Christ Our All in All

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 25, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 42.

Christ Our All in All

THE apostle Paul declares of Jesus Christ that He “was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” 1 Cor. 1: 30, 31, Revised Version.

Our Wisdom

“Wisdom” is from the Greek word sophia, defined by Greenfield to mean “knowledge, intelligence, illumination of mind; wisdom as exercised in forming the best plans and in the selection of the best means; wisdom, prudence, discretion.” Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1: 24), the One who inspired the prophets of old (Luke 11: 49). In Him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Col. 2: 3. He possesses all knowledge; He knows how to use the best means in the best way for the best purpose. And He is all this for the children of men. Man does not know himself. He fails in the use of the best means for the best purposes in the commonest affairs of every-day life. How much more does he not know the way to God! But Christ knows it. He knows all the way, the trials, the conflicts, the difficulties, the besetments, the opposition; and He knows how to use them all — favorable and unfavorable — for the best and greatest good involved. This all-wisdom will be granted to every one who will connect with Christ. It is pledged for us. God gave it to us in giving Christ. Ask Him; He will not upbraid, but will give liberally. Wisdom waits for the humble, in God’s Word. “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”

Our Righteousness

Man is a sinner. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Being a sinner, he is doomed to die; for “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” and “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Sin is the transgression of the law. God’s law condemns man because he has broken it. It demands perfect righteousness, even the righteousness of God. But “who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” Even man’s best deeds, his “righteousnesses, are as filthy rags.” He has not kept the law, he can not keep it. But Jesus Christ kept it in all its perfection. He “did no sin.” And He takes His perfect life of obedience to God’s law, and offers it, yea, imputes it, to every one who will choose Him and renounce sin. His righteousness becomes our righteousness; His life of obedience, our life. The law in us as sinners was a law of sin and death, because we transgressed it. In Him it was a law of righteousness and life, because He lived it perfectly; and when we come to Him by simple faith, He takes the law lived in Christ’s life and puts it upon us. This is “the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference.” “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [God’s holy law lived by Christ] hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” This is the righteousness which we receive through Christ, and to its genuineness the law bears witness. Rom. 3: 21. This is what Jesus desires to be to every one of us — “the Lord our Righteousness.” Will you not let Him? In His righteousness is life — eternal life.

Our Sanctification

“Sanctification” means a separation, a setting apart. Christ calls us out from the world. He was in the world, yet not of the world, for our sakes; and He says to His disciples, “Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” Again, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Christ separates through His truth. Thus He prays for His disciples, “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.” “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” It is God’s Word which points out sin by showing the better way, which pierces the heart by its wondrous truths, which gives power to renounce sin, which gives the life of Christ’s righteousness, which separates the soul from sin and separates it unto God, which sets apart from the world and sets apart to God’s service in Christ Jesus. His is the Word of truth and power; His is the righteousness; His is the holiness. Sanctified through the truth are those who are Christ’s, sanctified by the Spirit, the power in the Word, sanctified by Christ Jesus, who of God is made our sanctification. Christians are sanctified, but only in Christ.

Our Redemption

“Redemption” means purchase, release, deliverance. Christ is our redemption. He bought us with His own life; and every one who acknowledges that purchase price by yielding to Him, He will by His own power deliver from the power of sin and death to eternal life and immortal glory. He delivers us here from the sin of the past; He breaks its yoke from off our neck, opens its prison-house, and makes us free; and, if faithful to the end, He will deliver our bodies from the power of mortality and the grave at His soon coming.

Christ Is Our All in All

We are nothing; He is everything. We are the naughts, the zeros, the ciphers; He is the digit, the significant figure. But He offers us all if we will but yield to come into right relations to Him, if we will but choose Him. He then places our nothingness on the right side of His own intrinsic worth and wholeness, and, lo, in Him we are multiplied as tho we were units! The following figure represents us of ourselves: 0 — we are nothing. The following represents Christ to the extent of all infinity of vastness: 1 — He is everything. The union of the two makes each one of us, in Christ: 10 — ten units from nothing, ten tens, ten millions if need be, for He is infinite. It is all of HIM, that “he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”