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| Christ as Wisdom and Sanctification and Redemption.
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39. Christ as
Wisdom and Sanctification and Redemption.
We must not, however, pass over in silence that He is of
right the wisdom of God, and hence is called by that name. For
the wisdom of the God and Father of all things does not apprehend His
substance in mere visions, like the phantasms of human thoughts.
Whoever is able to conceive a bodiless existence of manifold
speculations which extend to the rationale of existing things, living
and, as it were, ensouled, he will see how well the Wisdom of God which
is above every creature speaks of herself, when she says:4633
“God created me the beginning of
His ways, for His works.” By this creating act the whole
creation was enabled to exist, not being unreceptive of that divine
wisdom according to which it was brought into being; for God, according
to the prophet David,4634
made all things in
wisdom. But many things came into being by the help of wisdom,
which do not lay hold of that by which they were created: and few
things indeed there are which lay hold not only of that wisdom which
concerns themselves, but of that
which has to do with many things besides, namely, of Christ who is the
whole of wisdom. But each of the sages, in proportion as he
embraces wisdom, partakes to that extent of Christ, in that He is
wisdom; just as every one who is greatly gifted with power, in
proportion as he has power, in that proportion also has a share in
Christ, inasmuch as He is power. The same is to be thought about
sanctification and redemption; for Jesus Himself is made sanctification
to us and redemption. Each of us is sanctified with that
sanctification, and redeemed with that redemption. Consider,
moreover, if the words “to us,” added by the Apostle, have
any special force. Christ, he says, “was made to us of God,
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption.” In other passages, he speaks about Christ as
being wisdom, without any such qualification, and of His being power,
saying that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, though we
might have conceived that He was not the wisdom of God or the power of
God, absolutely, but only for us. Now, in respect of wisdom and
power, we have both forms of the statement, the relative and the
absolute; but in respect of sanctification and redemption, this is not
the case. Consider, therefore, since4635
“He that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all of
one,” whether the Father is the sanctification of Him who is our
sanctification, as, Christ being our head, God is His head. But
Christ is our redemption because we had become prisoners and needed
ransoming. I do not enquire as to His own redemption, for though
He was tempted in all things as we are, He was without sin, and His
enemies never reduced Him to captivity.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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