What does it mean that "he became poor for our sakes" (2 Corinthians 8:9)?

"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he being rich became poor, in order that ye by his poverty might become rich. And I give an opinion in this, for this is profitable for you who began before not only the doing, but also to be willing a year ago. But now also complete the doing, that even as the readiness of the willing [was there], so also the completing [may be] out of what ye have. For if the readiness be there, [one is] accepted according to what he may have, not according to what he has not. For [it is] not that others [should have] ease and you distress, but on equality: at the present time your abundance for their lack, that their abundance also should be for your lack, so that there should be equality; as it is written, He that [gathered] much had nothing over, and he that [gathered] little had no lack." (Vers. 9-15.)

The parenthesis of verse 9 is eminently instructive, not only for that which would act powerfully on the Corinthians as on all saints who appreciate the grace of our Lord, but as a sample of the way the Spirit of God turns what was in Christ to every exigency of the individual or of the church. Nor does any other motive act with equal power in holiness. And it could not be otherwise; for who or what can compare with Christ? To His grace, though it be really immeasurable, two measures are applied, the infinite glory of His person in itself, and the depth of humiliation to which He submitted for us. "For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he being rich became poor, in order that ye by his poverty might be made rich." Wealth consists in fulness of means and resources, and poverty in their utter lack. As a divine person our Lord had no need for Himself, and all things at command for others absolutely. He was rich indeed, yet for our sakes became poor, not in the letter only but in spirit to the uttermost. See the picture summed up in Philippians 2, and expanded or detailed in all the Gospels, the perfect pattern of One who hung in dependence on His Father and never used a single thing for Himself throughout His career. He waited on and lived on account of the Father; it was His meat to do His will and finish His work. He had no motive but the one of pleasing His Father, whatever the cost. The fast of forty days in the wilderness was doubtless a special scene of trial which ushered in His public ministry; but it was His ordinary life to count on the care of God while doing His work without an anxiety on the one hand, and on the other without independent resources. But His poverty went down into depths unfathomable in the cross when giving His life for the sheep. I do not speak merely of His garments parted among them and of their casting lots upon His vesture, image though it was of extreme and helpless destitution. Deeper elements were there than man's eye saw, when all forsook Him and fled. God forsook Him too — His God. What remained then? Nothing but the unsparing judgment of our sins. Was He not the "poor man" then as none other was, never morally so high, yet never so abject, and this not circumstantially alone but in all the unspeakable abandonment of that hour? As He said prophetically in Psalm 22, "I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men and despised of the people … I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death."

This marvellous verse is an epitome of the New Testament. "Though He was rich," carries us back into the depths of His Godhead glory before His incarnation; the glory that is unfolded in the opening verses of John's Gospel and elsewhere. "Yet for your sakes He became poor," opens out into the wonderful story of His life, sufferings and death, as recorded in all four Gospels. "That ye through His poverty might be rich," indicates the wealth of blessing and glory into which we are introduced by Him and in Him, as unfolded in the Epistles and the Revelation. And the whole story is the supreme expression of GRACE; which consists in the down-stooping of Divine love to meet man's need, not merely according to the need that is met, but according to the love that meets it.

Having used this grace as a powerful lever to move and uplift the hearts of the Corinthians, the Apostle turned to enunciate a few important principles that are to govern the Christian in his giving. In the first place, we are to give out of that which we have; not that which we used to have, or that which we hope to have in the future. We are to live and act in the present, trusting in God as regards the future.

This illustration has been given. There is a mighty prince who, by his birth, has come into possession of vast treasures and estates. These he has by natural inheritance. They are his because of who he is. But he goes forth as a warrior, and, conquering everywhere, wins additional wealth and glory such as he would never have possessed had he remained at home. What he has done secures him these. Now he has a two-fold glory — one essential and the other acquired. And thus it is with Jesus. As the eternal Son of the Father, He has a glory all His own. It is His essential Godhead glory in which no creature can have part. But as Man in this world He has won honors, glories and riches such as He can and does share with His own redeemed and loved ones. Such are the riches He has won. And with these "great riches" He enriches all who trust Him as their Saviour. "All things are yours," the apostle says. Again he says, "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. 8:9). "He was rich," it says, yet for our sakes "He became poor." Now, how, it may be asked, did Jesus become poor? He became poor in several ways. He was poor in this world's goods. His parents were poor. At His circumcision they took advantage of the special provision made "in the law of the Lord" for the poor. Too poor to afford a lamb, they offered in its stead "a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons" (Luke 2:24; Lev. 12:8). He was a carpenter's son, without an education (John 7:15). And on one occasion He did not possess a penny, even. He had to say, "Show Me a penny" (Luke 20:24). As He went about fulfilling His ministry, "certain women" "ministered to Him of their substance" (Luke 8:2-3). And His poverty continued to the very end. His coat, for which the soldiers gambled, was such as only the poorest wore. "It was without seam, woven from the top throughout" (John 19:23). So literally He was poor. And He became poor in another sense, too. He was the rightful heir to the throne of Israel, yet (for a time) He gave it up, that we poor Gentiles, through His poverty, might be made forever rich. The wealthiest of men are wretchedly poor without Christ. And the saint, possessing Christ (and with Him everything), is immensely rich, even though compelled to toil for daily bread.

