2 Cor.8:9 – 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.
If I had to pick the greatest overstatement of all time it would have to be this one today, “Christ became poor that I might become rich”. In order to understand the immensity of this statement you would have to understand the riches of God that Christ enjoyed from eternity with His Father. If you are talking about physical riches then we can start there. Jesus is actually the Creator of all things therefore the owner of all things. That statement is impossible for our minds to grasp because the universe He created is past comprehension. If you are speaking of other riches there is nothing that compares to the wealth found in the love of God. Jesus has enjoyed an intimacy with the Father from eternity, this is His greatest treasure. It’s not that He lost the Father’s love when He became a man but it obviously changed. He was not able to enjoy the same completeness of that treasure in His humanity. This is why Paul said He became poor, He gave up His rights as God when He became a man. Why did He do this? So that He might enrich us. Here is how Augustine describes this.
“What human being could know all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ and concealed under the poverty of his humanity? For, “being rich, he became poor for our sake that by his poverty we might become rich.” When he assumed our mortality and overcame death, he manifested himself in poverty, but he promised riches though they might be deferred; he did not lose them as if they were taken from him. How great is the multitude of his sweetness which he hides from those who fear him but which he reveals to those that hope in him! For we understand only in part until that which is perfect comes to us. To make us worthy of this perfect gift, he, equal to the Father in the form of God, became like to us in the form of a servant and refashions us into the likeness of God.”
So Jesus became poor that we might become rich. How have I become rich? Sure, He blesses me with His abundance in this life but that is just a small token of what He has purchased for me. We are heirs with Him, the universe is ours as well as the fellowship Jesus has with the Father, that is our inheritance. Heaven will be better than any of us can imagine; it will take eternity to explore the riches of His love that we have received in Christ.
