9.
"See that ye abound in this grace also, for ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor." Every branch and leaf and blossom of the mightiest oak derives its life from the same strong root that bears the stem. The life in the tiniest bud is the same as in the strongest branch. We are branches in Christ the Living Vine; the very life that lived and worked in Him. Of what consequence that we should know well what His life is, that we may intelligently and willingly yield to it. Here we have one of its deepest roots laid open; "Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich." To enrich and bless us, He impoverished Himself. That was why the widow"s mite pleased Him so; her gift was of the same measure as His: "She cast in all she had."
This is the life and grace that seeks to work in us; there is no other mould in which the Christ-life can be cast. "See that ye abound _in this grace_ also; for ye know _the grace_ of our Lord Jesus, that he became poor." How little did the Macedonian Christians know that they were, in their deep poverty, and in the riches of their liberality, giving beyond their power, just acting out what the Spirit and grace of Jesus was working in them. How little we would have expected that the simple gift of these poor people would become the text of such high and holy and heart-searching teaching. How much we need to pray that the Holy Spirit may so master our purses and our possessions, that the grace of our giving shall, in some truly recognizable degree, be the reflection of our Lord"s. And how we need to bring our giving to the cross, and to seek Christ"s death to the world and its possessions as the power for ours. So will we make others rich through our poverty, and our life be somewhat like St. Paul"s: "poor, yet making many rich."
_6. The Grace of G.o.d works in us not only the willing, but the doing._ (v. 10.)
"You were the first to make a beginning a year ago, not only to do, but also to will. But now complete the doing also; that as there was the readiness to will, so there may be the performance also." We all know what a gulf in the Christian life there often is between the willing and the doing. This prevails in the matter of giving, too. How many long for a time when they may be better off and able to give more. And meantime that wish, the fancied willingness to give more, deceives them, and is made to do duty for present liberality. How many who have the means, and intend doing something liberal, yet hesitate, and the large donation during life, or the legacy in the will, is never carried out. How many count themselves really liberal, because of what they _will_, while what they _do_, even up to their present means, is not what G.o.d would love to see. The message comes to all: "Now complete the doing also; that as the readiness to will, so the completion also, out of your ability."
"It is G.o.d which worketh in us to will and to do"; let us beware, in any sphere, of hindering Him by unbelief or disobedience, and resting in the _to will_, without going on to the _to do_. The Christian life needs exercise; it is by practice that G.o.dliness grows. If in anything we find that our giving has not been up to this Scripture model, not as liberal and joyful, not in as perfect accord with the spirit of our entire surrender to our Lord, or of His making himself poor for us, let us at once, in addition to the readiness to will, complete the doing also.
_7. The Grace of G.o.d makes the gift acceptable according to what a man has._ (v. 12.)
"For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according as a man hath, not according as he hath not." The G.o.d who seeth the heart, judges of each gift by the ability to give. And His blessed Spirit gives the upright heart the blessed consciousness that the gift on earth has found approval and acceptance in heaven. G.o.d has been careful in His Word to teach us this in every possible way. All the world"s judgments of the value of gifts are reversed in heaven; the love that gives liberally according to what it hath is met by the Father"s love from above. Let us seek to redeem our giving from all that is commonplace and little by taking hold of the blessed a.s.surance: it is acceptable. Let us refuse to give what appears to satisfy us: let us pause, and rejoice in G.o.d"s call to give, and in His Spirit that teaches how much and how to give, and the deepest joy of giving will come to us--the Spirit"s seal that the Father is well pleased.
_8. The Grace of G.o.d through the giving works out the true unity and equality of all saints._ (v. 13.)
"I say not this, that others may be eased and ye distressed; but by equality, your abundance being a supply at this present time for their want, that their abundance may also become a supply to your want. That there may be equality. As it is written: He that gathered much, had nothing over: and he that gathered little had no lack." Another ray of heavenly light on this appeal for a collection. Money will become the bond of union that binds the Christians of Jerusalem and of Corinth into one. They are one as much as Israel was one people. As in their ingathering of the manna the feeble and the strong were to bring all into one store, that all might share alike, so in the body of Christ.
G.o.d allows of riches and poverty, G.o.d bestows His gifts with apparently unequal hand, that our love may have the high privilege of restoring the equality. The want of some calls us to the love and the help and the blessedness of giving to others. And at another time, or in different spheres, the very ones who needed help may, in their turn, out of their abundance bless their helpers. Everything has been so ordered that love shall have room to work, and that there shall be opportunity to cultivate and to prove the Christlike spirit.
