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3/9 Reading Portions: Exodus 20; Luke 23; Job 38; 2 Corinthians 8

Listen to the audio devotional above, and/or read the written devotional below.

RICH or POOR?

To consider that the blessed Son of God, the Owner and Creator of the universe, would leave the riches of His eternal glory to be born of poor parents, to live as a poor servant upon the earth, to teach and mentor confused disciples who often misunderstood Him, to live under the constant threat of religious leaders conspiring to undermine Him with a ravenous desire to destroy Him, to suffer the shame, indignity, mocking, and brutality of His trials, beatings, scourging, and crucifixion, to receive God’s eternal and unbridled wrath for sins He did not commit, and to die in utter anguish the cursed death upon a tree—it staggers my limited and finite mind. Nevertheless, this is what Jesus Christ did. His actions have given you and me access to God so we may have the riches of glory through His poverty.

Through God’s eternal and glorious plan in His one and only Son, we are recipients of the greatest, most precious, and most infinitely valuable treasure in the universe— Jesus Christ. Yes, the Scriptures most certainly speak of crowns victorious to cast down honorably at the Savior’s feet; and also of heavenly mansions all-marvelous, in which we will abide with Christ forever. Nevertheless, if we have not Jesus Christ as our eternal Prize, Pleasure, and utmost Treasure, we have nothing. Apart from the eternal presence of Jesus Christ, heaven is puny, paltry, pathetic, and outright reprehensible. If our view of life eternal and our hope for the future is anything other than the exalted and glorified presence of the person of Jesus Christ the Son of God first and foremost, our lot among God’s creatures is most tragic indeed.

How shameful is our faith when we
Don’t marvel as we should
O’er Christ’s death on Mount Calvary,
Our debt paid with shed blood.