1 Corinthians: The Collection for the Saints

This passage in 1 Corinthians is one of those passages that we are familiar with, but often miss the main point in the text because we jump to application before we see exactly what Paul is instructing the original recipients of the epistle. So I would like us to look at a little bit of background information about the specific collection Paul is talking about in this chapter.

From what we see in verse 3, this collection was for the specific purpose of sending funds to Jerusalem. We have many passages in the New Testament that talk about this specific collection. We will see in these passages that this specific collection served a couple purposes:

First, it would bring relief to those who are in need, helping them to not be distracted by their physical circumstances

Second, this collection was meant to bring unity between the Jews and Gentiles. There was a lot of animosity between Jews and Gentiles during the first century, and at times this would continue even among Christians… This collection would have the purpose of bringing these two groups together. The Gentiles would be showing good will or benevolence towards their Jewish brethren for the spiritual blessings they received from the Jews…

The first mention of a collection chronologically for the Christians in Judea:

"Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul." ()

This prophet comes and tells these brethren about a future need of brethren in Jerusalem and Judea, and what do these brethren decide to do? They decide to begin preparing to meet this need. They, of their own free will, made the decision to get involved in taking care of the need of their brethren outside of their local congregation. We are not told exactly when they collected these funds… what day or how long they had a collection for before the funds were sent to Jerusalem. It could be that the funds were collected until when Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem in .

After this, it seems that Paul, as he travelled on His apostolic journeys among the Gentile churches, encouraged them to take part in this collection for the Christians in Judea.

It does not seem like it is the case based on some things Paul says in 2 Corinthians that this collection was mandatory for every church. Instead, it seems like it was something that was strongly encouraged by Paul, and that each church would tell Paul if they wanted to get involved with it. It doesn’t even seem like every church knew about it. It seems to be only the churches Paul was working with that sent it. We will see shortly that, when He speaks to the Romans about the collection, that they probably did not know about it yet and Paul had not yet been to Rome.

It would make sense that this was a voluntary collection, if you wanted it to be something that brings unity between the Jews and Gentiles… If you were a Jewish Christian and you knew that these brethren gave out of obligation and not by their own free-will with generosity, then this would not make the same kind of impact that a generous offering done voluntarily would… You see in that the Corinthians said they wanted to be involved, and also that the Macedonians begged Paul to get involved in meeting the need of their brethren in Judea… Also, the fact that they had to send Paul a letter about how to collect the funds shows that they agreed to take part of the collection at least some time after they learned about it. If Paul commanded them to collect money for the saints in Jerusalem, wouldn’t he have given the instructions for it sooner?

We do see in this that when a church decided to get involved with the collection, they would then receive instructions from Paul as to how to collect the funds and to get them ready to be picked up. This is what Paul gives them in . The “how to” instructions

The Corinthians asked Paul for instructions about how they were to collect the funds (). Paul gave both them and the churches in Galatia the same instructions… We will look at this passage in more detail shortly.

We see in that, as Paul travelled to different areas, that he used examples of the zeal and generosity of some churches to encourage other churches to give. He used the Corinthian’s desire to be involved to stir up the Macedonians. And in 2 Corinthians, when there were some questions as to whether the Corinthians were going to keep their word and collect the funds, Paul uses the Macedonians to encourage them to keep their word in giving to the saints in Jerusalem.

Churches in at least three regions of the Roman empire (other than the church in Antioch of Syria) decided to give towards this collection: the churches in Galatia (; Derbe, Lystra), Achaia (at least Corinth - don’t know about Cenchrea, another local congregation), and churches in Macedonia (ex. Phillipi, Thessalonica, & Berea)… We are not told of any other churches than these that were giving to this collection, and even here, we only have regions spoken of and don’t know of any specific churches involved other than the brethren in Antioch of Syria and the brethren in Corinth.

Two other mentions of this collection: and

Paul wrote Romans from Corinth. This may have been during His final visit there when he collected the funds from them… Here he is giving his travel plans to the Romans, telling them of his desire to visit them on His way to Spain… But before he does this, he tells them that he needs to go to Jerusalem to deliver the contribution that the Gentile saints made for the Jewish Christians there.

"At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you." ()

These are the verses that talk about this collection. It is important to get this context so we can see that what Paul is primarily dealing with in our passage is a specific contribution for Jerusalem in which all the funds that came in for it among each local church went to Jerusalem. He is not talking primarily about a general collection for the needs of the local church.

I am not saying that there is not any applications to a general collection, but I am saying that this is not primarily what Paul is talking about. He is not giving a command to us today to have a collection on the Lord’s day to meet all of the local needs of the church here. Whenever we say at the time of the collection that Paul is giving us a command for a general collection today, this is technically incorrect. There are principles here that we can apply to collections that we have on the Lord’s Day that we will talk about at the end of the lesson.

NEXT SLIDE

Let’s go ahead and read verses 1-4 of :

NOW CONCERNING… This does show that they asked for these instructions on how to give in the letter that they sent to Paul.

