I skipped this verse on my way through the first chapter because I did not feel prepared to comment on it then. I was surprised by it because it seemed too theologically deep for Christians who were described by Paul as infants in Christ. If anything, it reminds us that it is probable that there were members of the Corinthian church who were not spiritually immature. It is very easy to lump all of them into a group and then give them a blanket label rather than considering the likely diversity of the members’ spiritual states.
Here is the text from the NASB:
“But by His [God's] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption”
There is significant depth in this verse due to the usage of such terms as righteousness, sanctification and redemption. The verse also sparks questions like what does it mean to be “in Christ Jesus” or what does it mean that Christ became wisdom for us. Now the first question may not seem like much to someone who grew up in a church and knows “church language”, but to many others it is probably difficult to define what is meant by being in Christ. The second question can only be understood within the context of the first few chapters of this letter alongside the culture of Corinth. I prefer to write about the three terms I mentioned earlier so I will leave these questions unanswered here.
Later in the letter (chapter 10) we see that Paul assumes the Corinthians were familiar with what we call the Old Testament (more specifically, Paul assumed knowledge of the Pentateuch). I think we can argue that the Corinthians’ understanding of these terms was derived from the Old Testament — even those who were coming from pagan backgrounds. Their idea of redemption would be based on God's actions to bring Israel out of slavery in Egypt and the commemoration of that event through Passover. The Israelites also offered sacrifices to redeem the firstborn among them. Righteousness would be the result of keeping the moral law — the Ten Commandments being the underpinning of the law. Sanctification would refer to following the ceremonial law — regulations concerning food, sacrifices, and other portions of daily life. Israel was to set herself apart from the other nations by following these ceremonial laws. She was to make herself holy.
A more challenging step is understanding what it means for Christ to become righteousness for us, to become sanctification, to become redemption. This is the language of imputation. In fact, it is the plainest description of imputation in the Bible. We do not often think about positional sanctification (at least I don’t) but rather focus on progressive sanctification. It is there though. Hebrews 10 is another place to find references to the believer being declared holy through the sacrifice of Christ. Also, without imputed sanctification, how else could Paul have referred to the Corinthians as saints (1 Cor. 1:2) given their struggles?
Paul is not done writing about topics like justification and redemption after this short mention in chapter one. In chapter six, he includes what is almost an echo of this verse: “but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” It fascinates me how Paul included this type of teaching in a letter that dealt with all of the serious problems happening within the Corinthian church.
Comments
Well that is a lot longer than I was intending. I even cut a lot out. It is not even anything I would present to my Sunday school class due to the technical language. Those are great terms in that they contain so much meaning - if you are familiar with them. Otherwise, they are meaningless and actually hinder understanding.
I tried using the "continued" feature. If anyone dislikes that let me know.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Sunday, October 2, 2005
I generally don't mind articles that are "continued". However, your RSS feed doesn't give any indication that there is more to the post.
Posted by: Jeremy Stein on Monday, October 3, 2005
I fixed this (I think) by putting the entire post in the rss feed while keeping the web version the same.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Monday, October 3, 2005