God’s eternal purpose must be fulfilled. That eternal purpose he expressed in these words: “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” God is God. All glory, honor, wisdom, and might are his, also in the matter of salvation. His purpose in salvation is not only the salvation of sinners, but his purpose is also that he be glorified in all his words and works and that he be justified when he judges. God will be glorified. God will be glorified in the salvation of sinners. He will not give his glory to another.

And of him are ye in Christ that the word of God might be fulfilled. He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

Of him are ye in Christ.

Union with Christ.

Saving union with Christ.

Eternal union with Christ.

That he who glories might glory in the Lord.

Consider the contrast between saving union with Christ Jesus and damning fellowship with Adam. God joins to Christ those who had condemnation in Adam. God saves nobodies. He creates out of nothing. He always calls the things that are not as though they were (Rom. 4:17). What is true of God’s creating is true of God’s work in salvation, yet more glorious, for in salvation he raises the dead!

What was true of us spiritually prior to our union with Christ? We were not! We were not merely weak, foolish, or despised, but we were nothings and nobodies. We were that because of Adam. He was our head. He represented us, and out of him we are born corrupt, dead in trespasses and in sins.

As Adam came from the hands of God, Adam was not nothing. God made man glorious, and he was the crown of the creation. God made Adam glorious spiritually. He possessed the image of God; God made Adam good, righteous, and holy. He knew and loved God. God was Adam’s life, his friend, and his sovereign. And Adam served God as God’s friend and servant.

Adam became nothing by the instigation of the devil and through an act of Adam’s own willful disobedience. The devil promised Adam everything and left him with nothing. Because of his sin, God stripped Adam of everything. God took away the garden. He took Adam’s life and stripped him of his spiritual glory by taking away the image of God. All the light in Adam became darkness. He was judged by God to be worthy of death, and Adam became dead in his trespasses and sins. He was liable to temporal and eternal death. Adam became nothing.

All men became nothing in Adam. The contrast in verses 30 and 31 is not that by their own wicked deeds men became nothing, but in Christ they become something. The contrast is between what men became in Adam and what they become in Christ. The whole human race became nothing in Adam by what Adam did. Men do not need to commit another sin to be nothing; they are so conceived. Union with Adam is condemnation.

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus!

Out of that nothingness God joins the elect to Christ Jesus to be represented by him, to be joined with him, and to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. True faith is to be engrafted into Christ, to be a branch in the vine, to be a stone on the chief cornerstone, and to be a part of God’s covenant. It is a great mystery, even, the husband and his bride.

Saving union! That union with Christ is man’s salvation, just as his union with Adam was his condemnation. In Adam we are not! In Christ Jesus we are! If in Adam man has nothing, then by union with Christ Jesus, man has everything.

Unspeakable riches: wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

In Christ, then, Christ himself becomes wisdom from God to those who are in him. Christ is not wisdom from God to one who is in Adam. Christ is foolishness to the natural man. The natural man hears Christ Jesus preached and calls it foolishness. If he is a Greek, he says, “That preaching of Christ is stupid. There is wisdom outside of Christ, and I do not need Christ. I can find wisdom somewhere else. I can know how to live my life in the world outside of Christ.” So the Greek seeks for wisdom. If the natural man is a Jew, he stumbles at Christ and the folly of the cross. He stumbles at the word that Christ alone is salvation and that outside of him there is no salvation. The Jew especially stumbles at the truth that there is no righteousness in his works of the law. Offended, he cries out, “But what about the law and my works? Doesn’t a man have to repent, obey, and be a good person?” Despising the righteousness of Christ, the Jew goes about to establish his own righteousness by his works. By this he says that his way of salvation by works is wiser—especially because he supposes that it will not make men careless and profane—and by that evil he makes Christ and his cross foolish. If righteousness were by works, why did God go through all the trouble? The natural man, whether Greek or Jew, says, “Christ is foolish.”

