2 Corinthians 8:9
New American Standard Bible (1995)
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
1 Context and Background
In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul encouraged the Church in Corinth to be generous in their giving, and gave as an example the open-handedness of the Macedonian Church. Paul says to the Corinthians, “You ought to give the way the Macedonians give. They show their love in their giving; you need to manifest yours in your giving the way they did.”
Now the subject of giving is often a controversial issue which might not appeal to some, especially when Church leaders appeal for money. There is more to this, however, than meets the eye because the teaching of our Lord Jesus about giving, is more than just fund raising. The love of our Lord is manifest in the act of giving.
Paul cites the Macedonian Church as a model for giving which he hopes the Corinthian Christians will emulate. This is the context in which he delivered the passage in 2 Corinthians 8:9. And here the good Apostle went even beyond the Macedonian example and reminded them of even the surpassing, magnificent and perfect example of our Lord when it comes to giving.
2 Knowing the Grace of our Lord and what he did for our sake.
And so, he says in verse 9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” Jesus wanted to make us rich. And in order to make us rich, he had to make Himself poor.
In verse 9, he begins by saying, “For you know.”
A Christian is supposed to know and understand the Lord’s example. Every Christian knows Christ came down and gave his life. We all know that He was rich, yet He left His Heavenly Realm. We know that He became poor in order that we might be made rich. We know that. And that should be the great motivation, which should teach us on the subject of giving. The Lord’s example, and His magnanimous self-giving.
So, Paul has just said, in verse 8, that love expresses itself in generous giving, and Christ, he says in verse 9, is the single greatest example of that. And we know it, he says. A person who comes to Christ knows what the Lord did for him. That is at the heart of the gospel.
“You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here Paul points out that the Lord’s act of giving is described as “grace giving”. And in the level of generosity all free-will giving is grace giving. It is not duty; it is not obligation, it is not a fixed percentage, it is not a tithe, it is not an amount, it is spontaneous giving, whatever is in the heart. It is grace giving, not compelled, not grudging, not of necessity, but outflowing will to give. And that’s how Christ gave.
Christ gave purely out of love, mercy, grace, and kindness. It was unmerited, spontaneous kindness to undeserving sinners. And it is the action of the Savior that defines grace giving at its highest.
3 The Riches of Christ
Then St. Paul went on to affirm the riches of our Lord. He was rich; He made Himself, that we might become rich.
That’s unsurpassed magnanimity. That is generous. There is no question some rich people out of generosity, help poor people. But rarely, if ever, do rich people make themselves poor in order for the poor to exchange places with them. Rich people give out of their riches; they don’t impoverish themselves in the process normally. They normally give and are no poorer for the giving. But the Lord Jesus Christ became poor, that we might be made rich. That the Lord is rich is not doubtful. It’s expressed in the statement “that though He was rich.”
When we talk about the riches of Christ, what are we talking about? Are we talking about earthly material wealth? No. It’s only part of it. What we’re talking about here refers to His eternal glory. It is about the eternity of Christ or the eternality of Christ, or the preexistence of Christ. He is a member of the eternal Trinity. And the eternity of Christ, or the eternality of Christ, is the most important truth in all of Christology. The Lord Jesus Christ is rich because he is eternal. And the word rich is not even a close comparison.
There was never a moment when Jesus Christ did not exist. That is the most crucial truth in Christology.
He is the eternal God, not dependent on any other for His existence, not even on God the Father. He is self-existent and eternal. Jesus Christ, then, was rich, and He was as rich as the eternal God is rich. And that’s all we need to say about His riches. He is because He is God. He is the eternal God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
In John 1, it tells us the Word is Christ, and it tells us about the Word, that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In John 10:30, He says, “I and the Father are one.” In Colossians 1, He is the premier one, He is the supreme one, He is the one above all others who is called the image or the representation of the invisible God. Colossians 2:9, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Deity.” Hebrews 1:3, He is the express image of God.
So, He is the eternal God. He is as rich as God is rich. God owns everything. He owns the universe and all that is in it. He owns all power, and all authority, and all sovereignty, and all glory, and all honor, and all majesty, and all that is created and uncreated. The wealth of our Lord Jesus is beyond comprehension. It’s is boundless; it is infinite. He is infinite. He is rich in the sense that He is God and as rich as God is rich, possessing eternity and all that it contains.
4 The Poverty of Christ
“Yet for our sake He became poor.” For our sake He became poor. What does this mean?
This passage is often commonly interpreted as speaking of the earthly economic poverty of our Lord Jesus. I remember in my Sunday School Class as a child, our teacher would say our Lord was poor, a lowly carpenter. Ever since, I have this picture of the Lord as a poor man coming from a poor family. Some Christians often incline to romanticize the poor background of our Lord. So let’s disabuse our mind a bit. The New Testament record does not say that our Lord was poor economically except for the record that he was born into an average human family. No question He was on the side of the poor judging from His teaching and healing ministry. Nowhere in the passage of Scripture does it mention of the low economic status of the Lord, which some Christian thinkers believe we should emulate. Some Bible Commentators believe that the compelling force of the gospel is found in the dire poverty in which Jesus lived, as if eliciting sympathy for His poverty had some redemptive virtue. There is no question the Lord pitied the poor, the sick, and the oppressed.
Our text 2 Corinthians 8:9 says nothing about the economic condition of Jesus. Jesus – listen – didn’t make us rich by becoming economically poor. The gospel of salvation cannot be equated with the earthly financial or economic status of Jesus. The message is this: The Lord became poor in the sense that God had to become a man, human. That’s the impoverishing here. That is the poverty spoken of here.
What was the poverty of Jesus? The incarnation. Though rich he became poor. He became poor when He being God, was born of a woman, Galatians 4:4; when He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, Romans 8:3; when He had to come to the cross, Colossians 1:20; when the Word became flesh, John 1:14; when He was made for a little while lower than the angels, Hebrews 2:7; when He was manifested in the flesh, 1 Timothy 3:16 – that was the issue. He laid aside the free exercise of all of His Heavenly Majestic power and prerogatives. He took on human form. It is in this context that he became poor.
Consider Philippians chapter 2 verse 6, “Who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself” – He emptied Himself – “taking the form of a slave, and being made in the likeness of men.”
That’s the poverty of Jesus. “And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” He became poor because he emptied himself, by taking the form of human flesh.
His riches was the glory He had before the world was made. His riches was being in the form of God and being equal with God, being God – a very God. His becoming poor was emptying Himself.
The poverty of Christ is His incarnation. And He came all the way down –to death and the most ignominious death on cross.
So, the eternal God, rich, becomes poor, humbled into human flesh, killed, executed, at the cross.
5 Through his poverty we might become rich
We have seen the riches of Christ, the poverty of Christ, and thirdly, the purpose of Christ.
The purpose is clear: that we through His poverty, might become rich. All of that for our sake. To make poor sinners Spiritually rich. Yes. Eternally rich? Rich with the same riches that he possessed and possesses. Rich in salvation, forgiveness, joy, peace, life, light, glory. Rich in honor. Rich in majesty. We are so rich we are called joint heirs with Christ. We are promised an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled that fades not away, laid up for us in heaven. In fact, we’re so poor, poor in spirit and the Lord came to make us rich in salvation as children of God, adopted into his family. We are rich in position. We are rich in privilege. We are rich in relationship. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
It was by His self-imposed and willing poverty that Jesus made us rich. This self-emptying, this self-sacrificing love by which we are so blessed and for which we are so thankful is exactly, Paul says, the motivation for our giving. This is the ideal standard of giving. The genuineness of our giving is an act of emptying.
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