MADE RICH THROUGH CHRIST’S POVERTY (PART II)

“Theological Sewage from the Pulpit: When Biblical Ignorance Becomes Spiritual Authority.” 

By Akin Ojumu

Vertical Worship, formerly known as Vertical Church Band, is the worship ministry associated with Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

On July 31, 2012, the group released Open Up the Heavens, a contemporary worship song written as a call for God to manifest His presence, bring spiritual renewal, and awaken His people.

Its chorus contains this petition:

Open up the heavens

We want to see You

Open up the floodgates

A mighty river

Flowing from Your heart

Filling every part of our praise

As I pondered how to begin this installment in my commentary series on Baba Adeboye’s distortion of 2 Corinthians 8:9, the words of this chorus came to mind.

The song pleads for Heaven to open and for a mighty river to flow from the heart of God. It expresses a desire for divine truth and glory to flood the worship of God’s people.

Sadly, what has flooded much of the visible Church is not sound doctrine but theological sewage.

Men and women who are manifestly unqualified to teach Scripture have positioned themselves as spiritual authorities over the Household of God. Biblical novices now occupy pulpits, command vast religious organizations, and presume to instruct multitudes in matters of eternal consequence.

Instead of nourishing Christ’s sheep with the pure milk of God’s Word, they feed them theological garbage and administer heretical poison.

Baba Adeboye is a quintessential representative of this class of biblically unschooled religious leaders. One glaring illustration of the spiritual havoc caused by his mishandling of Scripture is his interpretation of 2 Corinthians 8:9.

Speaking about Christ becoming poor for the sake of His people, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God declares:

“He didn’t become poor so that we can remain poor. He became poor so that He can take us out of poverty. He was beaten, that we might be healed. He went to hell, so that we won’t go there. Everything He suffered is so that we can have the opposite. He became poor so that we might become…rich. He didn’t say He became poor so that we might continue to be poor.”

This interpretation of 2 Corinthians 8:9 does violence to the text.

As we established in the previous installment, Paul is not presenting Christ as the guarantor of earthly affluence. He is presenting Christ as the supreme example and inexhaustible source of self-sacrificing grace.

The movement of the passage is not:

“Christ became materially poor so that Christians would never experience poverty.”

The argument is:

“Christ gave Himself sacrificially for you; therefore, you should willingly give yourselves and your possessions for the good of others.”

The entire context of 2 Corinthians 8 concerns Christian generosity. Paul is encouraging the Corinthian believers to contribute toward the relief of impoverished saints. He appeals to the grace of Christ not to promise them financial prosperity, but to motivate them toward sacrificial giving.

Christ’s poverty was voluntary:

“For your sakes He became poor.”

The eternal Son was not forcibly expelled from Heaven. He was not stripped of His glory by a power greater than Himself. He willingly entered the poverty, weakness, and humiliation of the human condition for the salvation of His people.

This does not mean that Christ ceased to be divine. The incarnation was not the Son exchanging His deity for humanity. Rather, the eternal Son assumed a genuine human nature and embraced the lowly position of a servant.

He did not surrender His divine nature or cease to possess divine glory. Instead, He declined to insist upon the visible display, recognition, and enjoyment of the glory that was eternally His.

Christ’s poverty encompassed His incarnation, lowly birth, ordinary earthly existence, rejection, sorrow, suffering, humiliation, and crucifixion. He left the glory He shared with the Father, took the form of a servant, entered human weakness, and submitted Himself to death on a Cross like a common criminal.

Paul describes this astonishing descent in Philippians 2:5–8:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Material simplicity was certainly one aspect of Christ’s earthly humiliation. Jesus was not born into earthly royalty. He did not live amid the comforts associated with social affluence, political influence or economic power. At various times, He depended upon the hospitality and material support of others.

Yet the poverty of Christ cannot be reduced to the amount of money He possessed.

If His riches consisted of the glory, majesty, and privilege of His preincarnate existence, then His poverty must be understood as the entire movement of His humiliation—from Heavenly glory to human weakness, from divine majesty to servanthood, and from the worship of angels to rejection, suffering, and death at the hands of sinful men.

At Calvary, the poverty of Christ reached its deepest and most terrible expression. The Lord of glory was treated as a criminal. The righteous One bore the judgment deserved by sinners. He who knew no sin was made sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Christ became poor not merely by possessing little, but by giving everything. The One worshiped by angels was mocked by men. The One who gives life tasted death. The One to whom all things belong was stripped of His garments. The One who shared eternal glory with the Father endured the humiliation and shame of the Cross.

He descended into the depths of suffering so that spiritually bankrupt sinners, like you and me, might receive forgiveness, righteousness, adoption, reconciliation, eternal life, and an inheritance that can never perish.

These are the riches Paul had in view when he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write 2 Corinthians 8:9.

To turn this glorious proclamation of Christ’s redemptive humiliation into a promise of material prosperity is not merely poor exposition. It is a grotesque trivialization of the incarnation and the Cross.

Christ did not descend from Heaven so that preachers could promise their followers bigger bank accounts, luxury automobiles, palatial mansions, and immunity from financial hardship.

He became poor so that condemned sinners might become rich in grace, rich in righteousness, rich in reconciliation with God, and rich in the eternal inheritance secured by His blood.

This—not earthly affluence—is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To be continued.