“This wise man continued: “As Jesus grew up he worked in the trade of a carpenter, not a trade known for its wealth. How did Jesus become rich with a step-dad who was only a carpenter? There is absolutely no indication anywhere that he was wealthy from his family or from travelling with His disciples…?” Now you can’t beat arguments like these can you? The wise men who visited Jesus as a young child, gave Him spiritual gold, frankincense and myrrh. There are no rich people in Ajegunle and we all have to be bankers and IT Specialists to be wealthy! And of course, you are doomed to poverty if your parents were poor. In other words, M.K.O. Abiola was a myth!"
I know that the debate on the financial and material status of the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry has raged for ages and that it probably would never be resolved till His return. I know and understand most of the arguments for the position that He was poor, and they are all based on passages from the Bible. We may as well review some of them before proceeding any further.
According to proponents of the “Poor Jesus” idea, He was poor right from birth. They see Luke 2: 4-7 as evidence if this. That passage reads: “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” Yet the passage did not in any way suggest that Joseph could not afford to pay for a room in the inn. It says there was no room. In other words, it was fully booked! When this was pointed out, one “Poor Jesus” theorist retorted: He should have booked ahead! But as another commentator put it: “He (Joseph) was prosperous enough to marry…He was looking for an inn, implying he could afford to pay. They were just full, and he was in a last minute predicament. I’ve slept in my car because no motels were available, and I was tired...”
Another widely canvassed evidence of Jesus’ deprived childhood, according to those so minded is found in verses 22-24 of the same chapter of St Luke’s Gospel: “And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” It is argued that the reference to the “Law of the Lord” here is to Leviticus 12 which in verses 6-8 read: “And when the days of her purifying are fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest: Who shall offer it before the LORD, and make an atonement for her; and she shall be cleansed from the issue of her blood. This is the law for her that hath born a male or a female. And if she be not able to bring a lamb, then she shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons; the one for the burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering: and the priest shall make an atonement for her, and she shall be clean.” Some Bible scholars conclude from this that Jesus’ family must have been so poor as to be unable to afford a lamb for the sacrifice and so, had to settle for doves. This is quite logical, but as another scholar pointed out, “it is not certain that the alternative offered in Leviticus was still an active custom; possibly everyone offered birds by the time of Jesus.” This was after all, 1,400 years or so later!
There are those who say that it simply was impossible for Jesus and his earthly family to be rich because as one scholar put it, “archaeological excavations of Nazareth from the 1950’s show the village of Jesus' day were occupied by poor agricultural people.” This wise man continued: “As Jesus grew up he worked in the trade of a carpenter, not a trade known for its wealth. How did Jesus become rich with a step-dad who was only a carpenter? There is absolutely no indication anywhere that he was wealthy from his family or from travelling with His disciples…?” Now you can’t beat arguments like these can you? The wise men who visited Jesus as a young child gave Him spiritual gold frankincense and myrrh. There are no rich people in Ajegunle and we all have to be bankers and IT Specialists to be wealthy! And of course, you are doomed to poverty if your parents were poor. In other words, M.K.O. Abiola was a myth!
There is possibly no end in sight for this debate because the financial status of Jesus was never really an issue in the Bible. Was that because, wealth was unimportant? Was it because His material status was a given? I think it is the latter. The truth is that Jesus never lacked! He had access! And, properly understood, that is what true prosperity is! If he Had to pay tax, He could send someone to extract it from the mouth of a fish. If He had to feed any number of people, he could multiply tiny pieces of fish and fist-sized loaves of bread; if He needed a place to have dinner, he could ask for anyone’s penthouse without fear of refusal. The same applies to a ride! Even at death He was buried in a tomb fit for royalty. If the Lord Jesus was poor, I sure would like to be!
But let us for a moment assume, without conceding, as my lawyer friends would have put it, that Jesus was born dirt poor, lived in deprivation and died in poverty, one of Biblical passages often quoted in support of that position put an interesting new twist to the tale. That passage, 2 Corinthian 8:9 reads: “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 be rich.”
Matthews Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible had this to say on the verse: “And you know, saith the apostle, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 8:9), that though he was rich, as being God, equal in power and glory with the Father, rich in all the glory and blessedness of the upper world, yet for your sakes he became poor; not only did become man for us, but he became poor also. He was born in poor circumstances, lived a poor life, and died in poverty; and this was for our sakes, that we thereby might be made rich, rich in the love and favour of God, rich in the blessings and promises of the new covenant, rich in the hopes of eternal life, being heirs of the kingdom. This is a good reason why we should be charitable to the poor out of what we have, because we ourselves live upon the charity of the Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words, this Bible scholar, who most certainly cannot be branded a prosperity preacher, identified the riches of God which Jesus sought to bequeath to us through his poverty includes such “blessings and promises of the new covenant” that would enable us to “be charitable to the poor out of what we have.” You cannot give what you don’t have, can you?
Having established that financial and material prosperity is a part of the divine plan, I shall hopefully wrap this up next week by showing what a Biblically sound wholesome teaching on Prosperity should look like. I mean the kind that I have received over the years from my teachers and mentors; the kind that I know is preached in a majority of the churches, but which promotional sound-bites and commentator biases have tended to obscure.
From My Mail Box
RE: CONSCIENCE AND CORRUPTING INFLUENCES (1)
I always shy away from commenting about men of God…I didn’t read Nyiam’s piece, but from excerpts culled from it in your write up, I know there will be a lot to agree/disagree with. It is important as you have said that we stay balanced in our support of Prosperity or a lack of it. It will be fool hardy to insist that God didn’t tell Adeboye to buy a jet, since we were not there, but it is also difficult to quickly agree it was God, because the private jet will sit idle for most of the year (I think). If the private jet was not purchased because the Man of God needs to be all over the world almost the whole year, then its usefulness is in question and therefore the question of where the instruction to buy or not to buy can easily be determined. Don’t get me wrong, people of God should not be answerable to the world for their actions but we are certainly answerable to God and the people of God.
Uche Biosa (Mrs),
Marina, Lagos
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