Alright brethren, let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. This is what I, best I can recall, this is one of the first passages I remember being able to understand when the Lord began to reveal Christ in me. 1 Corinthians 1 verses 29 through 31. This is why The Lord say through the preaching of Christ and him crucified. Verse 29, that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That according as it is written, he that glorieth Let him glory in the Lord. He begins here and he says, No flesh shall glory in God's presence. What does it mean to glory? It means to boast. It means to brag. No flesh is going to boast and brag about anything that we've done in God's presence. Not one. He said, I am the Lord. That is my name and my glory will I not share with another. Neither give my praise to graven images. That's the offense of the cross. The offense of the cross is that God gets all the glory and salvation beginning to end. Works, no matter what name it goes by. You take all the religions in the world and all the different divisions within each religion, and it all works if it gives man just one thing to do. That's what works is. And the only other religion is true religion, which is the religion of grace. That declares God does the saving beginning to end. No flesh shall glory in His presence. And if it's grace, then it's no more works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace. If it's works, it's no more grace. Otherwise, works are no more works. Everybody sitting here today You're either going to be found trusting in your works and grace won't even enter the picture. Or you're going to be saved by grace and works don't enter the picture. One or the other. One or the other. So how's a sinner made willing to stop boasting in himself in glory in the Lord? He says, of God, are you in Christ Jesus? In eternity, God the Father chose whom He would in Christ And that's how we're in Christ. Of God are you in Christ Jesus. And then in time it says who of God is made unto us. It's God that reveals Christ in us. He's made unto us. Now what he's going to say here is salvation. And this is what I want us to focus on this morning. Everything that he's going to list here that Christ has made unto us, this is salvation. If you have Christ made these things unto you, you've been saved. This is salvation. This is what we have to have to be accepted of God. We're going to look at these four things. He's made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. I realize I have That's a lot. But I'm going to try to be simple. I'm going to try to be very, very simple. First of all, wisdom. Of God is Christ made unto us wisdom. We have some young people here, and you're going to be starting college very soon. You get an education in college, but you're not going to get wisdom in college. You get an education, but you're not going to get wisdom. Christ is wisdom. And get what it says here, Christ is wisdom. And of God is Christ made unto us wisdom. When He makes Christ wisdom to us, that's when we have the mind of the Lord. We have the mind of Christ. I want you to look over at 1 Corinthians 2, look at verse 16. It says, Who hath known the mind of the Lord that Christ may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. What does he mean by that? We have the mind of Christ. Look back up there, 1 Corinthians 2, and look at verse 11. He said, What man knoweth the things of a man? What man knows the mind of a man, save the spirit of that man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now, we have received, we've been given, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. That's what it is when Christ has made wisdom to you. You start hearing Christ. Christ makes His mind known to you. He's the revealer, He's the Word, and He makes God known to you. And it says here, Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches." We're using the Word of God. We're comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. What God said here, what He says here, what He says here. We're not trying to take the fence out and preach it in such a way to try to make you believe something or make you do something. We're just declaring what God says. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that spiritual judgeth, he discerneth. He got spiritual understanding. He discerneth all things. John said, you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things. We know all things that are freely given to us. You know all when you know Christ is all. And he said, That's what he means here when he says, who's known the mind of the Lord? Christ has given us His mind and He's instructing us. And now we know, we know. What did John say? We know the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know Him that is true and we're in Him that's true. This is the true God and eternal life. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Now young people, you go to school, you go to college and get your education, but don't let education get you. This is what Jeremiah said, Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches. Let him that glorieth glory in this. This is what the Lord said. Let him glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me. that I am the Lord, which I exercise lovingkindness and judgment and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord." Now, here's the second thing. This is where it began. Christ's got to be made wisdom to it. We have to be made to sit down and hear Christ speak and learn from Him. Secondly, of God is Christ made unto us righteousness. Some preach righteousness as a doctrine. You know, you gotta believe this about righteousness and that about righteousness. What does this text say right here? It says Christ is righteousness. He's righteousness. The Lord Jesus Christ is righteousness. Look over at Romans 10 in verse 3. Romans 10 verse 3. See, what we're doing right here, we're comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now here in Romans 10, I want you to see what He said. In verse 3, he's talking about the Pharisees. He said, they being ignorant of God's righteousness. Look at that now. Ignorant of God's righteousness. Going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted unto the righteousness of God. And he's going to tell us what the righteousness of God is. He says, for Christ is. Christ is. