1 Corinthians 1:30

The sentence is built to remove any ground for boasting, and Paul says so explicitly in the verse that follows.

He has spent the preceding paragraph pointing out, with some bluntness, that not many of them were wise or influential or well-born. It is not flattering. He then says God chose the foolish things to shame the wise — and lands here.

Of him you are in Christ Jesus. The position is credited to God's action, not theirs. And then four things are named, and the first of them is the one under dispute: who was made to us wisdom from God.

That is a strange grammatical move. Wisdom is not described as something Christ gives, or teaches, or possesses. He is made wisdom to us. The thing the Corinthians were chasing in their teachers and their factions turns out to be a person rather than a body of content.

And the three that follow are each an answer to a different problem. Righteousness — standing. Sanctification — the ongoing change. Redemption — the price paid to get someone out. Between them they cover the legal, the moral and the economic, which is to say every register in which a person can be in trouble.

Four needs, one source, and none of them anything you could put on a résumé.