2.3 / He became poor so we could be rich

Is it really possible that Jesus wants us to prosper?

After the last post, there were quite a few people more than willing to show me how foolish I was to assert that Jesus was financially wealthy. The truth is, we can’t know for sure. Most people have just taken what they have been told as truth. Instead of searching Scripture - like Bereans - to see what it actually says, they prefer to defend a traditional position. There is nothing wrong with tradition. We’ll talk about it a lot more some other time. There is something wrong with assuming that what we have been told is true without examining whether or not it is. The idea that Jesus was poor is an opinion based on how some people interpret the facts of Jesus’ life. The idea that he was rich is an opinion based on how some people interpret the facts of his life too. The problem with the opinion that Jesus was poor is that there is more evidence that he wasn’t.

You might have a lot more questions or thoughts now. Questions about a camel and the eye of a needle, a rich young ruler walking away sad, and the love of money being the root of all evil. I will do my best to get to as much of that as I possibly can. However, there are some questions that only God can answer. But we still have a lot of ground to cover.

There’s a statement that Paul makes in 2 Corinthians 8:9 that’s worth thinking about as it relates to the wealth of Jesus.

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” // 2 Corinthians 8:9, ESV

So many people read this verse and take it to mean that Jesus was rich in heaven and came to the earth to live in poverty so that we could become “spiritually wealthy.” As you have no doubt seen, when we simply look at the face value English translation of a verse, we often miss the true meaning. So what is Paul really saying here about Jesus? The word that Paul uses for rich in 2 Corinthians 8:9, for both Jesus’ riches and ours, is one I listed in chapter 1.2; πλοῦτος (ploutos): To make someone rich both materially and spiritually. To be granted abundance (more than you need in every area of life).

If you disagree with the perspective that Jesus was rich on the earth, this is a verse you might use to support that point. The only problem with that logic is that it doesn’t change what Paul says in the second part of the verse. Maybe Jesus was never wealthy in His time on earth, and lived his life as a homeless nomad. The evidence doesn’t seem to point that direction, but let’s say that He was. Paul doesn’t just stop there, he tells us the purpose of Jesus’ poverty. No matter what we believe about Jesus’ prosperity in his time on earth, we must arrive at the conclusion Paul makes in the second part of the verse. “so that you by his poverty could become rich.” Let’s make that clearer using the definition of πλοῦτος:

““For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich (both materially and spiritually, and had more than he needed in every area of life), yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (both materially and spiritually, and had more than he needed in every area of life) .”

In the church tradition I grew up in, this was rarely, if ever taught. Everything was about the potential wealth we would accrue in eternity. If you did something virtuous, you were getting “jewels in your crown” in heaven. Your life might be really awful right now, but one day you’ll walk on streets of gold, and live in a mansion in heaven. What is so interesting to me is how much we equate heaven with prosperity and wealth. We seem to do this automatically, without even thinking about it. There’s this theology that has been developed that in some way sounds like this: “your life on earth will be horrible, but one day, when you get to heaven, it will all be worth it.” There won’t be any crying in heaven. There won’t be any physical pain in heaven. There won’t be any poverty in heaven. Only mental, emotional, physical and spiritual prosperity.

Is this what Scripture teaches? Or is this another one of those “man-made” ideas being substituted as an idea of God? Scripture clearly tells us that God isn’t just talking about eternal, spiritual prosperity. He’s talking about prosperity on earth. Human beings have created this idea that it is somehow either/or. Either you can prosper right now, or prosper in heaven. God doesn’t work like that. God is about both/and. You can prosper right now, and you can prosper eternally. Both are not just possible, both are planned. But God has even more in store for us than that. That’s the “and” part. We haven’t even started talking about John 10:10 yet and how God defines abundance. We’ll get there.

Poverty is often preached as a good thing. Poverty has been transformed into spirituality. There is a doctrine that we have created that says the poorer you are, the closer you are to Jesus. We’ll talk later about where that comes from, but it doesn’t come from Scripture. The idea of poverty as spiritual - or beneficial in any way - is completely antithetical to any kind of Biblical thinking about life. There is not one place in the Bible, not one place in the Old Testament, New Testament, or the life of Jesus where poverty is presented as a good thing. Human beings have imagined poverty as a virtue, but that’s not a God idea. The Bible doesn’t say Jesus became poor, so you should be like Him. It says he sacrificed his riches, his own life, so that you could be rich. Now and in eternity. At the beginning of his ministry, he steps into the synagogue, opens up the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and quotes it:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free,” // Luke 4:18, NLT

These are the first public words of Jesus. Later on in the story, he actually adds to what Isaiah had written. Matthew 11 tells the story:

John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?” Jesus told them, “Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen—the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.” (Matthew 11:2-5 NLT)

good news is preached to the poor?

In Luke 4, he quotes Isaiah to say that captives are released and the oppressed are set free. Then in Matthew 11, the lame walk, the blind see the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life and the “Good News” is preached to the poor. Some translations translate this as “the Gospel is preached to the poor.” Again we need to look at the Greek. The Greek doesn’t use the word “Gospel.” It uses the word εὐαγγέλιον (euangélion). In the ancient world, this word was primarily used in warfare, to announce that a victory had taken place, but it also means that the messenger views themselves joyfully as the bearer of the good news. The word literally means “good news” in greek, and the word “gospel” is an old english translation of this word. When Jesus said this, He was saying something different than we think. Why? Because in the world today, “The Gospel” is different than the “gospel” back then. The Gospel we know - the Good News - is that God loves humanity and has provided a way to overcome sin and death through Jesus Christ—who lived a sinless life, died in our place, and was raised, offering forgiveness and eternal life to all who believe.

Jesus could not preach this “Gospel” yet, because it hadn’t happened. He was preaching a different good news. Good news about healing, deliverance, and freedom from captivity - and poverty.

Because of Jesus, the lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the blind could see, the dead were raised to life, and the poor people were…preached to? Couldn’t Jesus just heal poverty like He did everything else? He healed every disease, He raised Lazarus from the dead, and delivered people from everything, except poverty. If the evidence shows us how much money and resources he had, why didn’t he just solve poverty by giving it all away to poor people? That’s what a lot of people - including Judas - would recommend. Jesus gave the poor good news because He knew, just like we do, that more money doesn’t cure poverty. Being lame is a state of being. Being deaf is a state of being. Being blind is a state of being. Being dead is a state of being. Poverty is not a state of being. The government might say it is, culture might say it is, our human thinking might say it is. But God doesn’t say it is.

More on poverty on friday.