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What He Became. "He became poor."
In what did this poverty consist ? His Divine perfections do not admit of decrease or limitation. The infinite riches of His own nature must be ever infinite. He is the Maker of all things and the Upholder of all things which He has made. He may destroy, but He cannot alienate; for to withdraw His support from any creature would be its annihilation. And if He were to destroy He would not be less rich ; for the resources of the Creator are inexhaustible, and at His will He could replace what He had annihilated. God might shed upon us the wealth of an entire creation and yet remain as rich as before He gave it. He might create and give again and again, while His own riches would remain the same and undiminished. To give is nothing with God. AAnd as God He could not become poor.
Whatever this poverty of the Son of God might mean, it could not imply that He ceased to be the Owner and the Lord of all
2 COR. VIII. 9 259
things ! When we come to think of it, the possessions proper to this Person which made Him so rich were quite inalienable possessions. How could the Divine Creator of the universe lose His proprietary right over everything that He had made ? That sort of limited ownership which the law gives me over what is mine I can renounce, I can transfer. I can make mine yours. Not so with the absolute ownership of God. All things are His by an indefeasible title. The use of them He may lend : His own proprietorship in them He cannot alienate. Still less is it possible to strip oneself of those moral and personal qualities which make up the wealth of one's very nature. My faculties of mind and heart are too much my own for me to part with them. Could a Divine Person cease to carry in Himself the unsearchable riches of Divine power, or wisdom, or goodness ? In whatever way He became poor, it was not by ceasing to be in actual right of possession the rich One.
^ We must recall to mind the truth that Christ's state of humiliation was at the same time a state invested with moral dignity and glory, as one in which He had, by the favour of His Father, an opportunity of achieving a sublime task, in His high and honourable calling as the Captain of salvation. Christ Him- self did not lose sight of this truth ; it was ever present to His thoughts, carrying Him through the hardest experiences as the mere incidents of a congenial vocation. Hence, though a man of sorrows. He was even on earth anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows. Does this seem strange ? Why, even Apollo, unjustly banished from heaven, and cherishing a sense of injury done to him by Jove, in his state of exile a neat-herd in the service of Admetus, is represented by the poet as making the vale of Phersea vocal with the sweet sounds of his lute, and gathering the wild beasts around him by the charms of celestial music. Shall we wonder that there was Divine gladness in the heart of Him who came into this world, not by constraint, but willingly ; not with a burning sense of wrong, but with a grateful sense of high privilege; and that He had a blessed consciousness of fellowship with His Father, who sent Him, during the whole of His pilgrimage through this vale of tears ? ^
1. The poverty of our Lord was not an outward condition so much as an inward act. At the most, the outward condition only mirrored the inward act. All things were not less truly His ^ A. B. Bruce, The Eumiliaticm of Christ, 375.
26o THE LIBERALITY OF CHRIST
own than before ; only He refused to assert His right to them, or to seize upon the benefits of them ; His rights of property He could not forfeit ; but He forbore to exercise them. And why ? That He might make Himself in all things like unto us, His human and fallen brethren. This position of voluntary poverty into which the rich Heir of all things was pleased for a time to put Himself, will be most easily understood if we say simply that He put Himself into our position. To the level of our poverty He chose to reduce Himself. That covers all the elements or ingredients in this strange self-impoverishment of God.
^ Inspired by the thought of poverty having been Christ's inseparable companion on earth, Bernardine exclaims : — " Jesus, my Saviour, at Thy entry into this life, poverty received Thee in the holy crib and in the manger,' and during Thy earthly sojourn deprived Thee of everything, so that Thou hadst not even where to lay Thy head. While fighting the fight of our redemption, that faithful companion was ever at Thy side, and when Thy disciples deserted and denied Thee, she. Thy sworn attendant, never swerved. Nay, then it was that she clasped Thee the more fervently. Then, when even Thy mother, who alone still honoured Thee in the faithfulness of her heart, was unable to draw nigh to Thee, owing to the height of the cross, then did victorious Poverty surround Thee with all her privations, as with a train of followers pleasing to Thy heart, pressing Thee the more tightly and inextric- ably in her arms. She it was who, far from lightening Thy cross, gave to Thee one hard and rough. She apportioned not the nails to the number of Thy wounds, neither did she soften nor sharpen their point, but she fashioned three of a kind, rough, ragged and blunt, so as to increase Thy sufferings. And when dying parched with thirst. Thy faithful spouse was solicitous to deprive Thee of even a drop of water ; nay, she it was who prepared for Thee at the hands of Thy cruel executioners so bitter a drink that, having once tasted it, Thou couldst not partake of it. Thus in the arms of Thy beloved didst Thou breathe forth Thy last. And, faithful to the end, she assisted at Thy burial, permitting Thee only a loan of sepulchre, perfumes, and winding sheet. Nor was she absent at Thy resurrection, for gloriously didst Thou rise again in the arms of Thy holy spouse leaving everything behind Thee, both what Thou hadst borrowed and what had been offered Thee, and taking Thy spouse with Thee to heaven, leaving to worldlings the things of this world." ^