Christ had riches before He came into this world, but in wondrous grace, for our sakes "He became poor," that we through His poverty might become rich. These riches were His in the form of God, riches of glory beyond all human thought; and in this world He was indeed poor, with no place to lay His head; then descending into the depths of poverty on the cross. Coming out of death He has "unsearchable riches"; riches given to Him as Man by His God and Father, but which He has procured by His death.

To all outward appearances the Son of God was poor, and He had indeed become poor, for although the possessor of all, and the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Him, He never used His divine resources to alleviate the circumstances of poverty into which He had come.

Laying aside the conditions in which He had been eternally rich, with ten thousand times ten thousand angels waiting to carry out His every command, the Son of God became poor that we through His poverty might be rich. No human mind can possibly conceive how rich He was, nor can any human heart fathom the depths of poverty into which His holy soul entered when, on the cross, He bore our sins, and was made sin for us.

And how rich He has made us! Already He has brought us near to His God and Father where, in relationship with Him, we have been enriched by the riches of His grace. Soon the Lord Jesus will call us hence to be His companions in the bright glory of His kingdom and in the deep joys and divine affections of the Father's House. All the blessings of the kingdom, and all that has been prepared for us for all eternity, according to the counsels of God, we shall owe to Him who was rich, but who for our sakes became poor.

There is no need to ask the question, When was the Lord Jesus rich? for every true believer knows that it was when He was in the form of God. In John 1:3 it is written, “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” The human mind cannot grasp the immensity of the wealth that belonged to the Son of God before His entry into this world. In one sense it still all belonged to Him, for He had still the right and title to all as the creator of all, but He had laid all aside, and had become Man, a real man in all that pertained to manhood, apart from sin. Born into this world in circumstances of poverty, the Lord Jesus spoke of Himself as having not where to lay His head. He was the appointed Heir of all things as Son of God, He was the heir to the throne of David, and as Son of Man He will yet be the Head and Centre of the vast universe, yet He had nothing while here, having to say, “Show me a penny,” not possessing one. All things were at His disposal, and He used them for the blessing of others, but He did not use these infinite resources to provide for Himself, or to relieve His hunger, His weariness or His thirst.

In verse 9 he reminds them of the supreme Example of sacrifice, He whose grace led Him to come from the place of infinite glory and riches, to become poor in a world of sorrow and need, not only in His life of lowly grace and kindness toward men, but in going to the utter extremity of poverty, in bearing alone the dread judgment of God against our sins at Calvary. Here was the grace that willingly gave up His own riches; and indeed gave Himself, in order that we might be enriched beyond all human imagination. No legal obligation is involved here at all, but pure, real love, the voluntary willingness to do His Father's will, for the sake of the blessing of those who deserved nothing. Can we rightly appreciate such grace as this without being moved with desire to willingly help those who are in need?

Rich, indeed, both was and is the Lord, who had called them by His grace; and to what an unmeasured depth of poverty did He abase Himself, that they and we might share the blessings of His wealth! But to expatiate on this is here impossible. The wealth of the believer is the Lord Himself. His grace is apparent in His acts, and we should thence infer His love. The one is our salvation, the other, the unending joy and meditation of the saved (Acts 15:11; Eph. 3:18-19). The one may and must be known to all who are its objects; the other passes knowledge, though searchable indefinitely by the saints, in the enabling power of the Spirit (Eph. 3:19; 1 Cor. 2:10). And while God's saints are occupied in spirit with that which is unsearchable, and are living daily on the bread of God, the new commandment is no longer a neglected duty, but becomes, as it was to them of Macedonia, an object of intense desire. We may note also here, the appropriate force of the apostle's language: he does not say, "for our sakes," but, "for yours;"for he is not setting forth as a preacher the doctrine of salvation, but helping and admonishing those who already have believed through grace. General statements of doctrine are the fulcrum of our faith; especial applications of the same doctrine are the proper aliment of love (Gal. 2:16-20).

2 Corinthians 8:9 which tells us that He became poor, also tells us why He became poor, “that ye through His poverty might be rich.” How wonderful the grace of the Lord Jesus that caused Him to stoop to such poverty for our sakes. On rising from the dead He ascended into heaven, and the Spirit of God has come from heaven to tell us of the riches that belong to Him as Man in the place that God His Father has given Him at His right hand, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8), and it is as associated with Him who has these unsearchable riches that we have become rich. These are heavenly riches, things “which God ordained before the world for our glory…prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:7–9).

And O, what infinite wealth has come to us through His great poverty! We have been enriched in righteousness, in eternal life, in holiness, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, in sonship, in the possession of all things, in union with Christ, in fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ, and in the hour of His coming again to find our eternal home with Him in the Father's house, where we shall see Him as He is, and be like Him, to the eternal satisfaction and delight, not only of our hearts, but of the heart of the Father and the Son.