2 Corinthians, 8:7-9

we're in 2nd Corinthians chapter 8 if you'll turn there okay starting at verse 1 it says moreover brethren I'm going to read down through we are going to complete through verse 9 this morning moreover brethren we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia how that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy in their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.

For to their power I bear witness, yea, and beyond their power, they were willing of themselves, beseeching us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And this they did, not as we hoped or expected, but first gave themselves to the Lord and unto us by the will of God, insomuch that we besought Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also. Therefore, as you abound in everything, in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, See that you abound in this grace also. I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the earnestness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you, through His poverty, might be rich. Boy, that verse 9 is an incredible, incredible verse. And hopefully we'll spend some time on verse 9 this morning. Okay, just in summarizing the first five verses with respect to what Paul says about giving, in the first five verses, There are five principles that are laid down in terms of giving. And remember, when we think of giving, what do we think about? Tithing, money, right? I mean, we always think about giving with respect to financially, right? And usually we don't think of giving other than financially. In these first five verses there are some principles laid down about giving. And one of the most important principles that was laid down is giving ourselves to the Lord. That comes first. That is number one. That is priority. Number two, in terms of priority as we went through here, is giving ourselves to ministry, whatever ministry that is.

And I think lastly is giving of our finances, but it's all combined into, if you will, our giving. then there's two principles involved with respect to our giving. The one principle that we've seen in these five verses is that giving must be out of grace, out of God's grace, not out of some necessity or some need that someone is coming at us with, but the source has got to be God's grace. We also saw that giving, in terms of giving of ourselves, is a fellowship. It's a sharing in common. So we've seen those first five principles.

All right, we're going to look at verse seven. Therefore, as you abound in everything, in faith, and utterance, and in knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, See that you abound in this grace also. Question. Look at the first part of verse 7. As you abound in everything. Question.

Is that positional or conditional? It must be positional. Okay. And positional and why? Because the condition is hardly anything like that. Okay. There's no way we in ourselves could do those things. Okay, all right. All right, now look at the next few words.

Therefore, as you abound in everything, in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, positional or conditional. When I say positional, what do we mean by positional? It's a truth about us that is eternal. And it's immutable. It will never, never, ever change. Okay? That's what we mean by positional. Conditional... That's our walk. That's our walk. Maybe it's true and maybe it's not in our walk. Okay. So, Bob, you had a... Okay.

Okay, so how about those things that we just mentioned? In faith, utterance, knowledge, and intelligence, and love. Conditional or positional? I think positional would be the word inspired in you, maybe, because that was something they caused to happen. Okay. So it could be.

So here's the question, look at those in faith, and assuming that's our personal faith in our walk, do we always have a walk in faith? Yours truly does not always walk in faith. How about our speech, our utterance? Isn't that conditional? What do you mean I'm wrong? Right? I mean, if you were at our house, you know, You'd hear that from me occasionally.

Utterance, knowledge, all diligence, and then your love to us, those are conditional. But as Bill said, abounding in everything positional, because don't we abound in everything? How do we know that's positional? How do we know that's true? That we abound in everything?

Think of Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3. And the Lord has blessed us, and it says, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. And we're seated there. Our position is we're seated with Him. blessed with every spiritual blessing. There is not one that's left out. And then over in Colossians, it says that we're complete in Him, that nothing has to be added. Not one thing. We're totally complete in our position. That's our position. In our condition, we may not be walking in our position.

So when it talks about faith here in verse 8, I believe it's when we talk about faith, the word is pistis, trust, reliance, and it's talking about reliance and our faith has to have an object. Faith always has to have an object. Just like love has to have an object. So, if I say, I love, what does that mean without an object? Right? It has to have an object. I love Lindy. She's the object. Faith has to have an object. Have faith in what? And who has to have an object? The Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay, in knowledge, in the context of the passage that we've gone through, or the chapters that we've gone through, And I think the knowledge here is talking about the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, you remember back in chapter 4, in verse 7, it says that in these earthen vessels we have a treasure. These weak and frail vessels that we are, that there's this treasure in these earthen vessels, in you and in me. What's that treasure? What was that treasure?

The glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, His very glory, and how do we know that? Boy, you go back to John 17, verse 22, and remember the Lord's Prayer, the true Lord's Prayer, and He's praying to the Father, and He says, Father, the glory that You have given Me, what? I have given them, right?

Talking about all those who would believe on Him. So we have this knowledge, and by the way, this knowledge, gnosis, is objective. knowledge. We have this objective knowledge of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then when it talks about all diligence, this word, spude, in terms of the Greek, it's the carefulness or the zeal, the earnest effort. Now, I want to ask you a question. Look at this, look at the passage. It says, just as you abound in everything in faith, utterance, knowledge, and love we inspire, see that you abound, never mind, a different question, I'll ask it later. But the word diligence just means zeal, earnest effort.

So these believers in Carnath had this zeal. And the interesting thing is this, when you read the first letter in 1 Corinthians, you read that first letter, And you read the second letter, isn't there a world of difference between those two letters? And in terms of Paul's love that comes out for these believers, I mean, the first letter, it was one of correction. Not that the love wasn't there, but it was correction out of love. But in the second letter, you see Paul's heart. And Bob went through that in chapter 7. When he went through chapter 7. You know, something we touched on earlier I think is really relevant here too.

Turn to 2 Corinthians 4, 6, and 7. And I think it really does reflect what you were just commenting on in terms of Ephesians 1, 3 and the Colossians passage. For God commanded the light to shine out of darkness have shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. I didn't put a reference down, but if you want to put a reference down here, you can put down 2 Corinthians 4, verses 6 and 7. Okay, so here's an exhortation.

The exhortation is just as you abound in your response to the glory of Christ, And look at this. The faith, knowledge, diligence, and love was their response to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was their response to that. And what Paul is saying is, just as you abound in your response to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, so also abound in grace-giving.

So, when he says, also, bound in grace giving, the word bound simply means to excel. That our giving should excel. So now, how does that happen? Do we go home and say, okay, I've got to give more. I've got to excel in my giving, and I've got to give more. And giving now, there's several aspects of giving. Giving myself unto the Lord, giving myself unto ministry, and giving financially.

And boy, now I have to excel in all of that. So do I really need ministry? Let's see. There's a need here for teachers in Sunday school to teaching the little ones. Boy, that's one way I can excel in giving to ministry. Is that what Paul is saying here? Why not?

What is he saying? What's the source? What's the source of all of that? What I just described, the source was who? The flesh. The flesh, me, right? So the source has to be, remember the big picture, the source has to be where? The source has to be the Lord Christ through you, that Christ. It has to be out from His grace. It can't be anything else. Yeah, I mean that's the issue.

I think it's great what Tim LaHaye is doing and all this. I don't think that anything that is done in the power of the earthly being is in fact glorious to God, right? I mean, effectively it's right theology and how that's represented as we share the ministry, right? And the thing is this, would any one person want to be glorified saying that I'm one of the 25 in this country? You know what I mean? If the ministry was right, it's His ministry, and He gets the glory, and not us.

And no one would ever want to say, I'm one of the top 25 out there in Time Magazine, you can read it, right? No one would ever want to be in Time Magazine. Well, just a Larry King interview, too, these people ultimately never gave glory to where it should be given. I mean, they defended the Gospel very well. He had about five or six of them on the other night, not all 25. Anyway, I don't want to get too specific.

The issue is what is the source and who is glorified? That's exactly what you're talking about. Exactly. I put some points down. I'm just going to go through them. in terms of grace-giving, when you come down to it, it's the manifestation of the life of Christ, just like Margaret was saying earlier. It's Christ being manifested through us. That's simply what grace-giving is. And here's an important point. The grace of God must be owned. What do I mean by that? It must be owned. You have to own it. I have to own it. Well, it's like our children, you know.

They can have all this great teaching, but unless they understand and they identify themselves and own it, it's meaningless. Okay, so there's objective truth, knowing that We can know all about God's grace, and that's the source of giving, etc. We can know that. But do we own it? Do we rest in it, believe it with all our heart, that none of our giving would ever be done out from the flesh, because we own that truth? So that's a key. And so when we come down to financial giving, which we always think about, it's meaningless unless we first give ourselves to the Lord.

