January 11, 2007 - Thursday in the First Week after Epiphany
“It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.” (
1 Corinthians 1:30)
We are nothing, Christ is everything. We may think we are something, because we are smart or rich or popular or athletic. We may strut our stuff on the athletic field or in the classroom, but we are nothing.
The Corinthians thought they were something, super-spiritual Christians who walked the walk and talked the talk – even in tongues! But the apostle Paul says to them, “You were nothing when God called you.” They weren’t wise by the world’s standards of wisdom; they weren’t strong by the world’s standards of strength. God takes the nothings of this world, and He makes them into something. He takes the foolish things, the despised things, the lowly and insignificant things and makes them into something big in order to shame the world in all of its boastful arrogance.
Think of the arrogance you see in the world – the proud football player doing his victory dance in the end zone, or the brilliant scientist arrogantly proclaiming, “There is no God, and we have the evidence.” Think of the arrogance in yourself, how you boast of your God-given abilities as though they were your own, how you compare yourself against others, how you want to be the toughest, the biggest, the best, the most.
We are nothing before God, nothing but sinners, dust destined for dust. Yet, God has mercy on those who are nothing. He reaches down to us in our dust and becomes one of us. His Son Jesus, emptied Himself of all of His divine honor and glory, He stepped down from His throne and took off His royal Son’s robes, and took up our humanity. He became bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. And in our flesh, He humbled Himself and became obedient to His own law, even to death on the Cross. Christ who was everything became nothing, so that in Him we might be something: children of God.
God chose you, nothing that you are, and made you something in Baptism. He united you with Jesus’ death and life, so that, buried in Jesus, you are covered with His righteousness, His holiness, His redeeming Blood. To the world, this is sheer foolishness, that God should rescue Man by becoming the least of men. Yet, this is the wisdom and power of God to save you. He made everything out of nothing, and He saved everything in the nothingness of Jesus’ death on a Cross.
Thanks be to Jesus, the Wisdom of God, and our righteousness, holiness and redemption!