Rest in Jesus as Your Wisdom

According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, Christ has become wisdom for you:

“But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.’”

During the time of Jesus’s ministry, He was known as a prophet. It was His work, as a prophet, to reveal God. When He healed, He revealed God’s healing power. When He taught, He revealed God’s wisdom.

Of course, He also prophesied. He spoke of future events and revealed the secrets of people’s hearts. But those were only some of the ways He revealed God. In reality, everything He did was some kind of revelation about God. In that sense, He was the ultimate prophet.

Now that Christ’s work of redemption is accomplished, and He is more famous for other things, it is easy to overlook that He is still a prophet. He still reveals God’s wisdom to you and for you.

More than that, He became wisdom for you. You can now rest in Him as your wisdom.

When God created the old creation, He began by saying, “Let there be light.” In the new creation, He says, “Let there be wisdom.” The wisdom revealed in Christ is the light of the new creation. If anyone is in Christ, the spiritual lights have come on within.

Christ is still your Revealer. He makes His Father known to you. And, as you rest in Him, He continues to give you wisdom as you need it.

Every gift from God comes through Christ and leads to closer fellowship and deeper rest in Him. God meets your immediate needs as He meets your ultimate need: Christ.

Do you want spiritual revelation? Rest in Jesus. He will make you spiritually wise beyond your expectations.

But you must be content to receive the wisdom that is unspeakable. When God gives you wisdom, you might not be able to put it into words—at least not right away.

Here is what Andrew Murray said about this wisdom: “You may not be able to grasp it with the understanding, or to express it in words; but the knowledge which is deeper than thoughts or words will be given—the knowing of God which comes of being known of Him.”

This inexpressible wisdom will test your motives. Do you want wisdom and revelation to be able to impress others? You can’t do it without words. Do you want to reassure yourself that you are wise? You won’t be able to articulate this wisdom even to yourself.

You should work to articulate it, of course. Labor to express what Christ reveals to you in fellowship with Him. But by the time you have done the work of putting that wisdom into words, that wisdom will have done its work on you. You won’t be interested in impressing others, or even reassuring yourself.

And you won’t be content with just the outward form of knowledge.

The natural mind seeks knowledge, but is often content with no more than an empty shell. The apostle Paul said, in Romans 2:20, that the unbelieving Jews had “the form of knowledge and truth in the law.” Their problem was that this was all they had: outward form.

Yet some people are content with just this. It’s all they seek and all they want.

God, however, is not content to give an empty shell of knowledge. Even before God gives knowledge, He gives what Andrew Murray called “the thing itself.”

“The soul,” said Murray, “satisfies itself with thoughts which are but the forms and images of truth, without receiving the truth itself in its power. God’s way is ever first to give us, even though it be but as a seed, the thing itself, the life and power, and then the knowledge.”

As you rest in Jesus, you will live out the wisdom He reveals to you. You won’t do this by thinking it out first. Your thoughts will come later, and they will never match the fullness of the thing itself.

When your life in Christ is precious to you, you will preserve and protect it, even doing what the mind doesn’t understand at first.

Christ, your wisdom, will guide you by what Murray called “a secret spiritual instinct.” Here’s how he explained it:

“The life you have in Christ is a thing of infinite sacredness, far too high and holy for you to know how to act it out. It is He alone who can guide you, as by a secret spiritual instinct, to know what is becoming your dignity as a child of God, what will help and what will hinder your inner life, and specially your abiding in Him.”

Study the Bible. It does indeed contain “the form of knowledge and truth.” Paul was not denying this in Romans 2:20. This can help people live better lives, even if they never get beyond the outward form. But you are not on the outside. You are in Christ. You are in Wisdom. Remember this as you study.

But Christ is not wisdom for you only when you study the Bible. As your wisdom, Christ reaches into your daily life.

Don’t turn this into a burden by overthinking it. Just know that it will happen.

The care of your body, the ordering of your day, the routine decisions of life—God cares about all of this. He has placed you into a Wisdom that has something to say about all of this.

Again, don’t overthink it, but follow the secret spiritual instinct that values Christ and His life above all. This will clear your mind and simplify your intentions.

Wisdom will guide you into unknown works—unknown to you, that is, but known and prepared ahead of time by God. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

There is great joy in finding and doing what you were created to do. And that is true for the small works and well as the big ones. This is one of the benefits of living your life from a place of rest in Jesus.

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This excerpt is from: Find Your Place of Rest in Jesus – An Adaptation of Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