2 Corinthians 8:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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2 Corinthians 8:9

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This is about the work of Christ and his grace to us; his undeserved, unearned kindness and compassion to us in salvation. It is about his work – though he was rich, he became poor. In what sense? He suffered and died on Calvary to atone for our sins. He lived a perfect righteous life on earth: perfect obedience; he humbled himself; he made himself a servant, a representative of us, obeying the law, obeying God in every respect. His perfect righteousness not only qualified him to be our atoning Lamb, our Scapegoat, the one who would suffer on our behalf, but it was offered up for us. His perfect righteousness earns heaven for us. ‘He was rich.’ Christ the eternal, the sum of all perfection; rich in perfection, rich in power, rich in knowledge, infinite knowledge and wisdom; rich in possessing all the divine prerogatives or rule and authority and judgement. The self-existent one – how can you richer than that? To need no fuel, no energy input, no help from anybody but to be eternally subsisting in yourself as God. Rich in possessions, he surveys the universe and considers it a very little thing, that is how rich Christ is. He made all the gold. Rich in honour and glory: worshipped by the angelic hosts, praised and obeyed night and day.‘He became poor.’ With what amazement the angelic host saw the Creator of all things and the judge of all the earth, descending and projecting himself into a woman’s womb and taking on human flesh? With a mixture of certainty that God could make no mistake and wonder that he should do something so seemingly inconsistent with his glory, they observed him becoming our representative, submitting to poverty and humiliation, allowing himself to be abused, and in apparent weakness arrested crucified and slain. The Creator of all worlds is born and goes into a stable. They saw the contras between how he was honoured on his heavenly throne and how men doubted, scorned, mocked and hated him. The Creator of all the oceans and the water courses drinking from a well! He humbled himself for us, washing the feet of the disciples, being spat upon and scourged and insulted. He never gave up the possession of his divinity but he gave up the exercise and the use of his divine power. Sometimes in the working of miracles he displayed a little bit of it but for himself and his own comforts he surrendered it all in order that he could be our representative, our sin bearer, our Saviour.

Application

People don’t understand these things. You read in the books of the atheists, Professor Richard Dawkins and others. An atoning death, that Christ should come and die on Calvary and the Father should punish the Son instead of us? They all use the same terminology. They think they are so clever, they copy from each other – that makes God the Father a cosmic child abuser, they say. Absurd things like that. They like this word ‘cosmic’; you pick it up in all the books as they copy each other. People read one of the books, they think, this man’s very clever, they read the others and they are all saying the same thing. Whatever they may know about other things, they know nothing about religion. The God of the Bible is so distorted; it is not the God we see in the Bible at all.

Have you been made rich by Christ through his suffering and death? Do you believe in his atoning death? Have you repented of your sin? Have you given yourselves entirely to him? Why, we are poverty stricken! Maybe not in money, though most of us are not wealthy in this world, but certainly poverty stricken in righteousness. We have nothing to present before God. We are selfish, fallen, sinful people. We lack spiritual life unless God gives it to us through conversion. We are poverty stricken in terms of acceptance. We have no acceptance with God, we have no heavenly home, we have no right or access to him. Yet through his humiliating himself and making an atonement for us, we gain infinite righteousness. God deals with us as though we had never sinned because Christ has stood in our place. We have infinite life – life now, life that will go on eternally. We have acceptance with God; we have a heavenly home.

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2 Corinthians 8:9 Commentary and Bible Study