What Did Jesus Give Up to Become Poor?
How the example of Jesus reveals that generosity isn’t just about money
An excerpt from the forthcoming book by Jamaal Williams and Timothy Paul Jones, In Church as It Is in Heaven (InterVarsity Press, 2023)
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
What were the riches that Jesus gave up?
It wasn’t a wealth of money that Jesus released in his incarnation.
He didn’t give up denarii or drachmae, dollars or cents.
Part of what he gave up was a wealth of privilege.
And so, we can see in the incarnation of Jesus that generosity isn’t only about money. It’s about privileges and preferences too. And, if Jesus gave to us by releasing his privilege, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same? Whether our privileges are economic, educational, cultural, or racial, shouldn’t we be willing to leverage what we possess to provide opportunities for others?
That’s what the church in Jerusalem did in response to the cries of the Grecian widows. When we do the same, we’re simply following the example of our Savior.
With that in mind, let’s look at two habits to aim our souls in the direction of greater generosity.
Living Generously by Receiving the Gift of Another Culture’s Way of Worship
Here’s a habit to help you to move toward multiethnic generosity: Plan to visit a faithful, gospel-driven church outside your own ethnic and cultural expression once every three months. Embrace this habit as an opportunity to learn from sisters and brothers in other cultures—but don’t start this liturgy just yet. Before this habit begins, we want to prepare you to be aware of your own cultural preferences so that you can be generous in the ways you respond to others. Here’s how:
1. Consider your own preferences. The night before you visit a church outside your own ethnicity or culture, list the aspects of your home church’s worship service that you find most meaningful. Thank God for these parts of your church’s practices of worship.
2. Visit the other church at a time that doesn’t remove you from your church’s weekly worship. As you worship, be receptive to the differences in the other church’s practices of worship. Afterward, take time to record your thoughts in a journal. How did the service challenge you to be more like Jesus? What didn’t make sense to you? What did you enjoy? What made you feel uncomfortable?
3. Be grateful for your preferences—and be willing to lay them down. Compare what you experienced in that church with your listing of the most meaningful aspects of your own church’s worship service. There’s nothing wrong with having preferences! Be grateful for the ways that God has shaped you through these patterns of worship. At the same time, pray that you can continue to appreciate these aspects of your church’s worship without turning them into idols by refusing to recognize the value in other expressions of worship. That’s important because, when you’re simultaneously grateful for these patterns yet ready to lay them down, you’re cultivating a heart that’s responsive to ethnic and cultural diversity. This attitude enables us—in the words of my friend Derwin Gray—to “put down our preferences and pick up our crosses.”
Living Generously by Receiving the Gift of Another Culture’s Wisdom
Do you regularly learn from Christians whose ethnicity or culture is different from your own?
If not, make a list of twelve books written by faithful Christians from ethnic backgrounds other than your own. Read one of these books each month throughout the upcoming year—or, better yet, engage more of your senses in this process by obtaining the books in audio formats and listening to them instead. Sometimes, the first step to a life that looks like heaven is a reading list that’s more representative of heaven.
The gospel remains unchanged, regardless of culture. Yet each culture and ethnicity accentuates different aspects of this glorious gospel, and there is beauty in hearing a chorus of different ways of expressing the same gospel.
No, Generosity Isn’t Only about Money—But Sometimes It Is
These liturgies are meant to cultivate gratitude for other cultures and ethnicities. What grows from this gratitude is a willingness to give generously to others.
So what are some specific ways that you might express this generosity?
It might be that you have a position of influence that you can leverage to open doors for others. This might take the form of connections to influential social networks or recommendations for leadership roles. It might include an offer to speak at a conference or an invitation to contribute a chapter to a book.
For some of you, however, generosity does mean giving money—and it would be difficult for me to overemphasize how important this can be.
If you’re a Christian with access to significant wealth, what if God is calling you to stabilize a faithful church in a financially distressed neighborhood or perhaps to support a multiethnic church planting team? Many church planters in multiethnic neighborhoods long to deepen their roots in the community by becoming homeowners. And yet, they lack financial resources to purchase a home. If you believe in the beauty of a life like heaven, could you assist one of these church planters with a down payment so their family can live in the neighborhood that God has called them to serve?
How Generosity Points to God’s Truth
In the earliest centuries of Christianity, generosity was a mark of the Christian life that pointed to a power greater than any human being. According to a second-century writing known as Epistle to Diognetus, the ultimate evidence for the truth of the Christian faith was martyrdom: “Don’t you see them exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet they are not overcome?” he wrote. “This doesn’t seem to be a human work, does it? This is the power of God, and these are the proofs of his presence.”
But what about Christians who never have the opportunity to prove the truth of the faith through martyrdom?
That’s where generosity comes in.
According to the author of this ancient epistle, generosity is an apologetic for God’s truth. That’s because a Christian’s generosity is a living imitation of the sacrificial love that God revealed through the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ. It is a rehearsal for martyrdom that points to the self-giving nature of God which no purely human category is able to explain. This generosity includes caring for the physical needs of one’s neighbors, but it isn’t limited to the giving of goods or money. It includes the ways that a Christian uses power too. In the words of Epistle to Diognetus, “happiness is not a matter … of ruling over one’s neighbors, desiring to have supremacy over those that are weaker, or possessing wealth and using force.” Such hoarding of wealth and lording of power are “alien to the greatness” that belongs to God because they do not reflect God’s sacrificial love. And thus, acts of generosity function as miniature martyrdoms that provide the world with living evidence for the integrity of the Christian’s claims about the gospel.
Edited by Elisabeth Carlsen
What Did Jesus Give Up to Become Poor?
Again, not only what you have said so insightfully, but from a former cross-cultural missionary's perspective, you have laid out a very practical strategy for putting into place everyday that which you preach. I would only suggest that perhaps we should (ought?) include not only multiethnic but multigenerational as well. Perhaps I say that because of my advanced years in age.