Second Corinthians 8:4 speaks of “the grace and the fellowship of the ministry to the saints.” This grace became the fellowship of the Macedonian churches in giving, the fellowship in liberality, to minister to the need of the saints. To send the material supply from Greece to Palestine at Paul’s time, close to two thousand years ago, was not an easy thing. It may have taken over two months for this supply to arrive by ship. Also, it took a number of months for Paul’s letters to reach those to whom he wrote. For them to reply to his letters took even longer. Today it is much different. We can use fax machines to send people letters immediately and get an immediate response from them. The co-workers in Moscow fellowship with me quite often in this way. But even in Paul’s “awkward” age, in which transportation and communication were slow and inconvenient, the Macedonians, under the apostle Paul’s leading, ministered to the need of the distant saints. That grace became a fellowship. Because of the modern conveniences which we enjoy today, our liberality must be a “quicker” grace.
Grace is a business in which all the believers should participate for its accomplishment (2 Cor. 8:6-7). Today there should be traffic, fellowship, among all the local churches on earth. This is the fellowship of the Body of Christ, and this is “international trade.” This is a business. Nearly every day I receive letters by fax from different directions. A kind of business is going on, a business of grace. This is an international trade of grace. Grace first becomes the fellowship, and the fellowship, the traffic, becomes a business. This is the busiest international trade.
When I receive letters from the brothers, this is the grace incarnated to be the business, and this incarnation is God. When the fax letters come to me from the brothers, that means God comes. Paul went to a place to visit and that was grace. So when the brothers send me letters, that means they come to visit me by letters. That is also grace; that is fellowship; that is business.
Second Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, for your sakes He became poor in order that you, because of His poverty, might become rich.” By becoming poor, Christ gave Himself to us to be our riches. If He had never lived in Nazareth in that poor environment to be a poor carpenter, how could He be our riches? This is all grace. Grace means “God is everything, God does everything, God gives everything.” What do we have, that we have not received? We have received everything. We receive grace upon grace, and this grace is God Himself.
Second Corinthians 9:8 speaks of the all grace which God causes to abound unto the believers that, in everything always having all sufficiency, they may abound unto every good work. This grace is God.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9 we see the sufficient grace of Christ to the apostle Paul as the power of Christ that was perfected in weakness and that overshadowed the apostle. God gave the apostle Paul many high revelations, so God was concerned for him that he might be proud in receiving these many revelations. God had even brought him to the third heaven and to Paradise to hear unspeakable words, which it was not allowed for a man to speak (vv. 2-4). So God gave him a thorn, which was a messenger of Satan, an evil spirit, to buffet him all the time (v. 7). Paul prayed three times for the thorn to be removed, but the Lord would not remove it. Instead, He told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (vv. 8-9). No one could bear such a thorn, but the Lord’s grace could. This all-sufficient grace became the power to sustain and support Paul. It also overshadowed him, tabernacled over him, to protect and cover him. Thus, the all-sufficient grace does two things. First, it supports, sustains, and strengthens us positively; this is offensive. Second, it covers and protects us; this is defensive. This all-sufficient grace is Christ, and Christ is the processed, consummated Triune God to be the Spirit. Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). We revised the chorus of Hymn #312 in our hymnal (Hymns) to read: “All sufficient grace! / Never powerless! / It is Christ who lives in me, / In His exhaustlessness.”
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Grace is the Triune God becoming our enjoyment. The source of this grace is God; the element of this grace is Christ; and this grace being applied to us and reaching us is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the Third of the Divine Trinity.