That is number one. So, here's this exhortation, and the point is this. It's an exhortation, not a command. It's not a command to Christian giving. What you hear from the pulpits is commands to Christian giving. This is not a command. In verse 8, here's what Paul says.

Now, I use the interlinear here because I thought it was clearer. He says, I'm not speaking according to a command. We just said it was an exhortation, not a command. But as proving through the diligence of others and the sincerity of your love. Three things. When it says, I'm not speaking according to a command, what is Paul saying? No law? Okay. Giving is not a law? You can't? Okay. What else? How about if Paul said, Thou shalt not covet? Thou shalt. not steal, that shall not commit adultery. Let's say he said those things, okay?

Are those according to a command? Commandment? They sure are. Those are written commandments to us. Now, the interesting thing is, nine of the ten commandments that are in the Old Testament are repeated in the New Testament to believers. Now, are we to live by those commandments? Do we live by the law? The law? They're commands to us. How do we fulfill those commands?

The only way we can is with Christ's life in us, his character, his animation of our life. There's no way the flesh can However, we were not asked to fulfill them. They've been fulfilled. yes and no, because there are these commands that thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, and they do apply to us. But if you steal and you're a believer, has that sin not been paid for?

Right. Okay, so the point is this. We don't live by fulfilling, trying to fulfill the law, and as Margaret says, it's the Lord Jesus Christ who fulfills that in in our moment-by-moment walk. We can't, there's no way we could fulfill that, to fulfill a walk, right? Okay, but the point I was trying to get at is this.

Those are commands, those are commandments, right? And they're to be fulfilled in our life, not by us, but by the Lord Jesus Christ. Here he says, I'm not speaking according to a command. There is no commandment in terms of giving. That's all Paul is saying. There's no commandment in terms of giving.

But, as proving by test, through the diligence of others and the sincerity of your love. When it talks about the sincerity of your love, who's the your here? Okay. Individuals. Good. And what individuals specifically? Okay. Believers. And more specifically? Pardon me? I'm sorry?

The believers in Corinth. The believers in Corinth. So he's talking about the sincerity of the believers in Corinth, about the sincerity of their love. Right? Okay. Now when we get up here, as proving through the diligence of others, who are the others? The churches in Macedonia. Okay. Churches in Macedonia, right?

And we just saw in terms of their diligence in giving, right? And they were very diligent in their giving. In fact, what happened? They were so diligent in their giving, And Paul was so surprised because they were in this deep poverty, right? They were the poorest of the poor, but yet they were giving out of their deep poverty. And what did the Macedonian believers have to do with respect to Paul, in terms of convincing Paul? They had to beg him to take it. to take their gift, right? And Paul was just totally surprised. Paul saw giving in terms of out of grace. And so, when he's relaying this account, he's relaying it not to put a lever under these people to give, but he's explaining what grace-giving is all about. This is what grace-giving looks like. This is what it looks like. That's all Paul is doing.

Okay, a point I'd just like to make in terms of observation, verse 8, that you can conclude this, that giving is a test or proof of one's genuine love for Christ. Do you agree? It's a proof. Now, the point is, not the only proof, but it is a proof. Another thing we can observe, not giving out of grace, God cannot be glorified. He cannot. The only way God can be glorified is that we're giving out from the source, out from God's grace. Okay. Verse 9.

Again, I've got the interlinear here because I think it's a little bit more clear. It says, For you are knowing the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that because of you he became poor, though being rich, in order that you by the means of that one's," in the interlinear Greek, it says, that one's, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, according to that one's, or his, poverty, that you, by the means of that one's poverty, might become rich. Now, what does all of this mean? The best way I thought what we'd do is just take it in increments, and look at the first increment, and I'm emphasizing the personal pronoun here in this verse, you.

It says that you are knowing. Now, the word knowing here is gnosko. Gnosko simply means to know experientially. to know experientially, to know in your heart of hearts and to experience it. Gnosko, you are knowing, you are knowing in your heart of hearts, experientially, what?

