But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus. By the gift of God Himself, by His grace, were ye called to believe in Christ. So Anselm. To be in Christ is to have been incorporated with Him in Baptism, or to be in the Church of Christ, and in Christianity.
Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. This righteousness, say our modern innovators, is imputed, because it is ours, not substantially and inherently, but is merely the external righteousness of Christ imputed to us; before God we seem righteous. But I reply: If this be true, then in the same way the active redemption wrought by Christ, which S. Paul here joins with righteousness, will be imputed to us, and consequently we shell be redeemers of ourselves, which is absurd. In the second place, wisdom is infused into us, and so is faith, and so therefore is righteousness; for the Apostle classes together the righteousness and wisdom of Christ as both alike ours.
I say, then, with Chrysostom, Theophylact, Anselm, Ambrose, and S. Thomas, that the sense of this passage is this: Christ is made unto us the author and cause of real Christian Wisdom of Solomon , redemption, sanctification, and righteousness.
1. By way of satisfaction and meritoriously; and this is what the Apostle specially has in his mind here: because Christ paid man"s debt with the most precious price of His own Blood, and so made sanctification for Prayer of Manasseh , and merited for us righteousness, Wisdom of Solomon , and sanctification. In this way He was made for us righteousness, because the righteousness, i.e, the satisfaction of Christ, is ours, just as much as if we had ourselves made satisfaction to God. And hence it is that theologians teach that the satisfaction of Christ is applied to us in justification through the Sacraments, as if naturally first, and that then as a natural consequence our sins are forgiven through that satisfaction, and grace is infused. This condemns the error of Peter Abélard, in which he is followed by the Socinians, who teach that Christ was the teacher of the world, not its redeemer—nay more, that He was sent by the Father to give to man an example of perfect virtue, but not to free him from sin or to redeem him. S. Bernard refutes this in Ephesians 190 , to Pope Innocent, where he says: "Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth. In short, S. Paul says that He was made to us righteousness by God the Father. Is not then that righteousness mine which was made for me? If my guilt is brought against me, why am I not given the benefit of my righteousness? And indeed what is given me is safer than what is innate. For this has whereof it may glory, but not before God. But the former, since it is effectual to salvation, has no ground of glorying, except in the Lord. "For if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head," says Job , lest the answer come, "What hast thou that thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hast not received it?" This is the righteousness of man in the blood of his Redeemer, which Abélard, that man of perdition, scoffs and sneers at, and so tries to empty of its force, that he holds and argues that all that the Lord of Glory did in emptying Himself . . . in suffering indignities . . . is to be reduced to this, that it was all done that He might by His life and teaching give to man a rule of life, and by His suffering and death set up a goal of charity." Abélard"s argument was fallacious and frivolous: the devil, he said, had no right over man; therefore man needed no liberator. The premiss is doubtless true when understood of lawful right, but not of usurped right, under which man through sin by his own free will had submitted himself to the power of the devil, of sin, and of hell.
2. By way of example; because the righteousness of Christ os the most perfect example, to which all our righteousness ought to be conformed. In this sense S. Paul"s meaning Isaiah , Christ is an example and mirror of righteousness.
3. Efficiently; because Christ effects and produces this righteousness in us through His Sacraments, and because He teaches the Saints true wisdom and understanding; as, e.g, how to live a good and Christian life, by what road to attain to heaven, and how we must strive after bliss.
4. As our end; because Christ Himself and His glory are the end of our righteousness and sanctification. S. Bernard, in his22Sermon on the Canticles, deals with these four, Wisdom of Solomon , righteousness, sanctification, redemption, symbolically. In the first place, he adapts them to the four works of Christ. He says, "Christ was made for us wisdom in His preaching, righteousness in the forgiveness of our sins, sanctification in the life that He spent with sinners, redemption in the sufferings that He bore for sinners." And again further on he says, "Christ was made for us by God wisdom by teaching prudence, righteousness by forgiving our trespasses, sanctification by the example He set of temperance and of chaste life, redemption by the example He left of patience and of fortitude in dying. Where, I ask, is true Wisdom of Solomon , except in the teaching of Christ? Whence comes true righteousness but from the mercy of Christ? Where is there true temperance but in the life of Christ? Where true fortitude save in the Passion of Christ?"
In the second place, S. Bernard naturally adapts these four to the four virtues, prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, which Christ imparts to us. He goes in to say: "Only those, then, who have been imbued with His doctrine are to be called prudent; only those, who by His mercy have obtained forgiveness of their sins, are to be called righteous; only those are to be called temperate who strive to imitate His life; only those are to be called brave who bravely bear adversity and show patience like His. In vain surely does any one strive to acquire virtues, if he thinks that they are to be obtained from any other source but the Lord of virtues, whose teaching is the school of prudence, whose mercy the working of righteousness, whose life the mirror of temperance, whose death the pattern of fortitude."
