike Doyle · May 10, 2020
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 07
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261918466840

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So, starting today, we've been working our way through the first chapter of 1 Corinthians. And last week, we had gotten down through 27 and 28, and I've got a few comments on that, so I'll read those verses and then we'll get on with 29, 30, and 31. Verse 27 and 28 said, But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. And the base things of the world, and the despised God has chosen the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are. I think in the handout and in this slide, you can see the verses. And there are three sets of who's and why's. in this verse, these verses. One is, who has God chosen? He chose the foolish things of the world.

And why did He do it? This is a purpose clause. This is one of those clauses in Greek that says, well, God has done this, and He did it for a purpose, and let me tell you what the purpose is. The purpose is to shame the wise. And then He says, God has chosen the weak things of the world. Again, what was the purpose? to shame the strong. And God has chosen the base things of the world, and what was the purpose in doing that? To nullify the things that are.

What I find interesting is that in all of God's doing, you find that God does not have to rely in any sense on what man has done or what man is doing in order to accomplish his purposes. And he uses what we in the world would consider to be something weak in order to accomplish his purpose. What's interesting about this, the very next verse says to us in verse 29 why he really did this. and he did it for a really kind of a cool reason and the reason in the verses is that no man may boast before God that's why he did it it shows us this real simple reason God will not tolerate human self-centered boasting about anything he just won't tolerate it and for that reason he chooses those who have nothing to be the ones that do the boasting. So, what is God's desire then? God's desire is for man to find all of his worth in the Lord Jesus Christ. All of it.

So, now, verse 30. And this is the verse we're going to concentrate on today. It's, by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus. who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Now, interesting the way the Greek puts this together. By his doing, you are in Christ Jesus. The by his doing is out of, as a source. The word ek means that out of the source of God, I am in Christ. His source, not mine.

And he is the one who has effectuated this entire thing. And he's going to talk about in a minute what I would describe as the believer's dignity. It's not derived from any earthly position, not at all. And it doesn't matter how well-educated a person is or how wealthy they are or what your lineage is or what your accomplishments are. God did all of this. And He did it without taking into consideration what we may have accomplished or who we came from or anything like that.

The second part of this I want you to look at is the word you. And I've highlighted it in blue. It's an emphatic personal pronoun. So it should be stressed in other words if you were to read this you would say Paul points out that you as Believers are different from all others from everybody else you're different you and the focus is on you and You are different and the question is why?

What makes us different? And the answer is real simple. It's because we're in Christ Jesus. That's what makes us different. That's what makes us different from all other human beings. Now, the next slide talks about personal worth. Christ, who became unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification.

And I took some information this week out of the None But the Hungry Hearts of Miles Stanford because it was so apropos for what these verses are. In One Hungry Heart on the 8th, it quotes this same verse. It says, Of God are you in Christ Jesus, or by His doing are you in Christ Jesus. It is all the work of God to place us there. And He has done it. And the exhortation is, now that he's done it, stay there. Don't move. Stay there. Don't be moved back into the ground of the old nature.

Never look at yourselves or ourselves as though we were not in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Never consider yourself as a believer not to be in Christ. Look at him and say to yourself, or see yourself as a new creation in Christ Jesus and all that goes with that. You look at Him as the very source of the Christian life.

So the exhortation is to abide in Him. Stay where you are. Rest in the fact that God has placed you in eternal union with His Son and let the Holy Spirit take care of His work in you. It is for Him, the Spirit of God, to make good the glorious promise that sin shall not have any dominion over you anymore. It's up to Him to do that. You just need to trust Him to do it. Just trust Him. So, the crowning purpose, I think, of God is His own honor and His own glory. And we believers are the vessels who have been chosen to reflect it. As you start to Take some time in a verse like this. What you discover is all of what God has done. And we find out that Christ is our very position.

He's everything before the Father and reality is before the Father. We're never going to be able to stand before the Father in prayer and fellowship because we somehow got fit in ourselves, that we did enough praying and enough spiritual push-ups or enough of this or enough of that in order to have a standing before the Father. We have come to see that we are in His presence because we have a position in His Son, and that's the whole reason that we're there. It's His doing.

And so the ground upon which the Father deals with us in our standing before the Father is grace alone. He deals with us only by grace and so we were talking about this a little bit in Sunday school. It's so important for us as believers to get a handle on what grace is and how it functions and how God deals with us. He deals with us with unmerited and unlimited blessing and it's all based on what Christ has done on the cross. That's the only way He deals with us. You know, if you're an Old Testament scholar, you recognize that God deals with man a lot of times based on His own behavior and His own pattern.

