Monday Meditation
January 25, 2016
From the desk of A.J. Higgins
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
“Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ … He became poor”
2 Corinthians 8:9
Amidst Paul’s exhortation to the saints in Corinth to make good on their promised intention to send relief for the poor believers in Jerusalem, is embedded one of those pearls of Scripture which yield a continuous stream of wonder and worship. As he recounts the self-impoverishing stoop of Christ, he tells of:
Knowing the Unknowable: “Ye know,” is how he begins his incredible statement. And yet we must all confess that to grasp the measure of the full display of that grace is beyond our abilities. We are confronted with an ocean which cannot be measured; of depths never plumbed and heights never scaled. We have no earthly measuring rod with which to compare such grace. While we cannot fathom the dimensions of this grace, we can stand in awe at its display. “We know,” and yet we cannot possibly know.
Measuring the Immeasurable: “Though being rich,” confronts us once again with a statement which transcends human capability to calculate. In what did His riches consist? In His life, He was rich in goodness as He went about doing good. He was rich in His grace; it was recorded of Him that He was full of “grace and truth” (John 1:14). There was no poverty of grace in Him! Romans speaks of God being rich in forbearance and longsuffering (Rom 2:4). There can be no doubt that as we trace the pathway of the Lord Jesus, He continued to be rich in these virtues as well. We read elsewhere of God being “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4); this same wealth marked the Son in His dealings with men.
We are reminded of the riches of His wisdom (Rom 11:33) which He displayed, and of the “riches of glory” that dwell with Him (Rom 9:23). He was rich. His wealth was not only the “cattle on a thousand hills” and the “earth . and its fullness,” but consisted of the inherent glories of moral perfection.
Tracing the Untraceable: “He became poor.” If during His life, He continued to display the moral virtues which mark deity, and to display them in all their undiminished fullness, in what then did His poverty consist? Was it merely the peasant home in Nazareth? The humble trade as a carpenter? The common people with whom He companied? Or was it the divesting of Himself of the outward display of glory that had been His eternally, moving among men and being viewed as the despised man from Nazareth; being referred to as “the carpenter” or accused of being possessed of demons? Didn’t his poverty consist in the scenes of shame and mockery, humiliation and reproach He endured? And what of His cross and shame, suffering and death? He was numbered with transgressors, while being the Lord of glory?
Calculating the Incalculable: “That we through His poverty might be made rich.” How rich are we? We are co-heirs with Christ. We have been made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). We are told by Peter that we are being reserved for an “inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not away.” Paupers have been made princes; beggars have been blessed with all the wealth God could heap upon us.
Consider:
Can you think of other ways in which the Lord was rich and which He laid aside to become poor?
Look up other Scriptures which speak of our wealth and contrast them with His poverty.
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