“For Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.”
(2nd Corinthians 8:9)

---

“For Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What is this grace? Favours freely given of God to sinners who are utterly unworthy, undeserving of the least mercy and blessing of Almighty God. Why? Because we have all sinned, we have come short of the glory of God. We have gone our own way. In us there is nothing to merit God’s favour, blessing, esteem, love; no worthiness in us. We are lost in the Adam fall, defiled at birth, full of sin, drenched with it, defiled with it. I need not enlarge; it is a solemn truth.

The angels that fell from glory for pride, there is no salvaton for them. God is holy; none can say He is unjust. Those angels, wicked, fallen, the devil, Satan, the accuser of the brethren, shall be cast into hell for ever and ever. Then why not all mankind? “Because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” These favours, these blessings, how are they to come, what blessings are they? These blessings, these favours from heaven are spiritual. All mankind, the wicked as well as the godly, receive of the good blessings of God in providence, but we are speaking of soul blessings, spiritual blessings, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” love, love revealed in the sacrifice on the cross. The sacrifice being none other than Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God.

“For Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich.” We cannot speak of the glory to be; we cannot speak fully of the glory in eternity past. “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Philippians 2:6). The Ancient of Days, the eternal Son of God, He who upholdeth all things, the Creator of the ends of the earth who fainteth not, neither is weary. Omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. “Though He was rich, yet for your sakes…”

You who know this grace, you who are loved with an everlasting love, you for whom the Saviour died, you whose names are in His book, you who one day will be in glory.

“For your sakes He became poor,” walked this earth, tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin. Poor, despised, rejected of men, weary, suffered pain, burdened, hungered, tried, deserted, lonely. At the cross they parted His garments and cast lots. Would these have been His only earthly possessions that Jesus Christ had when they crucified Him on the cross?

“Poor.” The Lamb of God to suffer. This word in one of the prophetical Psalms speaks of Christ. “I am a worm, and no man” (Psalm 22:6). He stooped so low, came down to this sin-drenched earth, to go to that cross to suffer for sins.

“For Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.”

“He poured out His soul unto death.”
(Isaiah 53:12)

“Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”
(Galatians 3:13)

“Away with Him, away with Him; crucify Him, crucify Him.”
(Mark 15:13-14; Luke 23:21)

The language of the world today!

“We will not have this Man to reign over us.”
(Luke 19:14)

Accounted as the chiefest of malefactors, cast out of the city of Jerusalem, not accounted worthy to die within the city walls, but He was taken out into the place were the refuse was carried and where the worst of criminals were put to death and there He was numbered among the transgressors, that through His sufferings and death, you might be rich.

---

Clement Wood