What a call and what a field in the needs of the world for all G.o.d"s people to prove that G.o.d"s plan is theirs: "that there may be equality,"
and that the spirit of selfish contentment with greater privilege has been banished by the Cross. In philanthropy and missions what a need for all saints doing their utmost "according to their power--yea, and beyond their power."
In sight of the heathen world, oh! what an appeal that there be equality and that we shall share and share alike with them what G.o.d gives us.
What new, unthought of, eternal value, money gets as one of the powers for giving to the perishing, of the abundance we have in Christ.
There is no room left to enlarge on the further lessons of chap. 9. Let me just mention them:
(v. 6.) Let the giving be bountiful: it will bring a bountiful reward.
(v. 7.) Let the giving not be grudging or of necessity: the cheerful giver receives G.o.d"s love.
(v. 8.) Let the giving be trustful: G.o.d will make all grace abound.
(v. 11-13.) Your giving brings glory to G.o.d by the thanksgiving of those you bless.
(v. 15.) Your giving reminds of G.o.d"s giving, and calls to thanks for His unspeakable gift.
What a world of holy thought and heavenly light is opened up by the gifts of the Macedonians and Corinthian converts! Shall we not under the power of that thought and light review all our giving and see that it be brought into perfect accord with the Divine pattern in these chapters? Shall we not begin at once, and yield to Him, who became poor for us, everything that self-interest and self-indulgence has. .h.i.therto claimed and held? And shall we not beseech Him to show in us by His Spirit that the one worth and blessedness of money is to spend it for our Lord, to bless our fellowmen, to use it as an instrument and an exercise of grace, and so to turn even it into the treasure that lasts for eternity?
[Ill.u.s.tration]
IV
THE POVERTY OF CHRIST.
"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 become rich." _II. Corinthians, 8, 9._
"THROUGH HIS POVERTY": what does that mean? That He dispossessed Himself of all heavenly and earthly possessions that the riches of earth and heaven might be ours? That He so took our place, as in our stead to walk in the path of earthly poverty, that we in comfort and ease might enjoy the heavenly riches He has won for us? Or has that "THROUGH HIS POVERTY" a deeper meaning, and does it imply that His poverty is the very path or pa.s.sage that He opened up through which all must go who would fully enter into His riches? Does it mean that, just as He needed in poverty of spirit and body to die to the world that He might open for us the way to the heavenly treasures, so we need to walk in His footsteps, and can only through His poverty working in us, through fellowship with His poverty, come to the perfect enjoyment of the riches He came to bring? In other words, is the poverty of Jesus something for Him alone, or something in which His disciples are to share?
There is scarce a trait in the life and character of Christ in which we do not look to Him as an example--what are the lessons _His Holy Poverty_ has to teach? Is the right to possess and enjoy the riches of earth as it is now everywhere practiced in the Church part of what Christ has secured for us? Or, is it possible that the lack of faith in the beauty and blessedness of the poor life of Christ Jesus is part of the cause of our spiritual poverty; our lack of Christ"s poverty the cause of our lack of His riches? Is there not a needs-be that we not only think of the one side, "For your sakes He became poor"; but as much of the other, "For His sake I suffer the loss of all things?"
In seeking an answer to these questions, we must first turn and gaze upon our blessed Lord, if maybe the Holy Spirit will unfold somewhat of the glory of this His blessed attribute. Unless our heart be fixed upon our Lord in patient and prayerful contemplation, and we wait for the Holy Spirit to give us His illumination, we may indeed have our thoughts about this Divine poverty, but we cannot really behold its glory, or have its power and blessing enter our life. May G.o.d give us understanding!
We must first of all see what the reason--the needs-be--was of the earthly poverty of Christ. He might have lived on earth possessed of riches, and dispensing them with wise and liberal hand. He might have come in the enjoyment of a moderate competency, just enough to keep Him from the dependence and homelessness which was His lot. In either case He might have taught His people of all ages such precious and much-needed lessons as to the right use of the things of this world.
What a sermon His life would have been on the far-reaching words: They that buy _as though they possessed not_. But no, there was a Divine necessity that His life must be one of entire poverty. In seeking for the explanation, we shall find two cla.s.ses of reasons. There are those which have reference to us and His work for us as our Saviour. There are others which are more closely connected with His own personal life as man, and the work the Father wrought in Him, as He perfected Him through suffering.