When God joins a man to Christ, Christ becomes wisdom from God to that man. That man sees that Christ is first in God’s decree. Christ is the very head of the covenant of grace that God determined to establish for the revelation of his own glorious name. That man sees that God arranged, ordered, and executes his decree for the glory of his own name in Christ Jesus. And that man sees that his salvation and the salvation of the elect church are subservient to that great purpose.

That Christ becomes wisdom from God to a man means that God so applies and gives Christ to him that Christ is that man’s complete salvation, and he seeks salvation in none other than Christ alone. This means that Christ alone becomes the way of salvation to that man. To the one joined to Christ, Christ himself becomes the sweetest, wisest, most glorious reality in the whole world. Because Christ is wisdom from God, that man sees all things in his life and in the world from the viewpoint of Christ Jesus. That man especially recognizes that all things serve Christ, understands all things in a new light, and sees all things from the vantage point of eternity and the purpose of God for his own glory in Christ and the salvation of his church. Because Christ is wisdom from God to that man, he stops being offended by Christ or vainly seeking wisdom—salvation—outside of Christ.

Christ becomes wisdom from God to a man in Christ because Christ becomes righteousness and sanctification to him—a two-word summary of all of the riches of Christ and of every benefit of salvation. If Christ is righteousness and sanctification to a man, there is nothing needful for his life and salvation.

If Christ becomes righteousness to a man, he is justified; his sins are forgiven; and God adopts him as his child, blesses him in all things, and afterward receives him into the glory of the perfection of God’s covenant. Oh yes, being righteousness to the one in him, Christ is also that man’s sanctification. The one without the other cannot be. Because Christ is righteousness to him, then also in Christ that man is drawn near to God and in Christ stands in the presence of God. Then from Christ comes his eternal Spirit to cleanse that man’s heart from sin’s bondage and pollution. In union with Christ, Christ himself becomes a man’s righteousness and his sanctification, so that Christ is that man’s whole salvation.

Oh, not Christ and works. That cannot be. It is not Christ and obedience. Justification is not by works. Sanctification is not by works. Christ alone is that man’s righteousness and his sanctification.

By faith alone!

Christ becomes a man’s righteousness and his sanctification by faith alone because it is by faith that he is united to Christ and made a member of his corporation and kept in communion with him and all his riches.

Because Christ redeemed us, body and soul, he is our justification and sanctification and is wisdom from God to us. He becomes salvation to us because he accomplished all that salvation for us upon the tree of the cross by all his blood, sweat, and tears and by his hellish anguish. There he satisfied the justice of God, fulfilled all righteousness, accomplished all obedience, paid for all sin.

Saving union!

We are not joined to Christ so that we might be enabled to be saved. But being joined to Christ, we are saved—saved fully and completely.

Of God!

This union is not of you, of your works, or of your will. This union is of God! It is wholly and exclusively of God. It is of God in its beginning, in its maintenance, and in its perfection.

Of God!

The union is of God, and all the blessings of that union are of God. The blessings of wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification are not of you—of your works, of your repentance, of your obedience, or of your will. The blessings are of God.

Those whom God joins to Christ are the foolish, the weak, the despised, and things that are not. Because they are not, they have nothing in themselves. Everything they receive and everything they are, they receive and become in union with Christ, that is, of God.

When we became nothing in Adam, that was Adam’s fault, but it was of God. Yes, it is very true that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God. It was part of God’s eternal plan of salvation that the world did not know him. God did not desire every man to know him. He did not desire that man come to know him in Adam or that man be received into God’s fellowship and friendship in Adam. It was not God’s plan that Adam would obey God and take himself and the entire human race into eternal glory. Adam was created to fall. It was of God that Adam fell in order that man would become nothing in Adam. It was of God that man by himself, by his wisdom, and by his works cannot attain unto the knowledge of God, the covenant, and salvation! God made sure of that in Adam for the whole human race.

