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2 Corinthians 8:9 vs. “Give Thanks”

Henry Smith (recorded by Don Moen) · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

Passage2 Corinthians 8:9 chapter ↗
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumGive Thanks · 1986
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • Never says it is quoting: no verse reference, no translation named, nothing framed as scripture
  • The closing ground clause preserves 2 Corinthians 8:9's causation, crediting the change to God's act rather than to the singer's resolve
  • Names the Son directly, so the thanks has a stated object and a stated reason instead of general gratitude
  • Speaks about God in the third person throughout, which makes it an exhortation a congregation can teach itself rather than a statement about the singer's feelings
  • The rights holder publishes the passages behind the song, so its sources are checkable even though the song itself cites none

⚠ Cautions

  • The verse's first clause is absent. In 2 Corinthians 8:9 the enriching happens only through an impoverishing, and the song sings the outcome without the cost
  • Paul uses the verse to persuade a church to send money to poor believers elsewhere, and verses 13 and 14 name equality as the aim. Lifted out of that paragraph, "rich" can be heard as a state to hold rather than a surplus to pass on
  • The weakness-to-strength declaration tracks Joel 3:10, which Integrity Music lists among the song's scriptures. In Joel that sentence belongs to a summons calling the nations to arm themselves for judgment, not to a believer's encouragement
  • Riches and poverty are figures in Paul. Sung by someone who is literally short of money, the declaration can be heard as a promise about circumstances that the verse does not make
  • Sources disagree about which verse prompted the song. The publisher and Songfacts name 2 Corinthians 8:9; the UMC's History of Hymns gives the sermon text as 2 Corinthians 6:10. This proof checks the passage the rights holder cites, and both verses run along the same line of thought

Verse Proof

2 Corinthians 8:9

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”

Second Corinthians 8 is a fundraising appeal set inside a letter. Paul is asking the church at Corinth to finish a collection they had begun a year earlier, money for poor believers in Jerusalem. He opens the chapter by describing the Macedonian churches, who gave beyond their means while in poverty themselves, and then presses Corinth to excel in the same grace. Verse 9 is the hinge of that argument, the reason he gives for asking. Five verses later he names the goal plainly: equality, the surplus of one meeting the need of another. The riches in this verse arrive in a paragraph about handing money over.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is short and built to be repeated. It opens as an instruction to the people singing rather than as a prayer: give thanks, with a grateful heart, to the Holy One, and give thanks because God has given His Son, Jesus Christ. The second half turns to two paired declarations the singer is invited to make, one about weakness becoming strength and one about poverty becoming wealth, and both are grounded in a closing clause that credits the change to what the Lord has done. God is spoken about in the third person throughout. Three independent transcriptions of the lyric agree that it contains no second-person address to God and no vocative. No chapter and verse is cited anywhere in the song, and no translation is named.

The most useful thing to say here is what did not shift. The song's turn from poor to rich is not a reversal of 2 Corinthians 8:9. It is the verse's own second clause. Paul writes that Christ was rich and became poor so that the reader might become rich, and the song's closing ground clause keeps that causation intact by crediting the change to what the Lord did rather than to anything the singer managed. What the song does not carry over is the first clause, the cost, and the cost in Paul is Christ's. Nor does it carry the setting, where the riches function as a reason to give money away rather than as a state to announce. The weakness-to-strength half is a separate borrowing. Its sense tracks Joel 3:10 in the King James, and Joel 3:10 is one of the passages the rights holder lists behind the song. In Joel that sentence sits inside a war summons addressed to the nations being mustered for judgment.

· Not a quote: No verse is cited and no translation is named. So it never says it is quoting. The song's poor-to-rich turn follows 2 Corinthians 8:9's own second clause. It does not reverse that clause.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The song's turn from poor to rich is not a reversal of the verse. It is the verse's second half, sung without its first.