Of the reasons referring to His work, the princ.i.p.al ones are easily named. Christ"s poverty is part of His entire and deep humiliation, a proof of His perfect humility--_His willingness to descend_ to the very lowest depths of human misery, and to share to the full in all the consequences of sin. The poor have in all ages been despised, while the rich have been sought and honored: Christ came to be the despised and neglected of men in this, too.
Christ"s poverty has ever been counted one of the proofs of His love.
Love delights in giving, perfect love in giving all. The poverty of Christ is one of the expressions of that self-sacrificing love which held back nothing, and seeks to win us for itself by the most absolute self-abnegation on our behalf. Christ"s poverty is His fitness for sympathizing and helping us in all the trials that come to us from our relation to this world and its goods. The majority of mankind has to struggle with poverty. The majority of G.o.d"s saints have been a poor and afflicted people. The poverty of Christ has been to tens of thousands the a.s.surance that He could feel for them; that, even as with Him, earthly need was to be the occasion for heavenly help, the school for a life of faith, and the experience of G.o.d"s faithfulness the path to heavenly riches.
Christ"s poverty is the weapon and the proof of His complete victory over the world. As our Redeemer, He proved by His poverty that His kingdom is not of this world, that as little as He feared its threats or its death could He be tempted to seek help from its wealth or strength.
But these reasons are more external and official; _the deeper spiritual significance_ of Christ"s poverty will be disclosed as we regard it as part of His training as the Son of Man, and His exhibition of what the true life of man is to be.
Christ"s poverty was part of that suffering through which He learned obedience and was perfected by G.o.d as our High Priest. To human nature poverty must ever be a trial. We were made to be kings and possessors of all things. To have nothing costs suffering.
Christ"s human nature was not, as the Docetae taught, a mere appearance or show. There never was one so really, so intensely, a man as Christ Jesus: "true man of true man." Poverty implies dependence on others; it means contempt and shame; it often brings want and suffering; it always lacks the means and power of earth. Our blessed Lord felt all this as man. And it was part of that suffering through which the Father worked out His will in His Son, and the Son proved His submission to the Father, and His absolute trust in Him.
_Christ"s poverty was part of His school of faith_, in which He Himself first learned, and then taught men, that life is more than meat, and that man liveth "not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d." In His own life He had to prove that G.o.d and the riches of heaven can more than satisfy a man who has nothing on earth; that trust in G.o.d for the earthly life is not vain; that one only needs as much as it pleases G.o.d to give. In His person we have witness to the power which comes with the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven when the Preacher Himself is the evidence of its sufficiency.
Christ"s poverty was one of the marks of His entire separation from the world, the proof that He was of another world and another spirit. As it was with the fruit good for food and pleasant to the eye sin entered the world, so the great power of the world over men is in the cares and possessions and enjoyments of this life. Christ came to conquer the world and cast out its prince, to win the world back to G.o.d. He did so by refusing every temptation to accept its gifts or seek its aid. Of this protest against the worldly spirit, its self-pleasing and its trust in the visible, the poverty of Christ was one of the chief elements. He overcame the world first in the temptations by which its prince sought to ensnare Himself, then, and through that, in its power over us. The poverty of Christ was thus no mere accident or external circ.u.mstance. It was an essential element of His holy, perfect life; one great secret of His power to conquer and to save; His path to the Glory of G.o.d.
We want to know what our share in the poverty of Christ is to be, whether and how far we are to follow His example. Let us study what Christ taught His disciples. When he said to them, "Follow Me," "Come after Me, I will make you fishers of men," He called them to share with Him in His poor and homeless life, in His state of entire dependence upon the care of G.o.d and the kindness of men. He more than once used strong expressions about forsaking all, renouncing all, losing all. And that they understood His call so is manifest from their forsaking nets and customs, and saying, through Peter, "We have forsaken all and followed Thee."
The call of Christ to come after Him is often applied as if it were the call to repentance and salvation. This is by no means the case. The principles the call involves have their universal application; but, to expound and enforce them in truth, it is of great consequence first to understand the meaning of the call in its original intention. Christ separated for Himself a band of men who were to live with Him in closest fellowship, in entire conformity to His life, under his immediate training. These three conditions were indispensable for their receiving the Holy Spirit, for being true witnesses to Him and the life which He had lived and would impart to men. With them, as with Him, the surrender of all property and _the acceptance of a state of poverty_ was manifestly a condition and a means without which the full possession of the heavenly riches in such power as to convince men of their worth could not come.