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of the definitions that we did two weeks ago with respect to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the definitions we said, you can define God's grace is His passion to share all of His goodness with you and with me. It's that passion that He has to share His goodness with you and me. Now, how about you and me? Do we know experientially? Do we know in our heart of hearts? His grace, His passion, and sharing His goodness with you in your life, and with me in my life.

Wow. I mean, you experience that all the time. And so he says, you're knowing the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And here's the next part. Because of you. Because of you. And what he's saying is that you're the reason. You are the reason. You are the only reason. I am the only reason. He became poor, though being rich. So, he was rich, but he became poor. What does that mean? Does that mean that he had a lot of bucks and he laid the bucks aside and became poor?

What do you think of initially when you see this? I think of his ability on the cross to be willing to give up the fellowship with his father. That's the first thing I think of. And he was willing to do that and to go through that process. Okay. He, you know, in the garden, didn't want to have to go through, but he was willing to do that for us. Okay. So everybody understand what Margaret's saying, is that he was rich in terms of he had this intimate fellowship, moment by moment, for how long? Eternity. For all eternity, with the Lord, for all eternity. And he was willing to give that up.

And we don't know how long a period of time that was. It was less than three days, right? It's less than three days. But whatever that time was, Let's see. I'm trying to think of the question to ask. How important was that to the Lord Jesus Christ? I'll tell you what, we'll get there. We'll get there.

Wouldn't that poverty, though, be the entire process of His life, incarnate life? Okay, so the question is, wouldn't that poverty be his entire life here on earth, starting at the incarnation? The answer is yes, and we'll see that in a minute. So he became poor, though being rich. Let's see. I don't want to do this. Let's do it this way. I want you to see, in terms of this poverty, what poverty means. When it says he became poor.

It's an aorist active indicative, and to most of you, I have no clue what aorist active indicative is. But just so you know, understand, aorist tense is a fact tense. If it's an indicative mood, then it usually is a fact that occurred in past time. Now, in the aorist tense, Sometimes the stress is placed on the beginning of the action, sometimes it's placed on the end of the action, and sometimes it looks at the entire action.

I believe it's what is called an aggressive heiress. It looks at the beginning of the action, at the start of the action. So, as Steve said, doesn't it include the incarnation? Yes, it's an heiress, an aggressive heiress, and it's looking at the beginning of the action, which is the incarnation. So, the emphasis, as I say here, is his entrance into the condition of poverty. That's the focus, on his entrance. Then it goes on to the point where Margaret said, where he's on the cross. So it starts as incarnation and it goes to the cross. Okay, the word poor. Ptokuo.

It's the only time in the New Testament that this word is used. It's only used in this passage of Scripture. So we don't have a lot of uses in the New Testament to know what it means. Not to know what it means, but to get a full feeling of what it means. But the interesting thing is this, as you go into the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, And you look in Psalm 79 verse 8, it uses this word, and look how it uses it. It says, O do not earnestly remember against us the iniquities and guilt of our forefathers.

Let your compassion and tender mercy And boy, you want to see a definition of mercy. Tender mercy is compassion. You want to understand what compassion is? Compassion is tender mercy. And the Psalms use duplicate words to give you the meaning. So, compassion and tender mercy speedily come to meet us, for we are brought, see this word here?

Very low. This bringing very low is this meaning of becoming poor. He was brought very low. So when you think of it in those terms, what do you think of? I think about it. OK. Let's talk about that. OK. For a period we're going to give up some of that. Yeah. So there is a bit of being made low. OK. to a degree he was helpless, so that we could benefit spiritually from him giving up some of that deity temporarily. Okay, excellent. And so Jim is going over to Philippians, and we're going to do that in just a minute. So let me just continue on here.

It says, Though being rich, and the word being here is this essence verb, eimi. It's the state in which one continuously exists. So he continuously existed, being rich. And the word rich, as I've defined it here, it's the totality of all spiritual and physical wealth, lacking nothing.

Lacking nothing. Now, we've become rich. Well, let me ask you a question. Have we become rich? Yes. Okay. How? Spiritually. Okay. But not necessarily physically. There's a difference between heavenly riches and earthly riches. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So let's, in terms of what Jim was just saying in Philippians, let's take a quick look at that. And what I've done is tried to contrast here is his being rich and his becoming poor.

