Today's reading from his second letter to the Corinthians is not one of the best known passages Paul wrote, but it includes some important points that I'm going to try to bring out this morning. In a nutshell, Paul says here that the grace of God, the generous gift of God, that comes to us in Jesus Christ should transform us, so that we become generous givers ourselves, and our lives then reflect the grace of God that we have received. Paul applies this very practically: he encourages the Christians he's addressing to give generously to those who are in great need so that God's generous provision is more fairly, more equally, distributed among all his children.
The heart of this passage is verse 9, where Paul says to the Corinthians, and to us here today: "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." This is one of the most powerfully compact statements in Scripture about the story of Jesus and its meaning for us. If you take nothing else away from what I say today, take these words. Commit them to memory and let them sink in deeply, shaping heart and mind.
Paul speaks here, as so often, of the "grace" of Jesus Christ. By "grace" he means the generous gift of Jesus Christ: Jesus has done something for us he didn't have to do, something we didn't deserve, something he did for us out of generous love. What is it that Jesus did?
Paul says that although Jesus was rich he became poor to make us rich. Clearly, Paul isn't talking about money here. The New Testament never says Jesus made anyone financially rich. So how does he make us rich? The wealth Jesus gives is a sharing in his knowledge of the love of God, in this life and beyond. Jesus introduces us to the eternal love of the God he calls Father; that's how he makes us rich.
This is a wealth Jesus always had, but to share it with us he became poor, leaving behind the wealth of his eternal glory as the Son of God, sharing our poverty by coming into this world as a nobody, going all the way to the extreme deprivation, the nothingness, of death on the cross.
"Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor." This is Paul's big point here – his master-truth about God and Jesus and us – but it's vital to see that he makes this point as part of his response to a very practical issue in the lives of the churches. So what is this issue and how does Paul bring what he says about Jesus to bear on it?
It helps to understand that Paul refers here to Christians in three different places. First, he's addressing Christians in Corinth. At present they are doing fairly well financially – in verse 14 Paul says that they have "plenty". Paul's writing to them about a collection he's arranging for Christians in a second place, Jerusalem. Jerusalem isn't mentioned by name here, but we know from the New Testament more widely that this collection was for the church in Jerusalem, where there had been a severe famine. [See, for example: 1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8 and 9; Romans 15:22-32; Acts 24:17-18.] Paul also mentions Christians in a third place, Macedonia. The Macedonian Christians have been going through a hard time, but they are extraordinarily generous and they've already given a great deal to the suffering Christians of Jerusalem. Paul points to the Macedonians as an example to the wealthier Corinthians, who have not yet given to the collection for Jerusalem, although they've been talking about doing so.
So . . . Paul is writing to the relatively wealthy church in Corinth; he asks them to give to the church in Jerusalem; and he points to the generosity of the relatively poor church in Macedonia, hoping the church in Corinth will follow its example.
Paul says remarkable things about the Macedonians. In verse 2, he mentions the "very severe trial" that they've experienced; we don't know the details, but they've clearly been going through a very hard time. He also refers to their "extreme poverty". But the generosity of these poor people is astonishing. Paul says: "they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability" (v.3). They "urgently pleaded" to be able to give (v.4). Paul doesn't say how much they gave, because that's not his point. What matters is their attitude. They want to give. They see giving as a privilege, a joy.
Paul's experience of the poor Macedonians being so keen to give generously while he has to push the wealthier Corinthians to give is not an isolated case. It certainly rings bells with Helen and me and our experience of ministry in various places. One might expect that those who are wealthier give more, proportionately, than those who are poorer. But that simply doesn't follow. Jesus warns us that it is very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:25). St James asks: "Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith...?" (James 2:5) Frequently, the scriptures warn us that wealth can very easily blind us to spiritual realities and make it harder for us to respond with open-hearted joy and gratitude to the grace of God that comes to us in Jesus Christ. [Among many other examples, see 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19.]
For Paul, the extraordinary generosity of the Macedonians points to the reality of their relationship to God through Jesus Christ. By implication, the question he's raising with the Corinthians is whether their slowness to give points to a lack of reality, or a worrying superficiality, in their relationship to God. In the end, it's about grace. "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." The Macedonians understand exactly what Paul is saying here. They know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ; they know that he has made them rich – so rich that they can give and give and give. They may be poor in the eyes of the world, but the generous gift of Jesus Christ has made them generous givers. In contrast, if the Corinthians fail to give generously, maybe the grace, the generous gift of the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't mean much to them – or, perhaps, doesn't mean as much to them as it used to.