With Paul the case appears to have been very little different. Without any express command we know of, the Spirit of his Master so possessed him, and made the eternal world so real and glorious to him, that its expulsive power made every thought of property or position disappear. He learned to give utterance, as no one else ever could do, to what must have been our Blessed Lord"s inmost life in the words he uses of himself: "as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things." And in his wonderful life, as in his writings, he proves what weight it gives to the testimony concerning eternal things when the witness can appeal to his own experience of the infinite satisfaction which the unseen riches can give. In Paul, as in Christ, poverty was the natural consequence of an all-consuming pa.s.sion, and made him a channel through whom the Invisible Power could flow full and free.
The history of the church tells us a sad story of the increase of wealth and worldly power, and the proportionate loss of the heavenly gift with which she had been entrusted, and which could alone bless the nations. The contrast to the Apostolic state is set in the clearest light by a story that is told of one of the Popes. When Thomas Aquinas first visited Rome, and expressed his amazement at all the wealth he saw, the Pope said, "We can no longer say, "Silver and gold have I none."" "No, indeed;" was the answer, "nor can we say, "What I have that give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.""
The earthly poverty and the heavenly power had been closely allied, with the one the other had gone. Through successive ages the conviction ever came that it was only by a return to poverty that the bonds of earth beneath would be broken and the blessing from above brought back. And many a vain attempt was made to secure to poverty a place in the preaching and practice of the church such as it had been in Pentecostal days. At times, the earnest efforts of holy men met with temporary success, soon to give way again to the terrible power of the great enemy--the world.
There were various reasons for this failure. One was that men understood not that in Christianity it is not an external act or state that can profit, but only the spirit that animates. The words of Christ were forgotten: "The Kingdom of G.o.d is within you;" and men _expected from poverty_ what only the Spirit of Christ, revealing itself in poverty, could accomplish. Men sought to make a law of it, to bind under its rules and gather into its brotherhoods, souls that had no inner calling or capacity for such imitation of Christ. The church sought to invest poverty with the mantle of a peculiar holiness, and by its doctrine of Counsels of Perfection to offer a reward for this higher perfection. She taught that, while what was commanded in the Gospel was the duty of all, there were certain acts or modes of living which were left to the choice of the disciple. They were not of binding obligation; to follow these counsels was more than simple obedience, a work of supererogation which therefore had special merit. Out of this grew the doctrine of the power the church has to dispense this surplus merit of the Saints to those who were lacking. And, in some cases, poverty became only a new source of self-righteousness, entering into covenant with wealth, and casting its dark and deadly shadow over those it promised to save.
At the time of the Reformation, poverty had become so desecrated as a part of the great system of evil it had to combat, that, in casting out those errors, it cast out a part of the truth with them. Since that time it is as if _our Protestant theology has never ventured to enquire_ what the place and the meaning and the power is which Christ and the Apostle really gave poverty in their teaching and practice. And even in our days, when G.o.d is still raising up not a few witnesses to the blessedness of giving up all to trust in Him, and of possessing nothing that one may possess Him the more fully, the church can hardly be said to have found the right expression for its faith in the spirit of Christ"s poverty, as a power that is still to be counted as one of the gifts He bestows on some of its members. It will be found that there is no small difficulty in trying to formulate the teaching of Scripture so as to meet the views of Evangelical believers.
I have spoken above of the errors connected with the teaching of the Counsels of Perfection. And yet there was a measure of truth in that teaching, too. The error was to say that the highest conformity to Christ was not a matter of duty, but of option. Scripture says, "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Wherever G.o.d"s will is known, it _must_ be obeyed. The mistake would have been avoided if attention had been paid to the difference of knowledge or spiritual insight by which our apprehensions of duty are affected. There is a diversity of gift and capacity, of spiritual receptivity and growth, of calling and grace, which makes a difference, not in the obligation of each to seek the most complete inner conformity to Christ, but in the possibility of externally manifesting that conformity in such ways as were seen in Christ.
During the three years of His public career, Christ gave Himself and His whole time to direct work for G.o.d. He did not labor for His livelihood.