Apply the Crucified Christ as God’s Power and God’s Wisdom to our Daily Experience

As believers in Christ, we need to know, enjoy, experience, and apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and God’s wisdom to our daily life, even to the experiences that we have in our daily living.

Paul preached a crucified Christ, who to the Jews is a stumbling block and to the Greeks is foolishness.

The Christ we know, enjoy, and experience today is not the “raw” Christ but the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ, the Christ who went through a process in order to become a life-giving Spirit to come into our spirit.

What a wonderful Christ we have!

In particular, this Christ is a crucified Christ.

When we preach the gospel to others, we should not tell them merely that God loves them and wants them to live forever if they believe in Jesus; we should preach and minister a crucified Christ.

The crucified Christ is to those who seek knowledge and wisdom a foolishness, for they cannot understand how this wonderful One did not use His wisdom to escape death on the cross.

Similarly, the crucified Christ is to the Jews who seek wonders and signs a stumbling block, for He did not make a miracle to save Himself from the death of the cross.

Humanly speaking, if we look at the life and work of the Lord Jesus, we are amazed to see His incarnation, we love and appreciate His wonderful human living with all His words and works, and we are quite puzzled to see that He went to the cross at thirty three and a half years old.

It seemed that His life had just begun, His ministry was flourishing, and He had just had a glorious entrance into Jerusalem; and then, He was crucified.

This truly is perplexing to the human mind, who seeks either a miracle to be saved from crucifixion or some wisdom to escape this cruel form of death.

But Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 1:23-24 that the crucified Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom. Wow.

It takes divine revelation for us to see this, for we cannot see it with our natural way of understanding.

May the Lord unveil us to see that the crucified Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

May we see what is power and what is wisdom, and may we realize that Christ crucified is the power and wisdom of God.

May we be delivered from our natural concepts and may we allow the Lord to renew our mind little by little, day by day, until we love, enjoy, experience, and apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom to our daily experience.

Seeing how Christ Crucified is God’s Power and God’s Wisdom

1 Cor. 1:24 tells us that Christ crucified – the crucified Christ – is the power of God.

Paul doesn’t tell us that the crucified Christ gives us the power of God but that He is the power of God.

The power of God is not some thing or energy measured in kilowatts; the power of God is a person, even a crucified person – Christ crucified.

Paul doesn’t tell us that the cross is the power of God but that the crucified Christ is the power of God.

The cross and Christ come together; Christ is on the cross, and the cross crucifies Christ, and the crucified Christ is the power of God.

When we speak of the cross here we don’t mean some kind of a lesson for us to learn how to suffer for the Lord.

The cross terminates us, and the cross crucified and terminated Christ in His human living and in His earthly ministry.

In the cross of Christ we see God’s power.  How can we see it? It takes the power of God to defeat Satan, the world, sin, fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, the old creation, and the ordinances.

When God created all things, He did it by His speaking; He simply spoke and things came into being.

However, the crucified Christ is God’s power, not by means of His speaking but by His wonderful death.

God used the death of Christ on the cross to deal with all His problems in this universe.

God used the death of Christ as the power of God to detroy Satan, to solve the problem of the world, to eliminate sin, and to terminate and destroy the fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation.

All problems in the universe have been cleared through the death of Christ; the crucified Christ is God’s power.

If we look around us in the world, the most powerful thing among human beings is not the leaders in politics, business, academics, or social media; it is death.

There are many powerful figures and there are many strong human beings, but when death comes, none of us can avoid it.

We may be the strongest man in the world, being able to lift many weights and subdue our body to the uttermost, but when death comes, we cannot fight it; death will overcome us.

When death knocks at our door, we can’t tell it to come later, for we’re not ready.

We can’t pay death a billion dollars to let us live. From the president to the beggar on the street, as long as we live on earth, death is the most powerful thing.

The crucified Christ is God’s power. In God’s economy, He designed a Christ who is not the exalted, resurrected Christ, but the crucified Christ to be the power of God.

God doesn’t need guns or missiles or drones; He needs only the crucified Christ to defeat Satan, the world, sin, fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, the old creation, and the ordinances.

Praise the Lord for the crucified Christ!