Why it matters

The verse behind this song is one of the shortest statements of the gospel Paul ever wrote, and it works by exchange. Christ gives up what He had so that others gain what they did not have. A song that keeps only the gaining half is still saying something true, but it hands the singer an outcome without the transaction that produced it. That matters most for the people this song reaches best. Henry Smith wrote it in 1978 while out of work and losing his sight, and the declaration it invites is exactly the one that is hardest to make honestly. Knowing where the riches came from is what keeps that declaration from being a mood.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What this song plants is a habit of attributing. Its grammar is causal from the first line to the last: give thanks because of a named gift, and make the declaration because of a named act. Repeat that a few hundred times and the word that settles is "because," attached to God rather than to circumstances. The dwelling tag is mixed and the count is genuinely close. Roughly half the words are about God, His title, His Son, and what He has done, and roughly half are the declaration the singer makes about themselves. The ground clause is what keeps the second half tethered to the first, which is why it is worth singing rather than trailing off after the declaration. If you loop this, loop the whole sentence, and read the verse it rests on at least once. Paul's riches are handed on. A singer who knows that will find the song asking something as well as giving something.

Sources

Corrections

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Proverbs 4” Streetlights Proverbs 4:20-27 Play it freely. This is Proverbs 4 itself, read word for word in a named translation. “Guard your heart” arrives with the commands about the mouth, the eyes and the feet still attached.

✓ The whole chapter, in order, so “guard your heart” arrives with the commands about the mouth, the eyes and the feet, instead of standing alone as advice

⚠ “Word-for-word” here describes the reading, not the translation theory. Streetlights uses it for what is read. Tyndale uses the same phrase for a different thing

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 11 (English Standard Version)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 11:1-7 Sing it straight through. It is all seven verses of Psalm 11, in order, in a version the track title names. A reviewer says one verse comes back as a refrain, and it is the psalm's own verse.

✓ All seven verses, in order. We set the printed sung text beside an ESV and compared it word by word: 131 words, all matching, nothing added and nothing dropped

⚠ The printed text under the video lists each line once. It is not a map of the song. A review of the album says verse 4 comes back as a refrain

 ✓ VERIFIED “Walk In Him (Colossians 2:6-7)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Colossians 2:6-7 Sing it, and teach it. The whole sentence arrives, in order, in the version Seeds names. Read verse 8 afterward, so a child knows what the walking is set against.

✓ Every word the chord chart prints as lyric is a word of Colossians 2:6-7, in the passage's order, and no word of the passage is left out.

✓ no cautions: this is the standard

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “Gracefully Broken” Tasha Cobbs Leonard 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 Sing it. Nothing here is offered as a quotation, and nothing it says about God is untrue. Just know the strong-when-weak line is Paul's conclusion about a trouble God would not take away.

✓ The song is a prayer. It is addressed to God nearly all the way through, and its requests ask God to act rather than announcing what the singer will achieve.

⚠ The bridge states Paul's conclusion with none of Paul's occasion. He wrote it about a thorn God refused to remove. A singer with no trouble in view supplies the meaning.

 NOT A QUOTE “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” Helen H. Lemmel (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) 2 Corinthians 3:18 Sing it. It names no verse and nothing in it is false. Just hold the rest of the promise alongside it: scripture says looking at Christ changes the one who looks, not only the scenery.

✓ Points the hearer's attention at Christ and holds it there, which is the direction 2 Corinthians 3:18 assumes before it says anything else

⚠ Paul's beholding produces transformation into Christ's image. The refrain's produces a fading of other things. Those are related and they are not the same promise, and the smaller one is the one that gets memorised

 NOT A QUOTE “Your Grace Is Enough” Matt Maher 2 Corinthians 12:9 Sing it. Nothing here is quoting scripture, and nothing it says of God is untrue. Just know the verse behind it is God's answer to Paul, not a line Paul sang to God.

✓ Never says it is quoting at all: no reference, no translation named, nothing framed or introduced as scripture

⚠ The direction of the sentence is reversed. God's word to Paul becomes the singer's word to God, which is true to say and is a different act from what the verse records

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