That isn't the way grace functions. Grace always functions from the standpoint of the completed work of Christ, and it's all about blessing. And it's all about unlimited and unmerited blessing, 24-7. Every blessing we receive of Him as a child is undeserved. If you can go through your mind and spend a lot of time that you actually did something that God says, okay, you deserve my blessing, then write it down because I want to see it. Everything that we have in Christ was undeserved. Everything.

In all our spiritual existence, we are debtors, debtors to the rich, sovereign, and free grace of our Father. It's a wonderful place to be in and a wonderful attitude to have that I do live under grace. I am under grace. So what is it that we're privileged to enjoy on that ground when we enter into the grace in which we stand? What do you get to enjoy there? What is so valuable about being there? When we have this new position, the position in the glorified Lord Jesus Christ, the believer's position is all by His doing. He did it all and we're there. So He sets before us the idea that through the cross the flesh has been set aside and the believer's origin and position is totally changed. Number one, the believer is of God. You came from Him.

It's far greater to be of God than it is to be high-born, or born into a royal family, or born wealthy, or educated wise. It's really, really a big deal to be of God. And yet more than that, not only are we of God, but we are in Christ. He's the origin of God, is the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're in Him. And that entitles us, or I shouldn't say entitled, we are in a totally new position now before the God of the universe that we weren't in before. We are in Christ Jesus. The emphasis is affirming as those but of Him. You are in Christ Jesus. I'm in Christ Jesus.

There's a vast change when that happens. There's a change of nature, there's a change of position, and there's a change of relationships for everybody who's in Christ. How blessed for those who are at one time in the world before Christ they were wretched. In the world and according to the flesh and were presented without disguise, without cover-up.

That's really what we were in Adam. And the stability and source, the character of this blessedness is Christ Himself. He's the character of it. Of God whose grace was given to us, have our being in Christ. We don't have any other being before God other than in Christ. He was made unto us wisdom. Here is the reality. And this is a blessing that is so, you can't calculate how great a blessing this is. We're not only pardoned, but we are made righteous. It is not merely what we have done, but it is secured by what He is.

As He is, and 1 John 4.17 says, as He is, So are we in the world. So if you want to find out who you are before Christ, find out who Christ is. Spend some time finding out what He is and who He is. Believers should never lose sight of the fundamental truth that the basis of our fellowship with our Father is not our own personal holiness. It is what the Lord Jesus is to us. Our official position before the Father and what the Lord Jesus is for us. That's our position. He is the Lord, our righteousness. And it's the foundation and the source of everything of walk as well as position.

And that came from a quote. And you know a lot of the Brethren, if you study the Brethren, they just put their initials after what they say. They don't tell you what their names are. That quote came from a man named E.H. E.H. Here's a problem we have, though, in everyday living.

We look to get victory in order to get peace. We feel like if we can get victory, we'll get peace. But it is peace already made by the Lord Jesus Christ. He's already done it in his work. And the risen life that is ours, it's all done. We're going to have plenty of conflicts, there's no question about that. But we know that the Father is for us, and really, John Darby says, that's what really makes the difference. Really makes the difference. Again, to repeat this verse.

Of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God has made unto us righteousness. So, that led to a question in my mind. How did he do it? How did he make me and put me in this position and it was all done through what we call the identification truths for both time and eternity when the Lord said in John 17 in the prayer to his father and this is life eternal that you might know the only true God and Jesus Christ what was the deal there the deal was is that divine grace is not only has everything according to the heart of God been secured to his heart to his satisfaction for me through the death and resurrection of Christ, but I as a child of Adam should be not only in peace with God where I was under His judgment, but that I am transferred from Adam to Christ and I am to have Christ formed in me now. Think about this.

We spent a lot of time in our church studying Romans chapter 6, because it is the first time we get the information from God to us that we were crucified with Christ. And it's a really difficult thing to get your arms around when you first encounter these verses, but then you begin to understand death means separation.

So God included me in Christ on that cross. He separated me from my position in Adam. Everything that was unpleasing to Him, He took me out of in the cross of Christ. And then He placed me or positioned me in Christ. That's where I get the new origin. I have been born anew into the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. A new and divine origin. People can say to you, well, where do you come from? A believer can say, I come from heaven. I come from Christ. That's where I come from. That's my whole lineage and heritage. I'm a new creation, but I'm still living on the earth. I'm not a child of Adam anymore. I'm now a son of God.