Everything that is negative ended at the cross of Christ. All the negative things, all the things that trouble us and divide us, are terminated by the death of Christ on the cross.

No negative thing can pass beyond the crucified Christ.

The death of Christ – His crucifixion – has become the power of God. Hallelujah! Furthermore, the crucified Christ is God’s wisdom (2:7).

Every man loves wisdom, seeks wisdom, and desires to be wise; none of us want to be dumb, but rather, we love to be wiser and have more wisdom.

The apostle James tells us in his epistle that there is wisdom from below, the earthly wisdom, and this wisdom is earthly, soulish, and demonic.

Merely seeking wisdom doesn’t mean that you seek a good thing; there is a demonic wisdom, the wisdom of this age, which has nothing to do with the crucified Christ as God’s wisdom (1 Cor. 2:6-7).

When we speak of God’s wisdom in a mystery, this wisdom has been hidden, for God predestinated Christ before the ages for us to be glorified with Him.

This is the wisdom from above, God Himself as wisdom.

This wisdom is not just for us to be smart and solve problems or get out of difficult situations.

The wisdom that God has planned for us is so that we may be brought to glory.

In order to accomplish anything, we need Christ as both power and wisdom.

In order to do anything, we need not just power but also wisdom.

If we only have power, we may do things in a foolish way, but if we have wisdom, we also have the proper way to do it.

Wisdom is for us to plan and purpose something; power is for us to carry out and accomplish what we plan and purpose.

The crucified Christ is God’s wisdom; through the cross, God displayed His wisdom to the whole universe.

May we come to the Lord again and again and ask Him to unveil us and cause us to see what it means for the crucified Christ to be God’s power and wisdom to us who believe.

Lord Jesus, unveil us to see the crucified Christ as God’s power and God’s wisdom! Amen, Lord, may we seek the power that is really power – the crucified Christ as the power of God! May we gain wisdom that is really wisdom – the crucified Christ as the wisdom of God! Hallelujah, through the cross God displayed His power, for through the one death on the cross He destroyed Satan, the world, sin, fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation! Praise the Lord, Christ crucified is God’s power to us who believe! Amen, Lord, may we know this power in our daily lives! Amen, Lord, may we see that Christ crucified is God’s wisdom! We need You, Lord, as our wisdom, even as the real wisdom from above! We don’t want to merely gain wisdom and become wiser; we want to have the crucified Christ as God’s wisdom! Oh Lord, what a wise God You are to destroy everything negative on the cross and through the cross! We praise You for Your wisdom and for Your power! Hallelujah, Christ crucified is God’s power and wisdom to us!

Apply the Crucified Christ as God’s Power and God’s Wisdom to Our Daily Experience

The fact that the crucified Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom is not just for us to know and enjoy but even more, for us to experience and apply.

We need to apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom to our daily experience.

We may say that the death of Christ on the cross was a great event that took place many years ago, and this event changed the course of human history.

But at the same time we can say that this death can be applied to our Christian experience today (Phil. 3:10; Rom. 6:3, 5; 2 Cor. 4:10-12).

For example, many of us have a problem with our temper; after believing into Christ, we realize that we have a certain disposition, a certain temper, which is not appropriate.

As we grow in life and have many dealings with the Lord, we realize that our temper is hateful and we long to be freed from it.

It is so easy for us to lose our temper and to live according to our disposition, thus being in our natural man and not expressing Christ; this damages both us and those around us, and it is not for the building up of the Body of Christ.

So we pray very much. We beg the Lord to deal with our temper. We ask Him to stop us from doing this or saying that, and we implore Him to help us overcome our temper.

However, it seems that the more we pray in this way, the more we are overcome by our temper, and we cannot overcome it. We become more desperate concerning it, but we can’t overcome it.

The reason is that only the crucified Christ is God’s power and wisdom for us to apply to our temper.

We don’t need to seek to be delivered from our temper; we need to be in another realm, a realm that is above and beyond our temper.

We need to exercise our spirit, call on the name of the Lord, enjoy Him, and be filled with Him.

When we are filled with the Lord, when we’re filled with the enjoyment of Christ, we have no problem with our temper.

