Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 332 · November 28
He Became Poor
“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.”
"Praying us with much intreaty that we would receive the gift." Paul is describing churches that begged him to take their money, and he tells their story because it explains everything else in the chapter.
Think about where the letter was going and where the money came from. Corinth was a wealthy port city, and Paul was gathering a gift for poor believers in Jerusalem. The churches that begged to give were in Macedonia, the region of Philippi and Thessalonica, and Paul describes them like this: "in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality." Liberality means generosity. He adds that "beyond their power they were willing of themselves." He had watched poor people give more than they could afford, and now he had to urge the richer church in Corinth to finish what it had begun "a year ago."
Right in the middle of that, with no build-up at all, he writes today's verse: "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." It is the greatest truth in the whole letter, and Paul uses it to settle a question about money. He does not stop to defend it or explain it. He says "ye know," because he expects them to know it already, and he puts it straight to work.
Then he shows what he means, and it is no call for everyone to give away everything. "But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want." He settles it with a line about the manna in the wilderness, when each family gathered what it needed and nobody could store up extra: "He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack." So the richest gift ever given, Christ becoming poor for our sake, becomes the reason one church helps another. That is grace doing what grace does. Whatever you hold this week came to you through His poverty, and He means it to flow on from your hands as freely as it came to you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 332 is Love Because He Heard (Psalm 116:1-2).