And I live by grace, and I live by the beauty of Christ himself. And I am to be led in his power to stand for him here as a new creation in Christ. Once I understand my position, then I begin to realize, wow, you know, I still see an awful lot of remnants of who I used to be in Adam, but God has a process that we all are involved in, and it's laid out fairly succinctly, which we'll see maybe a year down the road.

In 2 Corinthians 3.18, where he says, Beholding is in a mirror the glory of the Lord. The beholding is what I do. The mirror is the Word of God, and I begin to find out all of these wonderful truths. And through those truths, I get to behold the person of Christ. And that has an effect, a transformation on me. I'm transformed into His very image. I already have the life. I already have the standing.

But God is about manifesting that glory by His Spirit out and through every one of us believers to the world. That's how the world knows that the Father sent the Son. A little more from another hungry heart. J.B. Stoney, who really understands the confirmation process, says, he said, I used to study this passage and that passage to obtain guidance and light. And we all do that and have done that.

I see now that if I were really near Him, beholding His glory, if I was really near the Lord Jesus Christ, beholding His glory, I should be transformed. I should come from Him so impressed with Him that His interest would, as it were, naturally control me. Think about what's going on there. Have the privilege because I'm in Christ and because I have his word and because the Spirit is in me To behold him in his word Personally the glorified Christ and that has such an effect on me over time That it naturally begins to control me not like law would but by grace and as he said I should so be transformed so impressed with him that and his interest that they would naturally control me. That's how grace works. It doesn't work based on a law system. It works that way. Then he says, when the heart has found its rest and satisfaction in him, it can turn to him naturally and continually in every single circumstance. Boy, what a privilege. When in Colossians 3-2 we are told, set your affection on things above and not on things of the earth. What an incredible privilege that is that we can do that.

We don't stand before God in the condition or position of Adam any longer. We don't. Away from God or under judgment. You talk about social distancing. We are so far separated from God in Adam. And then once we come into Christ, we somehow think we've got to wear a mask. No, we don't.

We can behold Him face to face. We can look at His face reflectively right in the Word of God. We stand before God now face to face. In Christ is all the acceptance that God ever wanted from a man, and He placed us in Him so that we would be suited out to be with him in heaven for all eternity.

And you know what? This is not all. He says, wisdom, Christ has made wisdom to us from God. And wisdom is the first character here. And it is now answered for the believer in Christ, Christ crucified. We alone. Who alone? has put everyone and everything in its true place. And this is the point of wisdom to see.

Philosophy left God out. It was necessarily all wrong. You leave God out of anything and it's wrong. If it tried to bring Him in, it subjected Him to man's mind and made matters, if possible, worse. In other words, if they try to bring him in, they're always going to bring him in under them, so that the wisdom of God, you can see the wisdom of God operating, and that's why it looks, to a believer, the wisdom of man looks like foolishness. Well, God did it that way.

Christ has made unto us wisdom. We do not need to turn for wisdom to philosophy, to wise men, or to our own fancied wisdom. Why? Because we have Christ. We have Him. Having Christ, we see at once what all the wisdom of the world could never teach us. Christ on the cross has fully shown us our ruin and made God known to us in His love. In Christ we see the wisdom of God in meeting our ruin and fulfilling God's purpose. Our being in Christ Jesus is God's purpose.

It was His purpose. He wanted to do this. I would have never come up with a plan like that. I would have, in Adam, figured out a way to how to get God underneath me. But God's wisdom was, and His purpose, was to put me in Christ. The next thing is that He further has made us His righteousness.

2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He made Him who knew no sin, Him is the Lord Jesus Christ, to be this thing called sin for us. Why did He do it? So that we might become, now listen to this part, the righteousness of God in Him. It's God's righteousness and we have it because we're in Him. He didn't take some of His righteousness and send it over to me. What He did was, is He took me through the cross, He put me in Christ, and His righteousness is now my righteousness.

My standing, my right before God, is exactly what the Lord Jesus is, because I'm in Him. We don't have any righteousness when you really look at it in ourselves. And you know what? We didn't really care before we were saved. God's righteousness is seen in justifying us consistently with himself through the death of Christ. Everything he did was consistent with who he is. If we want to know what righteousness is and how perfectly it suits us for glory, then we don't need to look to man or at ourselves, but look to Christ. it is set forth in Christ in glory. He is everything that God ever wanted from a man and then some. The righteousness is God's, though it is Christ's work alone which could have made it not condemn but justify us." A couple of verses.