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. He's the righteousness of God. Look with me over at Romans 5. Romans chapter 5. To be righteous is to be perfect before the law of God. Perfect before the law of God. It's to be as righteous as God is righteous. That's what it is to be righteous. How are sinners made righteous? Look here in Romans 5.19. As by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners." Now let me ask you a question. When Adam sinned in the garden, and then you're born the first time, did God give you the possibility to be made a sinner if you'd just be a sinner? No, He made you a sinner, didn't He? You were made a sinner by somebody else, what they did. By their breaking the law and by you being born of them, you made us in it. How we made righteous. So by the obedience of one, shall many be made righteous. Christ didn't give us a chance to be righteous. By His obedience, He made His people righteous. Romans 3, I want you to go back there one more place. Romans 3. We know, verse 19, we know what things wherever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law. Now listen, if somebody is protesting and saying they want to be under the law, the law only speaks to those who are under the law. You don't want to be under the law. Because those that are under the law, this is what the law says, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested. Being witnessed by the law and the prophets is by the faith of Jesus Christ. It's by His obedience, by His faithfulness, and His righteousness is unto all and upon them that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it has to be this way. Justification has to be through faith only, for there's no difference for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Look down at verse 26. In Christ, by what He did, He manifests the righteousness of God. He showed in Romans 3, 26, Christ declared God's righteousness, that God might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. That's what we see on the cross. We all sin. All God's elect sinned and could not bring forth the righteousness, can't bring forth the righteousness. We had to die because God's just. Well, in Christ we died. God's just. And God justified us in Christ. We're justified in Christ. One time somebody came to the Lord and they said, Master, what's the great commandment in the law? Two tables in the ten laws. There's two tables. There's a whole lot more laws than just ten. But there's two tables. And our Lord said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And He said, the second is like it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. And somebody will start bragging that, well, I've done that. Let me tell you what it takes to do that. Let me tell you the only one that ever did that. The Lord Jesus Christ loved God the Father and He loved His elect perfectly. And you know how He did it? by being made sin for us and bearing the curse for us that he might declare God just and the justifier and might justify all his people and make us the righteousness of God in him. That's the perfect righteous love of the law. Nobody ever fulfilled that but him. That's why he's called the righteousness of God. He's the only one that ever did it. And I pray, I pray the Lord would help you get this. I want you to get this and don't let anybody rob you of this. When He gives us faith to believe Christ, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to us. And let me tell you something, the reason He imputes righteousness to you is because Christ made us righteous by His obedience. He's imputing to you what you've been made by the Lord Jesus Christ. Why won't He impute? He said He will not impute sin to us. Why not? before the law, before God in Christ, you don't have any sin to impute. Christ put it away. What I'm saying to you is God imputes what you've been made by Christ. That's right now. There was a heresy that had begun back in the early church right after Christ rose from the dead called Gnosticism. And a Gnostic said that They said that because all sinners are flesh, the Son of God could not have been made flesh or he'd have been a sinner. So they said it was as if he was made flesh. That's exactly what John was dealing with in his epistle when he said, if any man say that Jesus Christ is not coming to flesh, He's not of God. He's Antichrist. They said he couldn't have come into flesh. It was as if he came into flesh. It was as if he was made under the law. It was as if he was made sin. It was as if he was made a curse. And it's as if you're made righteous. That is not what the Word of God says. The Word of God says it behooved him and all things to be made like unto his brethren. He was made flesh. He was made under the law. He was made sin for us who knew no sin. He was made a curse for us. Now He's made higher than the heavens, and you for whom He died have been made the righteousness of God in Him. So you rejoice. That's the good news. And this is how Paul presented it to her. He said, In that he died, he died unto sin once. And in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon, impute ye yourself also to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. It's done. When Christ said it's finished, that's what he meant. It's finished. All right, here's the next thing in our text. But we come into this world dead in sin. We come into this world dead in sin. Well, Scripture says, of God is Christ made unto us sanctification. Now, here's where there's a whole lot of confusion. People want to say sanctification is by your work. Some brands of religion say sanctification is partly by Christ and partly by you. It's a co-effort between you and Him. It's a