So if you go to John 17 chapter 17 verse 5 and 24, I didn't quote 24 here, but in verse 5 it says, And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, listen to this, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Okay, so now here's Jesus in his incarnation as a man And he's praying to the Father, and he says, Father, glorify me with the glory that I had. Question. Did the Lord Jesus Christ leave his glory in heaven to come to earth?

No, it was veiled. It was veiled within his flesh. Okay. It was veiled? But you never really accept the fact that he left his glory entirely in heaven, do you? No, that's the question. Is that... Because one can look at this... One can look at this passage and Scripture says, well, he left it all in heaven, came down to be a man. Right? And boy, it's just...

So what's he saying then? He's calling us to our positional truth, is he not? I mean, isn't that a call to the position? Okay, but what is the Lord praying here? Is He praying for the inherent glory that He had with the Father before the world was? Or does He have that inherent glory in His incarnation as a man? Do you see the point I'm getting at? Now Sue said that he has the glory, but it was veiled. Absolutely. Okay. Because my next question is how can you prove that? That it was just veiled.

So she answered the question is that you know that he had the glory, that he was 100% deity, 100% humanity in his incarnation. And you know that, and the only difference was, as Sue said, that glory was not manifested outwardly. He had that glory inwardly, but it was not manifested outwardly. It was veiled. And how do you know that? Because in the Mount of Transfiguration, the glory that was within was now being manifested without, and his face shone, and his raiment was white as white, or however it describes it in Matthew chapter 17.

Back to what Jim was saying. In Philippians, this is a beautiful passage in understanding Pardon me? What was he asking for? Okay, Marilyn's question is, what was he asking for then? Well, in Jesus' condition, in his humanity, could he have personally experienced that veiling of glory? And so there was a longing in his humanity that he might be able to enjoy or experience more of the glory of God as it was before his incarnation. But his humanity wasn't there before the incarnation, was it?

No, it was not. But he's anticipating the cross here, is he not? This is immediately pre-cross. Okay. Although, look at the words, which I had with thee before the world was. Right? But that would be lost on Calvary's cross, would it not? True. Is not this the expectation that God's glory at the resurrection would ultimately be re-established? Okay. And the key is... Yes, the key is in the resurrection. So let me just go through this very briefly.

In Philippians 2.6, which says, who although he existing in the form, And when it's talking about form, it's talking about he had the essential essence of God, but it wasn't being manifested, but he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped.

In other words, when he was here in this humanity, he wasn't clinging on to his heavenly glories. He wasn't grasping on to that. He set aside, as Sue said, he set aside the manifestation of that, but he emptied himself. And the word emptied there just means that, as you look in your notes, emptied himself. He's still deity, but he set aside the manifestation of that glory.

So, taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the likeness of man and being found in the appearances of man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And then, look, 2.6 talks about his being rich, 2.7 and 2.8 talks about him being poor, and then 2.9 through 2.11 talks about him being rich again. It says, therefore, also God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, those who are on earth, under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

When does this happen? Bob said, isn't this, isn't the resurrection that that happens at the resurrection. Okay, we're going to close. If you get a chance, I want you to look at this last page in terms of the absolute low pit of his becoming poor. And as Steve has said, that his becoming poor started at the incarnation And as Margaret said, the ending of that was on the cross.

And when God had made him sin for us who knew no sin, and the low pit of this his becoming poor is when he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And why did he say that? Why did he say that? What happened? What happened What caused Christ to say that? He was made to be sin. He was separated from the Father. He died how? Spiritually. He died spiritually. He was separated from the Father spiritually. My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?

Our Father, we are just ever so thankful for Your Word and we thank You for this passage that we've read this morning in terms of our precious Lord and Savior. that him being rich for all eternity came down, became poor, became low, even to the point of suffering death on our behalf, which caused that separation from you.

But Father, as a result of that, we became rich. That you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. And Father, you have given us the gift of righteousness, of the very life of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Father, this is the unspeakable gift, unexplainable. And Father, in our human minds, it's something that we cannot comprehend, the grace and the love that you have. But we give you thanks, in Christ's name.