Principles for Effective Giving pt. 2

Giving Away What Wasn’t His

From the Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1995

When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St. Louis, another billion and a half for the State of Illinois, two and a half billion for the national forest system, and to top off the list, Herman left six trillion dollars to the government to help pay off the national debt. That sounds amazingly generous, but there was a small problem—Herman’s only asset when he died was a 1983 Oldsmobile. He made grand pronouncements, but there was no real generosity involved. His promises were meaningless because there was nothing to back them up.

True generosity is not determined by the amount that we give but by our hearts. When Jesus saw the widow give two mites in the Temple He responded, “Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury” (Matthew 12:43). The sacrificial gift that she gave demonstrated how much she loved God and His work. The best way to determine what we love most is not by our words but by how we use our time and our money.

Sermon in a Sentence

“Giving is not only a spiritual principle, but a spiritual practice that yields both physical and spiritual results.”

Chapter 9 in Context

Paul is still speaking concerning the money for God’s people, the offering for the saints, the collection for the Christians at Jerusalem, help for needy believers, and help for fellow Christians. Paul is seemingly excusing his earnestness in pressing the Corinthians to the duty of charity, and proceeds to give directions about the acceptable way and manner or performing it, namely bountifully, deliberately, and freely; and gives good encouragement for doing so. It is one thing to chide a church for being dilatory in their giving. It is something else to motivate individuals in the church to be free and unselfish in their giving How does one develop in individuals such a happy spirit about giving? Church leaders throughout the ages have faced the same challenge that confronted Paul. Some people balk at giving because they do not understand the benefits of giving, and here in chapter nine Paul list four benefits for giving that we will explore next week:

It will make them spiritually rich (9:8-10)

It will bring thanksgiving to God (9:11-13)

The recipients will respond with prayers for them (9:14)

It will advance the well being and solidarity of the worldwide Christian community (9:13-14).

The harvest you see will match the seeds in your hand

Paul’s first principle draws from a farming analogy: those who sow sparingly will get a spare harvest, those who sow generously will get a generous harvest. The idea of sowing is more than scattering seed, its describes the farmer that works and tills the ground where the farmer will scatter seed. No farmer considers sowing as a loss of seed because the harvest will provide the seed for the next season. Consequently, no sower begrudges the seed he casts upon the ground or tries to scrimp by with sowing as little as possible. He willingly sows all that he can and trusts that God will bless the sowing with a bountiful harvest. If the farmer, for some reason, stints on the sowing, he will cheat himself on the harvest. The more he sows, the greater the harvest he will reap and the more he will have for sowing for the next harvest. Applying this analogy to giving means that plentiful giving will yield a plentiful harvest. The word sparingly is pheidomenos, pertaining to what is done in a limited, sparing manner and of negligible quantity or extent. The word bountifully is eulogia, meaning a large amount of something, with the implication of blessing or benefit.

The idea that generosity to the poor would meet with overflowing blessing in return was common in Jewish thinking (Prov 11:24–25; Mal 3:10). In recent times this idea has been perverted by unscrupulous ministers to entice people to believe that the more they give the more they we will get in return. They appeal to greed to encourage others to open their pocketbooks, and they give ultimately to get more for themselves. But this verse must be interpreted in terms of what follows. Paul does not pass this principle off as a shrewd investment strategy on how to reap greater material blessings by giving a portion of it to others. If one gives in hopes of attaining greater material prosperity, then one will harvest only spiritual poverty. Paul makes clear in what follows that God rewards generosity with material abundance to make it possible for people to be even more generous.

“You cannot expect a maximum harvest without maximum investment.” (Mark 4:20).

Giving is a matter of the heart

There is a commercial that asks the most profound question: “What’s in your wallet? Capital One asks not so they can get money in your wallet, but so they can entice you to apply for their credit card that you may or may not get. Christians pray about everything, from babies to bills, but leave giving out of their prayer altogether. Truth be told, people preset their giving while expecting God to go above and beyond our heart’s desire. Giving is not a matter of the heart when your heart is not in the same place. Jesus said it best, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21).

“Giving from the heart is done with purposeful intent....so whats in your heart?”

decided (proaireo) — to come to a decision beforehand, to determine ahead of time, to decide upon ahead of time.

reluctantly (lype) — a state of unhappiness marked by regret as a result of what has been done

compulsions (ananke) — necessity or constraining as inherent in the nature of things

Paul echoes Scripture to bolster the need to give generously: those who give spontaneously from the heart are especially prized by God. In the Old Testament, giving reluctantly or under compulsion is portrayed as cancelling out any benefit that could be received from the gift while giving with a glad heart promises reward from God: “Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to” (Deut 15:10). Scripture assumes that what is crucial is the attitude of the one who gives, not the amount. God, who knows and appraises our hearts, values only those gifts that come as a free expression of the deepest part of our souls. Gifts given under some sense of external compulsion will always be halfhearted at best. That is why the amount makes no difference if it is given with a glad heart (8:12). But if it is given resentfully with a gloomy countenance, that attitude cancels any merit the gift might have no matter its amount.