Philippians 3.9 tells us, and may we be found in him Paul says this, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. I trust him. In virtue of the cross, God is consistent with himself in justifying us both freely and righteously.

Therefore, we should not be in bondage to sin anymore. For he who has died is freed from sin. The Lord Jesus is freed from sin, because he was made sin for us. And that applies to every single soul that's in Christ Jesus. We're all justified. We're released from the power of sin, according to Romans 6-7. And now we're under grace. We live under grace. It doesn't demand righteousness of us, for the Lord Jesus Christ was made unto us righteousness. It's already there. It's not demanded because we already have it. The next thing this verse says is that Christ is also made unto us sanctification.

He is the measure of or the pattern of or the power for sanctification. What does sanctification mean? It means to be set apart to God. It just means set apart. God is set apart unto himself. He's righteous. He's holy. And he set apart. Now what did he do? He didn't lower his standard in order to include us in. He put us in Christ to raise us up to his standard and brought us and set us apart. Set us apart.

The Spirit of God is the agent for this and the holiness is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So we read elsewhere that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. There's freedom. Yes, there is bondage where the law rules, but we are not under law, but we are under grace.

Another quote from the Hungry Heart this week, using the same verse of 1 Corinthians 1.30, if we keep in mind that the Lord Jesus is our sanctification, the seemingly difficult subject will clearly unfold to us day by day. The true Scriptural means of sanctification is that you are set apart to God. It is not at all a question of whether there is evil in our flesh, for there is a great deal. Why that is all the old man is made of. But this verse says that we are sanctified. Sanctification has nothing to do with the extinction of the evil flesh.

That was an idea begun a long time ago and practiced through a lot of ascetics and French and Dutch and all the way down, John Wesley, all the way down to today. The Christian life is nothing short than the life of the Lord Jesus. It is His life reproduced in us that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our flesh. The problem is that the concept most religious people have about sanctification is that every area of my life must be holy. But that really isn't holiness. That's the fruit of holiness. Holiness, like everything else, is a person. It's the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

We think that when we're conscious of the fact that we're prideful, we fancy that humility will meet our need. It isn't humility that meets our need. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who meets our need. He's the one who's humble. He's the answer to every need we will ever have. The Father will not give us humility or patience or love as separate gifts of grace. He's given us the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we just trust Him to live out His life in us, He'll humble. We will be humble.

We will be patient. and loving and everything else that we need. The greatest part of all of this is this incredible opportunity and privilege we have to just behold the glory of the Lord Jesus and that results in a conformity to His image so that humility and patience and love and all of those things are part of who He is and that life begins to be manifested in us.

The last thing is redemption. This is a really interesting word. It means to buy back out of the marketplace. But redemption is not just merely the forgiveness of sins. It's a complete deliverance from the effects of sin in our bodies for which we wait.

We talked in Sunday School about waiting, the hope that's in us. We're waiting for these new bodies. We're waiting to be with the Lord Jesus. We're absolutely certain that that's all coming. They're facts that are going to happen. We have been set free from all of the effects of sin. All of them. And we see that this rejection is set forth in Christ. Again, it comes right back to Him. We have it now in Christ, our head. But we wait for it to be manifested in ourselves.

You might spend time in Romans 8.23, Ephesians 1.14, and 4.30.

So, in closing up then, having then everything in Christ, and really nothing in man as such, the last verse says, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. The cross, the preaching of the cross, the call of God, our position in Christ before God entirely shuts out the flesh, entirely sets out the flesh. Do religious souls call on us to be aware of presumption? Have you ever had somebody say, well, you're kind of presumptuous in thinking that you're holy or you're righteous or you're redeemed.

The emphasis is on the Lord's servant. What we have done is to focus on what the Lord himself has done, providing the wisdom and the power of God. Paul says that this is on the strength, he uses on the strength of Jeremiah the prophet, who calls on believers who boast to boast in Jehovah.

It is therefore not rash nor wrong, but it's a blessed boast. I think that as we grow in Christ and we begin to enter into all that Christ is, He's the only one you boast about and you find yourself that you can't stop boasting about Him. We owe it to Him. He deserves it. So, I would say this in closing. How complete the blessing Christ has made unto us. And what a joy it is that not only that we should boast in Him who has so ordered it to be that way, and that He Himself has been given to us. So let's close.

I pray today that we can enter more fully into all that the Lord Jesus is, all that he has been made unto us, and that we can just settle down and just function and rest in who he is and who he has been made to us. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.