If philosophy left God out, it was necessarily all wrong; if it assayed to bring Him in, it subjected Him to man's mind, and this made matters, if possible, worse. Christ revealed God and blessed man, and this not by glossing over his state and sins but by suffering for them on the cross, so that God was glorified as much about evil in His death as about good in His life. He was thus made unto us wisdom from God. Not merely was the world's wisdom and flesh's wisdom set aside, but God's wisdom shown and given us in Him.

Nevertheless wisdom was not our sole want, greatly as it was needed — wisdom to its end, and not its beginning only in God's fear. The sinner has no righteousness for God; but God has for him, and this in Christ, yea, Christ Himself, for He it is who was so made to us, not wisdom alone from God, but righteousness. Man is thus set aside root and branch; God takes His place and gives all we lack in Christ. He had amply tested man's efforts under His law, which the Jew twisted to make up a hollow appearance, instead of submitting to learn by it his own insufficiency and sin.

But Christ is not more surely God's wisdom than He is God's righteousness, and made this to us; for by His death God is just and can justify the believer in Jesus. Man — the believer alone truly and fully — owns himself as a sinner. The righteousness is God's, though it is Christ's work alone which could have made it not condemn but justify us. In virtue of the cross God is consistent with Himself in justifying us both freely and righteously.

Further, Christ was made to us "sanctification." The Greek wallowed in sin, however he might sentimentalize; the Jew boasted in the law, but broke it. Christ is the measure and means and pattern of holiness to the Christian; no doubt the Spirit is the agent, and He works by keeping not Himself but Christ before us. So we read elsewhere that, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, as there is bondage where the law rules. But we are not under law but under grace. Nor is this all; but we all beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face are changed according to the same image from glory unto glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.

Finally, He was made to us "redemption," by which, as the order clearly shows, is meant not the forgiveness of sins which we have, but that complete deliverance from the effects of sin in our bodies which we await at the coming of our Lord Jesus. (See Romans 8:23; Ephesians 1:14; Ephesians 4:30.)

How complete the blessing Christ has been made to us! And what a joy that we not only may but ought to boast in Him who has so ordered and given to us! Do pious souls call on us to beware of presumption? It is the apostle, and this on the strength of Jeremiah the prophet (compare Jeremiah 9:23-24), who calls on him that boasts to boast in Jehovah. It is therefore not rash nor wrong, but a hallowed boast. We owe it to Him, and He deserves it of us.