But of God are ye in Christ! Yes! God brought man to nothing in order that God might save man from nothing in order that God might be everything. He did that for the sake of the revelation of his marvelous wisdom and his glorious name in Christ.

God determined the union. Before the world was we were joined to Christ in election and appointed to enjoy union with him and the riches of the salvation that is in him.

According to that sovereign determination, God joins us to Christ.

From everlasting to everlasting!

We glory in the Lord. Yes, now we do. But that will be heaven when we glory with the multitude that no man can number and with all the angels, when all will transparently and perfectly praise God for his infinite wisdom, his amazing grace, and his justice.

The union is of God. God cannot change. His purpose cannot change. His grace cannot be resisted.

The union is with Christ. He cannot be overcome who overcame sin, death, hell, and the grave and to whom God gave all power in heaven and earth and who now intercedes for us at the right hand of God.

To the praise of God’s glorious name.

Let him who glorieth glory in the Lord!

A boast by man!

A man boasts in that in which he trusts and in which he rests for life and salvation, for time and eternity. If a man’s boast is only in this life, it is a foolish boast, and that man is shallow and wretched and of all men most miserable. Man must have something beyond this life.

Your boast can be in man. You can boast in man’s will, man’s strength, man’s repentance, man’s obedience, or man’s wisdom. But if you boast in man, you cannot boast in God. Such boasting in man is damnable boasting.

You can boast in God. You can give all praise, honor, and glory to him and ascribe all salvation to him from eternity to eternity. You can rejoice in this truth, shouting it from the housetops and in the streets: of him are we in Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. But then you cannot boast in man. Such boasting in God is glorious boasting.

Also, man must boast. The apostle does not give man an option not to boast. Man must boast either in himself or in God; but boast he must, and boast he will.

Man must boast in the matter of salvation. That is why the haters of the truth often accuse the believer of being proud. He does boast. He must boast. The accuser of him boasts too. The difference is that wherein they boast. The accuser hates the boast of the believer because the believer will boast only in God, which makes man, those who trust in men, nothing except robbers of the glory of God and boasters in men. “You are proud,” the accuser says because the believer does not speak of the truth of his salvation as a matter of opinion or as something that can be taken or left but as the absolute truth, which a man must believe if he will be saved. He must have Christ as wisdom from God, righteousness imputed by God to him by faith alone, and sanctification worked in him by the power of the Spirit—all on the basis of Christ’s perfect atoning death alone in his place—or he has nothing, remains nothing before God, and will thus also be condemned by God. And man’s boasting in man charges that with evil.

But if a man claims to confess the doctrines of salvation by grace without boasting, by that fact he denies the doctrine of salvation because God saves men in union with Christ in order for them to boast. Those two things—salvation and not boasting—are utterly incongruous.

Let him who boasts boast in the Lord. Let him confess that he is nothing and that of God he is in Christ and that God is everything.

Besides, it belongs to a man’s gracious salvation that he actually does boast. He cannot help himself. If a man teaches the doctrines of grace and then commands his audience not to boast, he contradicts the apostle and the Spirit, who commanded men to boast. The true doctrine of salvation will both have man boast and have that boasting be in God. The fact that God makes Christ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to a man issues forth in his boasting in God.

The issue then between truth and lie is not whether man will boast but what kind of boasting man will be doing. He will boast in God, or he will boast in man.

If a man says that he will be saved because he has accepted Christ; has done some saving works; trusted and obeyed; was faithful in the covenant; or has done anything for his salvation, however so little, he will be damned. That is a man’s refusing to become nothing before God. That is a man’s thinking that he is something apart from Christ. In that pride, which is nothing more than the continuation and development of Adam’s original sin in the garden, that man will perish.

A man must be nothing before God. God calls the things that are not and raises the dead. A man must be nothing in order that God be everything in making Christ, his Son, wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to that man.

He who boasts—and boast he must—let him boast in God.