Christ is made unto us wisdom from God; and thus with Christianity, for faith, every cloud is lifted. The wisdom that is from God is a casket of priceless jewels; in which the redeemed one finds, not only liberty, but marvelous enrichment. How much is contained in just those three words, "righteousness, sanctification and redemption ! "And they are in an order of progressive fulness, as we shall see, by which we enter more and more into the heart of God.

Righteousness is the first need of the sinner, and which we see symbolically met in that robe which death furnished to cover the nakedness which was the first felt need in Eden. "I was afraid, because I was naked ; and I hid myself." Yet God had made him naked, not like any beast of the earth with its protective covering, but safe in the purity of his uprightness, open to the light and not ashamed. How all was altered now! The consciousness of guilt was upon him:the law of sin was already in his members; and God Himself recognizes the impossibility of restoring that lost innocence; he must have a covering, and a better one than any that he can invent with all his power of invention. Who could imagine that death, the penalty upon him, was to be that which should provide him with this? Yet we know that this is indeed the truth. The penalty must be endured, if the sinner is to be justified before God. Righteousness for him is not in any impossible work of his hands, or new life lived, but in the first place by the death of Him of whom all the sacrificial law spoke-whom it foreshadowed. The blood of the sacrifice-token of the life poured out- was that which was offered to God for the acceptance of the offerer; and we are thus "justified by His blood," every charge against us is refused, His resurrection from the dead being the assurance of the demand met, and thus the public sentence of justification of every one that believeth in Jesus.

But this is negative merely,-there is no imputation of guilt, and that is all; and it is not all that God has done for us; we have not in this yet reached the robe of righteousness, which death indeed must obtain for us, but which goes beyond the mere putting away of sin, and gives us a positive standing in the presence of God. Christ is not merely negative but positive righteousness to us. We stand in Him, in the value that He has for God, who has achieved, not merely for us but for Him also, that which has glorified Him in all His attributes. In His death all that we were by nature and practice both was branded and set aside,-"our old man crucified with Him," -and we are accepted in the Beloved, in that unchangeable perfection which is His, living because. He lives. He is the Priest that offered for us, to whom belongs the skin of the burnt-offering (Lev. 7:8); and here we are brought back as it were to Eden, to see whence those skins that covered the first sinners of mankind were derived. How from the beginning did the eye of God contemplate the coming Redeemer in His sufferings and the glories that should follow!

Yet, however wonderful this righteousness, more is needed, and more provided for us in Christ. God' could not merely cover the nakedness of a sinner, while leaving him still the sinner that he was before. Man fallen was corrupt as well as guilty; and Christ is made unto us not only righteousness but also sanctification.

Now sanctification is spoken of in two different ways in Scripture:we are sanctified positionally, and we are sanctified practically,-by the blood and by the Spirit of Christ; as the blood with the oil upon the blood consecrated the priest of old (Ex. 29:20, 21). Positionally, as is evident, it is the blood of Christ which has set us apart to God. And this is what sanctification means, setting apart to God. The Lord thus speaks of sanctifying Himself when He is going to take a new position as Man with God:"For their sakes," He says, "I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth " (John 17:19). This was no spiritual change in the Lord, which it were blasphemy to think; it was simply a new place that He was taking for us Godward. Upon this too our sanctification, positionally and practically, depends. He is gone in to God as Man. Entitled ever to such a place by virtue of all that He was, His own personal perfection, He is now gone in for men; and therefore, "By His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12). Thus He enters as our Representative, and the blood that He has shed sets us apart, or sanctifies us, to God, in the power of His finished work, "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all " (chap. 10:10). Thus the conscience is effectually purified, the worshiper once purged having no more conscience of sins (9:13, 14; 10:2); a thing how absolutely necessary for practical sanctification, for which we must be near to God:there is no possible in nearness to place of distance from sin but in God.

Practical sanctification has its two factors in the new birth, and the operation of the Spirit through the Word upon the believer, taking of the things of Christ to show them to him. In new birth Christ is our life, and thus we have a nature capable of responding to the Word ministered to it, although still and ever the Spirit's work is necessary to make the Word good in the hearts of the children of God.

But being born again, it is Christ once more, as apprehended by the soul in what He personally is, and in the place in which He is, who is the power for sanctification. And herein is the wisdom of God in Him fully and wonderfully displayed. He who has put away our sins and set our consciences at rest in the presence of God, has thus laid hold upon our hearts, and won us for Himself and for God, revealed in Him, forever. Christian life-what only can be called so-is that love's free and happy offering to Him who has loved us:" He died for all, that they which live should no more live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for us, and rose again."

Let us notice that "rose again;" for if our hearts, are thus Christ's, where is Christ ? In heaven. And where then are our hearts? That is the power for practical holiness, an object-the Object-for our hearts outside the world, outside the whole scene of temptation and evil. We have not to look about in the world, to see what of good we can perchance find in it:Christ is in heaven. Holiness is for us by heavenliness. How simply and in what perfect wisdom has God provided for us by the power of an absorbing affection, the Object withdrawn from us, outside the world, and becoming thus the goal of a pilgrim's heart and a pilgrim's steps!

And now, finally, what is "redemption"? This is the last of the three things found, according to the apostle, in this wisdom of God in Christ. What then is redemption? It is God's love acting from itself, and for itself, to satisfy itself at personal cost, in getting back that which has been alienated from Him, and which yet He values. It is more than purchase, or even repurchase; for this might be, not because of its value to myself, but to give it away again, or for some other reason. But redemption is for oneself, the getting back for oneself what one's own heart values,-the value of which is known by the price that one is willing to pay for it. Redemption brings out thus the heart of the redeemer.

And in Eden, amid all the goodness with which he was surrounded, man, taught of Satan, had learned to suspect the goodness of God. There and then he had lost God:for He is not God, if He is not good. Since then, naturally, "there is none that seeketh after " Him-that believes there is anything in Him for which to seek Him. Natural religions are religions of fear and self-interest only, and men's gods are the image of their own corruptions. God must reveal Himself; and how gloriously has He done this! Not goodness merely to man innocent in Eden, but infinite love to those who in Christ could see and hate Him. "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." Christ is the redemption-price that shows the heart of the Redeemer; this wondrous gift, the Father's heart told out in transcendent righteousness, and holiness, and love.

Nor can we forget that redemption has yet to show its power in the transformation of the body itself; that in the image of Christ fully we may enjoy the blessedness that is ours in Him forever Then indeed shall he that glorieth glory in the Lord; and the full blessing of the creature shall be found when He alone is glorified by all. From " The Numerical Bible."