2 COR 8:9 nkjv
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.
8:9 It is at this point that the Apostle Paul introduces one of the greatest verses in this grand letter. Against a background of the petty circumstances of life in Macedonia and in Corinth he paints a lovely portrait of the most generous Person who ever lived.
The word grace is used in a variety of ways in the NT, but here the meaning is unmistakably that of generosity. How generous was the Lord Jesus? He was so generous that He gave all He had for our sakes that we through His poverty might become eternally rich.
Moorehead comments:
He was rich in possessions, power, homage, fellowship, happiness. He became poor in station, circumstances, in His relations with men. We are urged to give a little money, clothing, food. He gave Himself.
This verse teaches the pre-existence of the Lord Jesus. When was He rich? Certainly not when He came into the world as the Babe of Bethlehem! And certainly not during His thirty-three years of wandering “as a homeless stranger in the world His hands had made.†He was rich in a bygone eternity, dwelling with the Father in the courts of heaven. But He became poor. This refers not only to Bethlehem but to Nazareth, Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha. And it was all for our sakes, that we through His poverty might become rich in him, not money.
If this is true, and it certainly is, then it should be our greatest joy to give all that we are and have to Him. No argument could be more forceful than this in the midst of Paul’s discussion of Christian giving.