Saturday
Saturday
Grace and Giving
You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9
Grace is a synonym for generosity, and the Lord Jesus Christ has given us in his birth and death a superlative example of it. Consider these four stages. Firstly, he was rich, existing eternally in his heavenly riches, sharing his Father’s being and his rule over the created universe, immune to sin, pain, and death.
Secondly, he became poor. He not only “made himself nothing” and “humbled himself” (Phil. 2:7–8), but “we might even dare say that he beggared himself” (Handley Moule). He laid aside his royal splendor and became a servant. He was obedient unto death, even death on the cross.
Thirdly, he did it for poor sinners like us, whose poverty is seen in our having forfeited paradise and lost our fellowship with God.
Fourthly, it was to make us rich that he impoverished himself—rich with “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8), that is to say, with salvation in its fullness.
Thus the rich Christ became poor so that we in our poverty might become rich with his riches. Christ impoverished himself in order to enrich us. It is a beautiful statement of the gospel. But the most amazing thing about this text is its context. It is embedded in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, in which Paul is persuading the Greek churches to help relieve the poverty of the Judean church. Although he deploys an array of arguments in these two chapters, his trump card is the cross of Christ. It was because Christ gave himself to the uttermost that they too must learn to give. Authentic Christian giving is spontaneous, sacrificial, and symbolical. The latter was especially important to the apostle. For the collection he was organizing was no mere transfer of cash from Greece to Judea, and from the rich to the poor, but a gift from gentile churches to the Jewish church. Paul saw it as a wonderful opportunity to promote gentile-Jewish solidarity in the body of Christ. Our gifts also symbolize our support of the causes to which we give them.
For further reading: 2 Corinthians 8:1–9