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. (2 Cor 8:9)
Commenting on this verse, LDS apologist D. Charles Pyle wrote the following in his very insightful and important book on deification:
We being this exposition with Philippians 2:5-10. In this passage, we learn of the mindset of Jesus of Nazareth, of his humility, of his emptying of himself, of his death, and of his subsequent reward of exaltation, all without even the thought of reward in his own mind. In that same passage, Paul teaches that we ourselves should have within us that very same mindset had by Jesus. It reminds us of all the words of Jesus at Luke 14:11. There, we are both warned and encouraged to humble or abase ourselves (as Jesus himself did). Exaltation cannot come to those who are unwilling to humble themselves before God (or, become like a little child).
Elsewhere in another passage, Paul speaks of Jesus’ grace and what he did, and it has as its underlying meaning the same that he outlined in Philippians 2:5-10. In that other passage, to which I alluded above, Paul writes:
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. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Here the first part of the passage refers back to the underlying thought of the following verses of scripture (also previously mentioned above):
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)
Now, considering this above scripture, we can see how “being rich” in 2 Corinthians 8:9 clearly correlates with “being in the form of God” in Philippians 2:6. We also see a very clear correlation of verses 7-8 of the very same Philippians passage (describing the kenosis or emptying of Christ) with the phrase “yet for your sakes he became poor” in 2 Corinthians 8:9. Indeed, Jesus was God before his incarnation, before life as a mortal man and his subsequent death for our sakes. He willingly let all that he had, and his great glory, behind to accomplish his mission for our sakes, with no desire for reward in mind. . . . Mark the Ascetic (c. 430), wrote the same things about the meaning of this passage that I had surmised. While reading an English translation of The Philokalia, I came across the following passage of text therein:
All the penalties imposed by divine judgment upon man for the sin of the first transgression—death, toil, hunger, thirst—He took upon Himself, becoming what we are so that we might become what He is. The Logos became man, so that man might become Logos. Being rich, He became poor for our sakes, so that through His poverty we might become rich (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9). In His great love for man He became like us, so that through every virtue we might become like Him (Mark the Ascetic, “Letter to Nicolas, in The Philokalia, translated by Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware [London: Faber and Faber, 1979], 1:155).
Note carefully here the doctrine of deification underlying this interpretation, and also that this old author, Mark the Ascetic, further claimed that we ourselves, too, would become Logos or Word like Jesus himself (the Word being God, considering John 1:1). Indeed, if we take that above meaning and apply it to an interpretive paraphrasing of 2 Corinthians 8:9, by which we see “rich” as meaning “God,” “poor” as indicating “man,” “poverty” as referencing “manhood,” and the final “rich” like to the first occurrence also meaning “God,” one then can see within it the ancient Christian formularies patterned along the same lines as the structure of this scriptural text.
Understanding the passage in this way, this passage could be worded in such a way as to bring out the fuller, oft-hidden underlying meaning in this same 2 Corinthians passage that early Christians appeared to have understood from it, when reading. This deeper, underlying sense can be represented (in the language of the King James Version of the Bible) in the 2 Corinthians passage, in the following manner:
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was [God], yet for your sakes he became [man], that ye through his [manhood] might be [God].
When Paul wrote of Jesus’ being rich he most certainly was not speaking of material wealth, or even of eternal possessions in a heavenly inheritance. In the first part of the text, Paul most clearly alludes to the deity nature that Christ possessed before becoming man, as is seen in the first part of the Philippians passage before cited. To have Paul change his meaning mid-thought would make little sense in the context of the first part of the logical unit of thought in that passage The meaning in the above paraphrase, as we have given it, also is no mere flight of fancy, nor a slip of logic, or some mere speculation originating in the New Age movement of our modern times. It was the underlying view of an ancient Christian writer!
Like it or not, if the first part of 2 Corinthians 8:9 refers back to the deity of Christ, and to the kenosis of Christ—of his becoming a man for us (and we can know it does, for Paul relates it to the grace of Christ!)—it logically follows that the second part must refer to a process parallel to the second part of the outcome of that emptying, and the humility discussed in Philippians 2. Coded through the passage is (considered in the light of 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 . . .), it still is clear enough in meaning if we keep in view the Philippians passage (quoted above), when reading this 2Corinthians passage. Try as we may, there is little use in attempting varying forms of mental gymnastics, in virtually Herculean effort, to get around this plain meaning hidden before our very eyes for so very long. Rather, we should try to wrap our heads around its fullest meaning and live our lives just as Paul and as Jesus intended, humbling ourselves before God—even unto death, if circumstances warrant—so that we might one day become exalted, as was Jesus himself (he being our Great Exemplar), and by whom and through whom this grace has been made available to us from the Father. (D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and Supplemented) [CreateSpace, 2018], 60-62, 63-66)