Paul underscores this point with a line from Prov 22:8 that is absent from the Hebrew text, “for God loves a cheerful giver.” The LXX has God “blesses” a cheerful giver. The Hebrew text reflects the idea of blessing in Prov 22:9, “A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.” It is not that God does not love the one who gives grudgingly or not at all but that God loves, in the sense of “approves,” the one who is delighted to give to others. God loves a cheerful giver because that is precisely what God is, a cheerful giver. Horrell reflects on how this verse can be twisted to mean something other than Paul intended:

The comfortable rich who wish to remain so may interpret this to mean that if they can only give a little cheerfully, and would resent giving more, then God would rather they give only a little. Paul, it is clear, puts things rather differently: where the grace of God abounds, there people of their own free-will abound in good deeds (9:8), like the righteous one whom the scripture describes as scattering gifts freely to the poor (9:9)

People don’t give with a heartfelt intent because too many worry about where the money goes. When people ask where the money goes, remind them they don’t ask...

Giving produces a harvest that enables you to give more

The songwriter put pen to parchment and said “the more you give, the more he gives to you, just keep on giving because its really true. You can’t beat God giving, no matter how hard you try.” The problem financially with ministry today is that we don’t even try to give better than we did yesterday. The phrase “be able” is dynateo, meaning to be able to do or to experience something. Everyone has the ability to give, but many do not because they seeing giving as a loss, or they feel they can do more with it. “Your seed can do more in the ground than it can in your hand.” Most people become miserly in their giving because they worry that they will not have enough for themselves. Paul assures them that God will supply them with plenty for their needs at all times and uses alliterative repetition to carry his point. What God is actually saying is that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

The word “having all you need” translates autarkeia, a word that Greek authors used to mean “self-sufficiency” or “contentment.” The Cynics and Stoics of Paul’s day understood self sufficiency to be related “to freedom from external circumstances and other people.” In this tradition one developed this self-sufficiency by disengaging oneself from human needs and from other humans. Paul does not use this term in a philosophical sense but in an economic sense. Having enough does not simply mean reducing one’s craving for material goods and becoming independent from everyone. It means reducing what one wants for oneself so that one has enough to share with others and create an interdependence with them. Having what is sufficient helps Christians “to relate more effectively to other people, not to withdraw from them.”

For Paul, having all you need means having enough for every good work. Paul’s point is that “God will provide the means to be generous, that one can sow liberally (which also means freely and cheerfully, v. 7a) in the confidence that God will bestow a liberal harvest.” The more we give, the more we will be given by God to share with others. We may not have all the money that we want, but we will have all the money we need to be abundant in our giving to others.

When God gives us our resources, God gives us more than we need, not so that we can have more, but so that we can give more to others. God does not bestow material blessings so that one can hoard them for oneself or withdraw from others but so that they might be shared with others. The whole purpose of the collection, therefore, is not to establish the independence of the Gentile Christians from the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem but to deepen their interdependence.

Paul also differs from the Cynics and Stoics in the use of autarkeia in his assumption that self-sufficiency does come from one’s own earnest self-discipline. It is a gift of God. Therefore “self-sufficiency” is a misnomer, since it is sufficiency that comes from God not from the self (see Phil 4:11–13). Paul believes that God bestows both the generosity and the resources for generosity which explains why he lists “liberality” as a spiritual gift (Rom 12:8).

Paul assumes in this verse that the most valuable thing about money is that we can use it for every good work. He avoids the plural “works,” which he tends to connect with “works of law” and the ritual acts of piety, such as circumcision, and observing food laws. “Every good work” here refers to acts of charity (see 1 Cor 15:58) and is little different from what James says about supplying the needs of the brother or sister who is naked and lacks daily food (Jas 2:14–17). Abounding in every good work comes from abounding in God’s grace. Every good work does not earn grace; grace, already received, generates the good work.

Paul is trying to teach the Corinthians about the value of money that differs significantly from the value attached to it in their culture (and almost every other culture, ancient and modern). Peterman shows a correspondence between what Paul writes here in 9:8–13 and what he writes to the Philippians. He draws important conclusions from these texts that are particularly relevant in any culture awash in crass materialism.

1. Christians should know contentment (autarkeia, “having enough”) in every state

2. Money is a commodity that should be used in the service of others (leitourgia), not something to display one’s virtue publicly, to gain honor, or to bring others into one’s orbit of power.

