Christ in Wisdom of Solomon

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God and the Conqueror of Death

This chapter speaks of Wisdom as a living person who comes to dwell with those who welcome her, of the Spirit who fills the whole world, and of the God who did not make death. Each of these reaches toward Christ. Paul names Him "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24); John says all things were made through Him, and "in him was life" (John 1:3-4); Colossians says that by Him all things "consist," or hold together (Colossians 1:17), which is the very w…

Christ Connection - The Righteous One They Put to the Test

No passage in the wisdom writings reaches toward the Gospel more directly than this one. A just man who knows God, calls himself the son of God, lives unlike other men, and is hated because his goodness exposes the guilty. His enemies resolve to test him with outrage and torture, to condemn him to a shameful death, and to taunt that God will deliver him if he truly is God’s son. When the crowd stood beneath the cross, they spoke this script almost word for word: "He truste…

Christ Connection - The Just One Who Shone Through Death

Everything this chapter promises the righteous, Christ embodies first. He was the Just One whom the unwise "seemed" to defeat: He suffered torments in the sight of men, was reckoned destroyed, and laid in a tomb where the world wrote Him off as utter loss. Yet His soul was in the hand of the Father, into whose hands He commended His spirit, and death’s torment could not hold Him. He came through the furnace and shone, the firstborn from the dead, and now His Lord reigns fo…

Christ Connection - The Beloved Who Conquered Death

This chapter gathers a man who "pleased God and was beloved," a soul taken from the midst of iniquities, a life "made perfect in a short space," and the promise that grace and mercy rest with God’s chosen. Each thread runs toward Christ. At His baptism the voice from heaven says, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17), and His earthly life, brief by any reckoning, was the one life lived without spot, finished in a few short years. Hebrews says H…

Christ Connection - The Righteous One Standing Vindicated

No figure in history fits the just one of this chapter more closely than Jesus. He was held in derision and made a parable of reproach, mocked as He hung dying, His life counted as madness and His end as shameful. The rulers were certain His case was closed. And then came the suddenness of an unexpected salvation, the empty tomb that stunned the very people who had condemned Him. Where this chapter shows the righteous one standing with great boldness before those who affli…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom Who Sought Us First

This chapter shows Wisdom going out to meet those who desire her, arriving before the seeker even finishes searching, sitting at the door of the one who rises early. The gospel takes that picture and gives it a face. Paul calls Christ "the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in Him the One who is sought becomes the One who comes seeking, the Shepherd who goes after the sheep until He finds it. The chapter’s ladder, where desire leads to discipline, discipline to love,…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God Made Visible

No chapter in this book reaches toward Christ as directly as this one. When the New Testament writers searched for words to describe the Son, they reached for the very phrases of Wisdom 7. The chapter calls wisdom the brightness of eternal light and the express image of God’s goodness; Hebrews says the Son is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, upholding all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). The chapter says wisdom is the image of…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom of God, Given to Those Who Ask

This chapter sets Wisdom before us as a bride to be sought, a teacher of every virtue, a comfort in grief, and the source of a life beyond death - and then confesses that she cannot be seized by effort, only received as a gift from God. Each thread is drawn up in Christ. Paul calls Him the one "made unto us wisdom" from God (1 Corinthians 1:30) and "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24). The Wisdom by whom all things were ordered (Wisdom 8:1) is the…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom Sent Down From Heaven

This whole prayer aches for one thing: that the wisdom enthroned beside God, present at the making of the world, might be sent down from heaven to be with us and to heal us. The New Testament announces that this very longing has been answered. Paul names Christ "the wisdom of God" and says God made Him to be "wisdom" for us (1 Corinthians 1:24, 1:30). John says the Word who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made, "was made flesh, and dwelt among u…

Christ Connection - The Wisdom Who Went Down to Bring Us Up

The line that Wisdom "went down with him into the pit" and stayed in the bands "till she brought him the sceptre of the kingdom" tells, in advance, the shape of the gospel. Joseph - sold by his brothers for silver, falsely accused, cast into a pit and a prison, then raised to a throne to become the savior of many - is one of Scripture’s clearest foreshadowings of Christ. The New Testament names Jesus "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), the very…

Christ Connection - The Power That Chose Mercy, and the Rock That Was Christ

This chapter gathers up images that the New Testament gives to Christ. Paul, retelling the same wilderness story, says the people "drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4). The water drawn from hard stone becomes a sign of the living water Jesus offers, a spring welling up to everlasting life. The chapter’s deepest paradox, that God "hast mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things," finds its fullest picture in t…

Christ Connection - The Power That Stooped to Save

This chapter’s deepest claim, that true power expresses itself as mercy and that the Lord of all makes Himself gracious to all, finds its fullest picture in Christ. The One through whom all things were made (John 1:3) showed His power not by crushing His enemies but by laying down His life for them, and Paul calls this crucified Lord "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24). Where this chapter says God thinks it beneath His power to condemn the undese…

Christ Connection - The Image of the Invisible God

This chapter says the Creator "may be seen" through the greatness and beauty of what He has made, and it names Him the first author of beauty. The New Testament gathers that work into a Person. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3), and He is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created" (Colossians 1:15-16). Where Wisdom 13 says creation should lead the eye upw…

Christ Connection - Blessed Is the Wood

The chapter blesses the wood "by which justice cometh," praising the ark that carried the hope of the world safely through the waters of judgment. The New Testament reads the flood and its ark as a picture pointing forward: Peter says the eight souls "were saved by water," and adds, "the like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us... by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:20-21). The wood that bears salvation finds its fullest meaning at the cross, wh…

Christ Connection - The Word Through Whom We Were Made and Remade

This chapter turns on a single contrast: the God who "breathed into him a living spirit" against the idol that has no breath at all. Both halves of that contrast lead to Christ. The Scriptures say that all things were made through Him and that "in him was life" (John 1:3-4), so the breath the idol-maker forgot is breath that came through the Word of God. And where Wisdom mourns a maker who "knew not his maker," Christ is the One who makes the Maker known: "no man knoweth t…

Christ Connection - The Saviour of All and the Sign Lifted Up

This chapter takes the bronze serpent in the wilderness and reads it as a "sign of salvation," insisting that the healing came not from the object but from God, "the Saviour of all," whose word "healeth all things." Jesus took that very episode and made it a window into His own cross: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14-15). The patt…

Christ Connection - The Light the Darkness Cannot Master

This chapter sets a darkness that no fire can pierce against a world still full of clear light, and it shows fear as the surrender of everything reason should have held onto. Both reach toward Christ. John opens his Gospel by naming Him the light that "shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not" (John 1:5), the one light this chapter’s blackness could never have swallowed. Jesus said it of Himself: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not…

Christ Connection - The Word That Came Down from Heaven

No image in this chapter reaches toward Christ more directly than the almighty word that "leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne." Here God’s word is alive and personal, descending from the throne to do His will in the world. The New Testament takes that very language and lifts it to its fullest height. John writes that "in the beginning was the Word," that the Word "was with God, and the Word was God," and that this Word "was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:…

Christ Connection - The Greater Passing Through

This chapter gathers the Exodus into a single picture: God’s children pass safely through the sea, the whole creation is refashioned to bring them through, and a "new death" swallows the power that held them. The New Testament reaches back to this very moment and finds Christ in it. Paul writes that the fathers "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea" and that the rock which followed them "was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:1-4), reading the crossing as a bapt…