Answers to their questions about the collection…

How it was to be collected: The 1st day of every week when they came together. This way there would be no surprise when Paul got there. There would always be funds building up until Paul arrived…

Preparations for pick-up:

Have the money collected… There is much debate among commentators exactly what is being commanded here. The majority view among the commentators is that Paul is telling each of them individually to have a fund on their own and then when Paul comes, to bring the funds to him. The first part of verse 2 is given as evidence to this. The language is difficult to take another way. But the context seems to better fit the second view, that they were to bring their money each Lord’s day as they are prospered to their assembly and pool it together in some way. The fact that Paul says in the second half of verse two that he does not want there to be any collections made when he arrives tends to fit this second view better in my opinion.

Have a brother picked to accompany the gift, as well as letters. Paul would accompany these funds to Jerusalem, as we see in . He opens up the possibility in v4, but we do see that he ends up accompanying the money. But the instructions that he gives here are specific. Have the money collected, and then have a specific individual picked to carry the money to Jerusalem. They were also to take letters with them that accompanied the gift.

But it makes sense that Paul himself would not carry the gift. One, that would not be really safe. one person carrying such a large sum of money from many churches… Having at least one representative from each church carry the money and letters from their church would be much safer. In , we see that there are at least 8 men who accompanied Paul to Jerusalem from different regions. The list is probably not exhaustive. Second, this would free himself from any personal accusation of keeping funds for Himself. He could not be accused of using the money for another purpose if he did not carry it. And third, it would be a lot better to put a face and letters to the money from each church. Having representatives come to Jerusalem would go a long way to bringing unity among the churches.

So this is what we see gong on in the text. Now let’s talk about applications…

First, let’s talk about some applications that parallel what the Corinthians were being instructed to do… having a specific collection for an outside need. This passage shows that it is pleasing to the Lord for us to use collected funds to help Christians elsewhere in the world. I say this because we can tend to think that every need that we hear about has to taken care of through the collection we already have. But there is not a reason biblically to assume that every need must be taken care of from the funds we currently have. My opinion is that this passage shows we should have a collection for the specific need, as we see in the first point of application. This is what the passage is primarily dealing with. When you hear about a need outside of the congregation, here is how you are to collect and send the funds…

There does seem to be a principle here that you know what you are giving towards… There isn’t authority in the New Testament to just collect money for an unknown future reason that may come up or just to inflate the bank balance so you can be ready for a rainy day that you don’t know about… There were specific needs being given to by the brethren here… and in my judgment, If there was not a need, there would not be a need for a collection… The fact that the Corinthians needed instructions on how to give for the saints in Jerusalem implies that they were not collecting funds for these brethren yet. We don’t even know if they even had a general collection as we do… And we don’t know what they did after Paul collected the funds. whether they kept having a collection or not… We would be speculating no matter what our opinion is… Then you also see the principle here to send a person and letters with the money that is used to meet a need… Just don’t send money, send someone. Send correspondence to them to encourage them in their need So if the elders here heard about a need in Zimbabwe, they would have authority from this passage to say, “let’s for the next 5 Sundays collect funds for the brethren in Zimbabwe, and we will send every penny of this collection there with _______ (Denny) along with personal letters from the brethren here to encourage the brethren.” This would be the main application of this text for us - meeting a benevolent need elsewhere…

This is how benevolent needs are instructed to be taken care of by Paul…

So what about the general collection that we have?

Next, let’s talk about some applications to

With this said, I do believe there are some possible applications for what we currently do on the Lord’s Day…

In the very least, we see that it is pleasing to the Lord to collect money when we come together to meet specific needs… Once again, we give for things we know we are giving towards, whether that be class materials or supporting preachers and teachers, etc. These certainly don’t have to be taken care of using the treasury. They can be paid for by individuals, but this passage, in my judgment, would authorize collecting money for these kinds of things. That is my opinion. I could be wrong though. And since we do come together on the Lord’s day, it would be pleasing to the Lord to collect on the Lord’s Day. This is not to say that there are not other days that are authorized to collect funds. It seems to me that both and have collections done that we are not given a specific day at all. In these passages, the Christians in Jerusalem were selling their possessions and laying the money at the apostles’ feet for needs that were more “local” in nature… This is the only example we have of local needs being taken care of. They had a general fund for needs that came about. So don’t feel like just because you give on the Lord’s Day that all of our obligations to be giving and to be generous are taken care of. There is nothing in this passage that demands that the collection be part of the worship service as many churches traditionally do here in America. Not all churches do it the way we do here. Some have a collection box in the back with a slot that money is put in as people enter. Both are acceptable ways to collect money on the Lord’s Day. There may be other ways that I am not thinking of… Either way, it is not necessary to make it part of the actual worship. It, among many of the things we do during worship, is not called an act of worship in the New Testament. Giving is a doctrinal idea. Exactly when on the Lord’s day is a tradition…

These may be some general applications from our text in 1 Corinthians…