Morning, December 24, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“For your sake he became poor.” — 2 Corinthians 8:9

The Lord Jesus Christ was eternally rich, glorious, and exalted; but “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” As the rich believer cannot be true in his unity with his poor brethren unless he ministers to their necessities our of his resources, so (with the same rule holding with our Head as between the members), it is impossible that our Divine Lord could have had fellowship and communion with us unless he had imparted to us of his own abounding wealth, and had become poor to make us rich. Had he remained upon his throne of glory, and had we continued in the ruins of the fall without receiving his salvation, fellowship would have been impossible on both sides. Our position from the fall, apart from the covenant of grace, made it as impossible for fallen man to communicate with God as it is for Belial to be in harmony with Christ.

In order, therefore, that communion might be embraced, it was necessary that the rich kinsman should bestow his estate upon his poor relatives; that the righteous Savior should give to his sinful brethren that from of his own perfection, and that we, the poor and guilty, should receive of his fullness grace for grace. In this way, in giving and receiving, the One might descend from the heights, and the other ascend from the depths, and so be able to embrace each other in true and hearty fellowship. Our poverty must be enriched by Him in whom reside infinite treasures, before communion and fellowship can occur; and guilt must lose itself in imputed and imparted righteousness before the soul can walk in fellowship with purity. Jesus must clothe his people in his own garments, or he cannot admit them into his palace of glory; and he must wash them in his own blood, or else they will be too defiled for the embrace of his fellowship.

O believer, here lies true love! For your sake the Lord Jesus “became poor” that he might lift you up into communion with himself.