'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.'--2 COR. viii. 9.
The Apostle has been speaking about a matter which, to us, seems very
small, but to him was very great viz., a gathering of pecuniary help
from the Gentile churches for the poor church in Jerusalem. Large
issues, in his estimation, attended that exhibition of Christian unity,
and, be it great or small, he applies the highest of all motives to this
matter. 'For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He
was rich yet for your sakes He became poor.' The trivial things of life
are to be guided and shaped by reference to the highest of all things,
the example of Jesus Christ; and that in the whole depth of His
humiliation, and even in regard to His cross and passion. We have here
set forth, as the pattern to which the Christian life is to be
conformed, the deepest conception of what our Lord's career on earth
was.
The whole Christian Church is about to celebrate the nativity of our
Lord at this time. This text gives us the true point of view from which
to regard it. We have here the work of Christ in its deepest motive,
'The grace of our Lord Jesus.' We have it in its transcendent
self-impoverishment, 'Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became
poor.' We have it in its highest issue, 'That ye through His poverty
might become rich.' Let us look at those points.
I. Here we have the deepest motive which underlies the whole work of
Christ, unveiled to us.
'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Every word here is
significant. It is very unusual in the New Testament to find that
expression 'grace' applied to Jesus Christ. Except in the familiar
benediction, I think there are only one or two instances of such a
collocation of words. It is 'the grace of God' which, throughout the New
Testament, is the prevailing expression. But here 'grace is attributed
to Jesus'; that is to say, the love of the Divine heart is, without
qualification or hesitation, ascribed to Him. And what do we mean by
grace? We mean love in exercise to inferiors. It is infinite
condescension in Jesus to love. His love stoops when it embraces us.
Very significant, therefore, is the employment here of the solemn full
title, 'the Lord Jesus Christ,' which enhances the condescension by
making prominent the height from which it bent. The 'grace' is all the
more wonderful because of the majesty and sovereignty, to say the least
of it, which are expressed in that title, the Lord. The highest stoops
and stands upon the level of the lowest. 'Grace' is love that expresses
itself to those who deserve something else. And the deepest motive,
which is the very key to the whole phenomena of the life of Jesus
Christ, is that it is all the exhibition, as it is the consequence, of a
love that, stooping, forgives. 'Grace' is love that, stooping and
forgiving, communicates its whole self to unworthy and transgressing
recipients. And the key to the life of Jesus is that we have set forth
in its operation a love which is not content to speak only the ordinary
language of human affection, or to do its ordinary deeds, but is
self-impelled to impart what transcends all other gifts of human
tenderness, and to give its very self. And so a love that condescends, a
love that passes by unworthiness, is turned away by no sin, is unmoved
to any kind of anger, and never allows its cheek to flush or its heart
to beat faster, because of any provocation and a love that is content
with nothing short of entire surrender and self-impartation underlies
all that precious life from Bethlehem to Calvary.
But there is another word in our text that may well be here taken into
consideration. 'For your sakes,' says the Apostle to that Corinthian
church, made up of people, not one of whom had ever seen or been seen by
Jesus. And yet the regard to them was part of the motive that moved the
Lord to His life, and His death. That is to say, to generalise the
thought, this grace, thus stooping and forgiving and self-imparting, is
a love that gathers into its embrace and to its heart all mankind; and
is universal because it is individualising. Just as each planet in the
heavens, and each tiny plant upon the earth, are embraced by, and
separately receive, the benediction of that all-encompassing arch of the
heaven, so that grace enfolds all, because it takes account of each.
Whilst it is love for a sinful world, every soul of us may say: 'He
loved me, and'--therefore--'gave Himself for me.' Unless we see beneath
the sweet story of the earthly life this deep-lying source of it all, we
fail to understand that life itself. We may bring criticism to bear upon
it; we may apprehend it in diverse affecting, elevating, educating
aspects; but, oh! brethren, we miss the blazing centre of the light, the
warm heart of the fire, unless we see pulsating through all the
individual facts of the life this one, all-shaping, all-vitalising
motive; the grace--the stooping, the pardoning, the self-communicating,
the individualising, and the universal love of Jesus Christ.