All Grace: Enough and More

Having poverty means having “hunger... thirst... nakedness... and [being] in need of everything” (Deuteronomy 28:48). When exactly did Jesus become poor? He began to become poor the moment He was identified with our sins. From that moment onward, He went deeper and deeper into poverty until, on the cross, He represented the absolute poverty described above.

Understand that at the cross, His poverty was not merely spiritual. He was also physically and materially poor. Therefore, by all the laws of logic, our wealth will not be merely spiritual, either. Jesus became absolutely poor in the physical, material sense so that we might become rich, having every physical and material need met—and having something left over to share with other people.

Second Corinthians 9:8 is the second particular verse we will study that supports the fact that Jesus bore the poverty curse:

“God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every [all] good work.”

God is not stingy. He does not give just enough; He gives enough and more. That is abundance. In the verse above, there are two instances of the word abound and four instances of the word all. I don’t know if this language could be any clearer. What does it describe? God’s grace.

Interestingly enough, in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, two chapters that deal with money, the key word is grace. It occurs seven times in chapter 8 and twice in chapter 9. It is a grace that operates in the realm of money. However, few professing Christians understand the nature of God’s grace. I have sometimes observed that those who speak the most about “grace” often understand it the least.