synergistic thing that takes place between you and God. What does the Scripture say? Of God is Christ made unto you sanctification. In other places, that same word sanctification is translated holiness. Same thing. Of God is Christ made holiness unto us. What is sanctification? It is to be set apart, separated, and made holy. Christ is made unto us sanctification. He is holiness. Holiness is in Christ and by Christ. In eternity, God the Father sanctified us when He chose His people in Christ. Everything's in Christ. Now watch this. He sanctified us when He chose us in Christ and He declared us holy. You remember whenever the Lord gave the pattern for the tabernacle and He said, He told them these certain vessels, He said, you're going to set them apart and they're holy. They're for my use. That's what God did for us in eternity. He set His people apart in Christ and said, now these are mine. They're sanctified. They're set apart in Christ. And it says in Ephesians 1-4, according as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Before He made a grain of sand, we was holy in Christ, separated, sanctified in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Lord Jesus came and He sanctified all those God the Father trusted to Him. He sanctified us by His will and by His Word. Hebrews 10, 9 says, Christ said, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. We couldn't do it. Not in the perfect righteousness and holiness God required. We couldn't. He said, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. And then He says, the which will, we are sanctified by that one offering Christ made. For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." Don't you love that? Perfected forever? I guarantee you, as much as we delight in it and as good as it sounds, we ain't entered into the half of what that means. Complete in Christ. And then in the new birth, a new holy man is created within us in the image of Christ our holiness when Christ is formed in us. And Christ is the holiness of the new man. You know, when you were conceived of Adam's corrupt seed, you didn't have to do anything to be a sinner. You were conceived in sin. By conception, you were a sinner. When you're born again of the incorruptible seed, when Christ is formed, you don't have to do anything to be made holy. That new man's holy. He's holy. And he's one with Christ. That's why the new man's holy. He that's joined unto the Lord is one spirit. It says, both he that sanctifies us and they who are sanctified for all of one, for which cause He's not ashamed to call them brethren." Our Lord is not ashamed to own us as His brethren because He made us holy. Colossians 3.10 says, you've put on the new man, now listen to this, you've put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Christ that created him. And there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free. See, those are all the things that when we were just in our flesh, those are the things we used to try to exalt ourselves over others, sanctify ourselves and say we were better than somebody else. But now in the new man we know, it's not whether you're a Jew or a Greek that made the difference, it's not whether you're Circumcision or uncircumcision, it's not whether you're barbarian, sentient, bond or free. It's nothing in the flesh. It's nothing you and I have done. Now in the new man, Christ is all. And you know He's in all those that have been born of Him. So for the first time, when you're sanctified, I mean when you've experienced this by Him, by this new birth, when you're sanctified, you know what you are separated from? You're separated from that vain notion that you sanctified yourself. You're sanctified from this false doctrine of trying to do a co-work with God to make yourself holy. You're separated from that, and you see Christ as my holiness. And for the first time, because He makes you see what you are, you put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, vows of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering. You start forbearing one another. You start forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, why do you do that? Even as Christ forgave you. And above all these, you put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And the peace of God starts rolling in your heart. And you know you're one body with your brethren and in all of this you're thankful to God. Now old things are passed away and all things become new. For the first time you start living to God. To God our Father and to His Son the Lord Jesus. For the first time. You begin living to Him and you love what He loves and you hate what He hates. You hate the sin of our old man and you love God less. You know, by Christ being made our holiness, by Him being formed in us, that's the first time that we realize what Paul said in Romans 7, I know that in me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good thing. That's the first time you know that. The Holy Spirit keeps turning us inwardly to Christ above to remember we're complete in Him. And that's how the Spirit makes you mortify this sinful flesh. And I'll tell you something now. I know that everybody's so worried about immoral sin. Well, God's people aren't wanting to commit immoral sin. But I tell you what, we've got to have our flesh mortified concerning more than anything else is that old self-righteous desire to have something to glory in. That's our That's our biggest problem. And that's what He keeps turning you to Christ to know. He's all. And that's the way this old, proud, self-righteous, self-sanctified man put down. You know, He said in Hebrews 12, Run the race that is set before you. He set the race. He puts you in the race. He set the race. Every valley, He set it. Every mountaintop, He set it. The curves, He said it. It's all set by Him. And you're running this race looking to the Lord Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith. And start talking about Him chastening us. The Holy Father would chasten us. Remember what it is. After it