Excerpt from The Finality of Christ and Other Sermons

"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 become rich." - 2 Cor. viii. 9.

There is a tremendous theology involved in this simple statement which we cannot evade. It does not say that Jesus was poor, but that He became poor: it was a piece of voluntary renunciation. But when was Jesus rich, and when did He become poor? There is no possibility of referring this act of renunciation to His earthly life, it can only refer to the act of the Incarnation by which He surrendered His heavenly glory and His Divine majesty, and adopted not only human life, but a life of poverty. Here we have the doctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus indubitably implied, a pre-existence which for the moment St. Paul is content to define as one of richness. And what a light it throws upon St. Paul's use of the word grace. It stresses its condescension, its voluntary and spontaneous choice, the artistic beauty with which the act of renunciation was made. We need all the fulness which the word holds in New Testament usage to bring out what it here contains.

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