I hope it would be true for all of us here that we "know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ". If, frankly, those words don't mean much to you, but if you wish they did, then speak to me or Helen or someone else in this community who can help you embrace the truth Paul is describing here, or to step more fully into. But I hope that most of us, at least most of the time, would say that we do know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, though probably we would go on to say (as I would, certainly) that we do not always live as we should in the light, the joy and the transforming power of that knowledge. So much distracts our attention from the grace of God in Jesus Christ, even though that is the most important truth for every one of us to grasp and live by. Wealth, and all the cares it brings with it, is a big beast among those distractions, though there are many others. We must all guard our hearts and minds to keep them free of the kinds of distractions that stop us living with the grace of Jesus Christ at the centre of our lives; but if that grace is at the centre of our lives it will gradually shape us into generous givers ourselves.
There's one more very interesting and important thing in this passage to mention. In the last few lines Paul makes a further point, where he seems to be responding to a question or objection which he anticipates from the Corinthians. Maybe he thinks they might come back to him, asking: "OK, Paul, what are you really trying to achieve with all this? It feels like you want to bankrupt us! Where's this all going? What's your big plan?" In his response, Paul twice uses a word that's very important in today's world but is used rarely in the New Testament. That word is "equality", which we see in verses 13 and 14. [Other translations prefer "fair balance" or other words but "equality" is a good translation.] Paul says that the aim of the collection he's raising from the churches in Corinth, Macedonia and elsewhere for the poor church in Jerusalem is that there should be "equality" between them. He doesn't want the Corinthians or other churches to be plunged into poverty because they've given to support those who are struggling [see v. 13]. He wants to see mutual concern between the churches, reflected in a serious sharing of resources. He says to the Corinthians in verse 14 that at the moment they have plenty and can afford to help those who are in need; maybe the day will come when roles are reversed and others will give to support them when they are in need. It's a very practical outworking of something Paul says in another letter: "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2).
When Paul appeals to equality, he's in effect asking: Isn't this what the Church, the community of Jesus Christ should look like – not just in its life in one place but also more widely in the relationships between the churches around the world? One commentator writes that Paul sees equality here in terms of "generously giving away what we have in abundance to meet the needs of those who have less than enough". In other words, Paul "passionately believed in mutual interdependence in the international family of God." [David Prior, The Suffering and the Glory, 156] Or, one could ask: we believe that other Christians are our brothers and sisters in Christ, but do we actually relate to them as if they are brothers and sisters? That's a challenge we seek to address through the charitable giving of this church, some of which supports the work of churches in other parts of the world. That challenge never ends and we can always do more.
Back at the start of this service you may have wondered why I spoke to the children about fairness and unfairness. It should now be clear that I was prompted to do so by what Paul says about equality, and his longing to see the outworking in Christians of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, leading to generous giving, the bearing of one another's burdens, so that there is equality, a fair sharing among God's children of the wealth of resources that God has provided for us.
There hasn't been time this morning to go into the complexities of how we should understand equality and the many debates around it, both in the wider world and in the Church. One could easily fill a long study-session on such matters, and maybe the house-groups meeting this week will touch on some of them. But even if rather briefly, I do think it's important for us to notice this little-known passage where Paul appeals to equality and to reflect on its implications for our lives as Christians. Also very important is to see how, for Paul, what he says about equality arises from what he says about God – the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ. Paul sees everything against the backdrop of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. So when Paul becomes aware of the imbalanced distribution of resources among the churches he knew and served, and the great hardship faced by some of those churches, his response is to point to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. He became poor to make us rich. If that grace has taken hold of our hearts and minds and we are seeking to live our lives in response to it, then as we look around the world with all its massive inequalities, and around the churches which also reflect those massive inequalities, we surely cannot fail to see how unfair this is, how unjust, how unequal, how opposed to God's good and loving purposes for all people. And we will pray, and give, and act as those who believe in the grace, the generous gift, of our Lord Jesus Christ.
David Marshall