says you're looking to Christ running this race, here's why He chastens us. We turn to the left and we turn to the right. And He corrects us. He said He does it for our profit. to keep us partaking of His holiness. We don't have any of our own, and it's not by our works that we're holy. He's our holiness, and He's gonna keep His sanctified child partaking of His holiness. He's gonna keep you knowing He's your holiness. He's your sanctification. All right, lastly. I'm doing a little better than I thought I was gonna do. I thought I'd be a lot longer. Lastly, of God is Christ made unto us redemption. He made to us redemption. Oh, this is so good to know. To be redeemed is to be bought with a price. To be redeemed is to be bought, to be purchased with a price. The law had us for ransom. Christ paid the price. And the price was His precious blood as a lamb without spot and without blemish. He paid the price. Christ had redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. He bought us. And then to be redeemed is to be freed. It's to be given liberty. That first covenant was enjoined to the children of Israel. And the way that first covenant was enjoined to them is to picture how the new covenant of grace is joined to us. I'm just going to paraphrase this from Hebrews 9. But it said, Moses, remember this, he come down from the mountain with the law. Moses read all the precepts of the law to the children of Israel. 600 and something laws. He read all the precepts of the law to the children of Israel. The Lord sends the Gospel to us of what He's done. Not the precepts of the law. He makes you hear the law and hear you're guilty, but He sends you the gospel of what He's accomplished. And then it said Moses took blood. They killed a substitute and they took the blood and He put it in some water and took hyssop and He sprinkled that on everything. The book, He sprinkled it on those vessels that God said He separated. The Spirit of our Lord purges our conscience with the blood of Christ. This is that same way of saying you have the mind of Christ. Christ has made wisdom to you by that. You start hearing it and one day, you don't even know what's happened, but you start hearing. And you really start believing, I am a sinner. And you really start hearing about Christ's blood and that He put the sin of His people away. And the Lord has purged your conscience to where you can hear what Christ accomplished for the first time. And then it said Moses declared. This was Moses' declaration. When He gave them that law and He sprinkled everything, but He said, this is the covenant God has enjoined to you. Well, when He When He's made you hear this gospel and He's purged your conscience, God comes to you and He says, because of what my son accomplished, He said, this is the covenant I make with you. Your sins and iniquities, I remember them all. And where remission of these is, you can stop working. There's no more offering for sin. I'm satisfied, God says. And the Hebrew writers said, now, if that had ever happened under that old law, they'd have quit working. They wouldn't have offered any more sacrifices. When will a sinner... Especially a religious sinner. When will he stop working to try to make himself righteous or holy or more wise or any of these things? When will he stop that and live to God and be thankful and really worship and serve the Lord? When his work's been done in his heart and he's been made to know there's nothing else to be done. We accept it. And preachers all over the world say, you can't tell people that. Don't tell them what they'll do. Just tell them and see. There ain't no telling what they'll do. They'll probably stop working and sit down and worship the Lord. And do some honoring to Him for a change. Yeah. That's what they'll do. The Lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. We are with an open face now. He's taken a veil off the heart. And we can look into the mirror of this gospel and we see the glory of the Lord. And we're changed into the same image. And if you read the context of 2 Corinthians 3, we're changed into the same image. From the glory of that old covenant to the glory of the new covenant. That's what it is, brethren. And it's by the Spirit of the Lord. That's when we start singing, free from the law of happy condition. Jesus has bled and there's remission. Cursed by the law, bruised by the fog, grace has redeemed us once for all. And then one day, one day Christ is going to redeem our bodies. He's going to redeem our bodies into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Scripture says He's already sealed us with the Holy Spirit. And He says the Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. Every time you partake of the Lord's table, you know what you're doing? You're showing forth His death until He returns. He's going to redeem our bodies into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. We ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our bodies. I want you to think about this. Christ said, you're not of the world. Even as I'm not of the world. When you were born the first time, all you were was earthy. You were flesh. You were born of Adam. But born again, you're born from above. And that new man is not of this world. The new man in you right now is not of this world. He's born of the Lord. makes this new body, it's not going to be of this world. Nothing of Adam, nothing of this flesh, nothing of this world is entering the new heavens and the new earth. Everybody there will be the creation of the Lord Jesus Christ entirely. Entirely. So then, if you've been, if you're sitting here now and you have been made meat fit to partake of that inheritance. And if Christ has made these things to you, you have been. You have been. That thief on the cross was with the Lord then, that day. He had his feet and his hands nailed to the cross. He had everything he needed. So if this is so with you, then here's what he said. According as it's written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. Amen.