3. Reward can only be expected from God, not from others, an Old Testament view that runs counter to Greco-Roman social expectations. Giving to others in need reaps spiritual dividends from God.

4. God bestows the material wealth that we share with others, and consequently God, not the giver, is the one who is to be blessed and thanked.

5. Sharing with other Christians is identified as koinōnia—joining in partnership with them. In no way should the benefactors assume that the recipients of their gifts become their social inferiors or are obligated to return the favor with material benefits.

6. Giving to others proves that one’s confession of Christ as Lord is true.

God provides provision for continued giving

God is the one who provides, scatters, and multiplies. God is the source of the seed (Isa 55:10–11), which is likened to righteousness (Hos 10:12), and God produces the crop. Paul’s interpretation of the psalm is drawn from his observation of the farming process. The seed planted provides a harvest and enough seed to plant next year’s harvest. But this statement also reflects the basic confession of Judaism that God graciously provides all of the bounty of nature. The Hebrew would have understood the opening phrase of Jesus’ parable of the rich fool, “the ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop” (Luke 12:16), to mean that God produced the crop. This idea also emerges in the parable of the seed that grows of itself (automatē) and the farmer does not know how (Mark 4:26–29). Paul’s statement that he planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1 Cor 3:6) shows that he shares this basic presupposition that all harvests come from God, not from the farmers. The one who is generous acts on the assured faith that God bountifully supplies bread for the sower and multiplies the seed corn for future harvests.

The phrase “the harvest of your righteousness” now applies “righteousness” to humans, “your righteousness.” The harvest of righteous deeds, like the harvest of the field, does not come from us, but from God. The righteousness that we become through Christ’s sacrificial death (5:21) works itself out in our sacrificial generosity to others. A lack of generosity calls into question whether or not we have truly received the righteousness of God. Paul’s point is that God makes us righteous through Christ and gives us seed money for a harvest of generosity. The more we sow, the greater the harvest; and the greater the harvest now, the greater the harvest will be in the future.

The principle Paul lays out is similar to the crass economic principle that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The generous get richer; the miserly grow poorer—a truth memorably captured in secular literature by the characters of Ebenezer Scrooge and Silas Marner. But growing richer may not mean wealth the way the world measures wealth. They are spiritually richer and regard whatever material resources they may possess as providing enough for themselves (see 1 Tim 6:8) and enough to give to others who have nothing. The problem with being tight-fisted is that the closed fist prevents us from receiving anything more from God. When we are open handed with others, our hands are also open to receive more from God. MacGregor writes:

A selfish man is never rich. His day is as long as his neighbour’s, yet he has no leisure except for his own amusements, no sympathy or concern beyond his own perplexities, no strength but to fight his own battles, and no money except for his own need; what haunts his mind at every turn is the dread of having too little for himself.Martin Luther said: I have had many things in my hands that I lost; the things that I placed in the hands of God I still possess.

The first half of the verse summarizes Paul’s point in the previous verses: God will provide the means for them to be generous. They will not be enriched so that they can become like the rich fool who sits back in comfort and says to himself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12:19). They are enriched solely to give them every opportunity to be generous with others. God is generous in giving people wealth so that they may be generous with others. What we do with our money, then, becomes a litmus test for our relationship to God. If we try to hoard it or to spend it all on ourselves, that should set off alarm bells that our relationship with God is out of balance or worse, nonexistent. The rich fool with his bulging barns and bumper crop wondered where he could store all his good things to preserve them all for himself. It apparently never crossed his mind that he had plenty of storage in the mouths of the needy. Those who are decisive and resourceful in trying to find ways to use God’s bounty to help others, as the rich fool was decisive and resourceful in finding ways to feather his own luxuriant nest, are those who are righteous in God’s eyes (see 8:2) and who live out God’s righteousness.

In the middle of outlining the principles explaining why the Corinthians should be generous, Paul reminds them that he is not talking about generosity in general. He wants them to be generous for this particular project that is “being worked through us.” Paul is the agent who initiated the undertaking that will allow their generosity not only to issue in a harvest of righteousness but also to produce a worldwide impact on Christ’s church. The project that he is administering brings a focus to their giving which amplifies its significance. It therefore requires that they emulate the Macedonians (8:5) in giving themselves first to the Lord and then to Paul in giving to the ministry for the saints.

The second half of the verse introduces the theme of thanksgiving by those who receive their gifts, and this idea is developed in the next verse (see 1:11; 4:15). Giving to others becomes a kind of thank-offering to God that multiplies itself. We thank God for what we have received; others thank God for what they have received from us.