The Christmas season is upon us. At times, I find it hard to stomach, with the excessive devotion to giving and getting gifts. The tinsel, the lights, the crass materialism that seems to have infected the true spirit of what Christmas is all about. Among the many texts that focus on the meaning of Christmas, one of my favorites is 2 Corinthians 8:9. Although this passage was designed by Paul to motivate believers in Corinth to contribute generously to the gift he planned on delivering to the suffering saints in Jerusalem, its message pertains equally well to the meaning of Christmas.

“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 Cor. 8:9).

As we see there, Christmas is all about the gift that Christ Jesus made of himself to us all. But what do the terms in this text really mean?

First, in what sense was Christ “rich”? The first thing that comes to mind is the incalculable “wealth” of his eternal glory. The sacrifice of the Son will have its sanctifying effect on us only to the extent that we are in touch with the immeasurable splendor and limitless majesty of his pre-existent glory in fellowship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah did his best to convey the magnitude of this glory by providing this description of his experience:

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke” (Isa. 6:1-4).

This is but one portrait of what Jesus had in mind when he spoke to his Father of “the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Paul described it as being “in the form of God” and experiencing eternal “equality with God” (Phil. 2:6).

But it was more than splendor, more than radiant beauty, more than the unending adoration of angelic hosts. It was joy! The “riches” of Christ that he so lovingly forsook entailed the mutual and immeasurable delight of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father and the Spirit in the Father and the Father in the Spirit and the Son in the Spirit and the Spirit in the Son. Each beholding the beauty of the other. Each exulting in the excellence of the other. Their eternal and energetic love for one another is beyond our capacity to grasp.

So, secondly, in what sense did Christ become “poor”? Perhaps we should again let Isaiah make the point. Hear him prophesy of the humiliation of holiness: for “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:2-3).

Wait! No! Surely there’s been a mistake. Are you suggesting, Paul, that the one at whom the seraphim dared not look (Isa. 6:2), whose glory filled the earth (Isa. 6:3), is also the one who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” a man “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53:4)? Are you suggesting, Paul, that the one who sat enthroned in power and glory (Isa. 6:1-2) was somehow “wounded for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5)? How can it be that “the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5) “was oppressed” and “afflicted” like “a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent” (Isa. 53:7)?

Such was the breathtaking height of his riches and the heartbreaking depth of his poverty. What words remain to explain such “grace”? He joyfully surrendered “all the insignia of divine majesty,” writes Murray Harris, “and assumed all the frailty and vicissitudes of the human condition” (579).

And this . . . “for your sake”, said Paul to the Corinthians. Yes, and for our sake as well, that you and I “by his poverty might become rich” (v. 9).

“Rich”? In what sense have we become wealthy through his poverty? Refuse to tolerate the spiritually sick and perverted claims of the so-called prosperity “gospel” that would find here a reference to material gain. Our riches and wealth are the sort that cannot be earned by effort or secured at a sale. They are the gift of sovereign grace.

Where does one begin to enumerate them? Election before the foundation of the world? Yes! Forgiveness of sins? Yes! Adoption into the family of God? Yes! Justification by faith alone? Yes! Union with Christ? Yes! The permanent indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit? Yes! Did not Paul assure the Ephesians that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:4)? Yes!

And above all else, the richest and most precious blessing of all . . . is God himself! He is our inestimable treasure. Beholding his beauty is our inheritance. Enjoying his excellency is our wealth. He is himself the Christmas gift so freely given to us all.

So, when you hear someone greet you with the standard, “Merry Christmas,” think of the immeasurable condescension of the Son of God and the incalculable riches that he died and rose again to give us.