“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor for your sakes: that through his poverty you might be rich. “

2 Corinthians 8.9

Rich or poor?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about being rich and poor. This misunderstanding also applies to the person of Jesus.

Some people say that we have to be poor because Jesus was poor (in other words we should follow his “example”). Is this really so?

In Christian tradition, especially in a Catholic one there are common ideas  about Jesus, which are not true in a face of God’s Holy Word. One of those is that Jesus was a poor man. In a light of above scripture and many others unfortunately we cannot say so. Also we cannot say that we have to be poor because he was poor! It is clear that He was not poor but became poor and He did it for us! But also important is why He became poor -  to make us rich! It is the same like with forgiveness of sins; He suffered for our sins so we don’t have to! He became poor so we don’t have to be poor! We have to remember also that word poor is not only related to finances but to any other area of our life. You can be poor in love, character, health, wisdom, knowledge or friendship. This is very wide term but people use it mostly to describe financial state. Implication can be made that Jesus became poor to make us rich (whole, complete) in every area of our life. So if we did not resist this what He did for us in sin area we should not resist in that matter too!