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His Riches

Arno Clemens Gaebelein

“For ye know the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.”

2 Corinthians 8,9

These beautiful words, which we find written in connection with Christian giving, contain the blessed Gospel in a most precious fullness. Like the great heart of the Gospel, John 3:16, it is so very simple and yet so very deep that its depths have never been fathomed.

Manoah had seen the angel of the Lord, and when he asked his heavenly visitor, "What is thy name?" He answered, "Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is Wonderful?" (marginal reading). And then the angel of the Lord did wondrously before Manoah and his wife, and ascended in the flame of the altar. The Holy Spirit through the prophet Isaiah, announcing the birth of the Saviour and the gift of the Son, gives as one of His names "Wonderful." Even so He is. He is wonderful in His Person and His Work. He is wonderful in all He has done, in what He is doing and in all He will yet do. His words, His acts, His Love, His Grace, His mercy, yea all, is wonderful. Three wonderful facts are found in the above verse. Each fact's more wonderful than the other:

First: The wonderful fact: he was RICH.

Second: The more wonderful fact: he BECAME POOR FOR OUR SAKES.

Third: The most wonderful fact: by HIS POVERTY WE ARE RICH.

The wonderful fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was rich

This statement leads us back into eternity. The Riches of which we read here are His eternal Riches. He ever subsisted in the form of God as the only Begotten of the Father, absolutely one with Him. With the Father before the world ever came into existence, "He was rich," But who is able to penetrate the mysteries of eternity? The wisdom of man, his reasoning and imaginations arc all folly in the presence of such a stupendous statement. We have to turn to revelation to receive glimpses of that which "eye has not seen, nor ear heard" to listen to what God in His Word has to say of the Riches of the Son of His Love. "No man knows who the Son is but the Father." Thus He spoke Himself.

But it is blessedly true that "God has revealed to us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God." What then do the Scriptures say about the eternal Riches of Him, who is our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ? The Word of God tells us that the Son of God was rich in all eternity in three things. He was rich in Possessions, rich in Love and rich in Glory. As far as we can learn from reve­lation His eternal Riches consisted in these three things. But how little we know what they all include! When at last Grace has brought us to the Father's house, where we shall behold His Glory, when we shall know as we are known, then we shall under­stand His Riches fully! And yet that which is made known about His Riches is sufficient to fill our hearts with wonder and our lips with praises.