When the life-giving Spirit fills us by our applying the crucified Christ to our temper, we have God’s power and wisdom to overcome the temper and to express Christ.

The power and the way to overcome our temper is the death of Christ, Christ crucified.

Only the crucified Christ is God’s power and wisdom for us to deal with our temper.

Similarly, we may want to have more patience; we realize that, as we grow in the human life, we have less and less patience, and many things bother us.

So we desire to be patient, we try to be patient, and we ask the Lord to give us more patience.

But it doesn’t seem that we have the power and the way for us to be patient; we have the desire, the inclination, but not the wisdom and the way.

When we experience the crucified Christ, when we apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom, we automatically have patience.

Our Christian life is not a matter of having a little more patience, grace, joy, and wisdom from God; it is a matter of us enjoying, experiencing, and applying the crucified Christ to our situation in our daily living so that we may live Christ spontaneously.

In all kinds of human experiences, we can apply the crucified Christ by the exercise of our spirit.

When we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, though we may not pray for a particular problem or request a particular thing from the Lord, His death, resurrection, and ascension are applied to us, and we spontaneously overcome and live Christ.

The key to experiencing the resurrection and ascension of Christ is in Christ’s crucifixion; we need to apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom to our daily experiences so that we may enjoy all His riches.

It is good to bring this to the Lord and converse with Him about this, being honest with Him and telling Him,

Lord Jesus, teach us how to enjoy, experience, and apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom to our daily experience. We want to not only know the crucified Christ and see a vision of Christ crucified being the power and wisdom of God but also apply this to our daily living. Amen, Lord, we come to You as we are; we want to apply the crucified Christ to our experience today. We just want to exercise our spirit and call on Your name to be filled with You! Save us from trying our best to improve our behavior, deal with our temper, and have more patience. May we come to You again and again to enjoy, experience, and apply the crucified Christ as God’s power and wisdom to our experience. Amen, Lord, may we realize that the key to experiencing the riches of Christ in His resurrection and ascension are all found in Christ’s crucifixion. Grant us the experiences we need day by day for us to apply the crucified Christ to our daily living!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother James Lee in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 Corinthians, msg. 8 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2) (2024 December Training), week 15, God’s Power and God’s Wisdom.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Applying the cross of Christ, a portion from, General Sketch of the New Testament in the Light of Christ and the Church, A – Part 2: Romans through Philemon, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee.
  – Dealing with the Self, via, Living to Him.
  – Dealing with the self by the cross, a portion from, Messages to the Trainees in Fall 1990, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee.
  – 8 Verses that Show Jesus Christ Lives in You, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – What is the crucified life? More via, Hearing of Faith newsletter.
  – 1 Corinthians (Program #7) – Christ Crucified, God’s Power and God’s Wisdom (2), via, Bible study radio.
  – The key to experiencing Christ – the human spirit, a portion from, The Key to Experiencing Christ–the Human Spirit, Chapter 1.
  – How Christ Crucified Becomes God’s Power and God’s Wisdom to Us, via, Holding to Truth in Love.
  – Conformed to Christ’s death – nuggets and gems from the Bible, via LSM (PDF).
  – So Great a Foundation–The All-inclusive Spirit of Christ, via, Having this ministry newsletter.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – I am crucified with Christ, / And the cross hath set me free; / I have ris’n again with Christ, / And He lives and reigns in me. / Oh! it is so sweet to die with Christ, / To the world, and self, and sin; / Oh! it is so sweet to live with Christ, / As He lives and reigns within. (Hymns #482 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – What a wondrous fact, I’m crucified with Christ; / Of my flesh and passion I’m relieved; / What a glorious fact, with Christ, the Lord, I live, / Resurrection life in Him received. / On the Cross of Calvary the Lord and I / Were crucified, were crucified; / Now in resurrection life with Him I live / And in Him e’er abide. (Hymns #487 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – I am crucified with Jesus, / And He lives and dwells with me; / I have ceased from all my struggling, / ’Tis no longer I, but He. / All my will is yielding to Him, / And His Spirit reigns within; / And His precious blood each moment / Keeps me cleansed and free from sin. (Hymns #564 stanza 2)