Abounding Grace

2 Corinthians 9:1-15Welcome! Today we continue our series on 2 Corinthians, looking deeply into some powerful, powerful verses in Chapter 9. Today’s passage, like that of last week, deals with giving, but it also applies in many other areas of life. Now, it may help to briefly recap what we saw last week, in Chapter 8. The chapter begins with Paul talking about the generosity of the Macedonian churches, those in the northern part of Greece, including the churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. These people were eager to give to a collection Paul was taking for the Jerusalem church even though they themselves were experiencing extreme poverty and trials and persecution. Paul exhorted the Corinthians likewise to be generous. In I Corinthians, Paul had instructed them to take weekly collections for this purpose, and they had responded by doing so. Now, about a year or so later, Paul instructed them to continue and in fact complete the collection so that when Paul and his companions came to Corinth, they would be ready to give them the funds.

In the middle of this passage Paul gives the incredible thought that we should think of Christ – to think about how rich He had been (in heaven at the right hand of the Father), how poor He became (coming to Earth as a helpless baby and then, ultimately, dying on the cross, experiencing the punishment of God the Father for our sins), how poor we had been (destined for Hell) and how rich we have become (an eternal future in heaven with Christ) – and we should think on this as we think about giving. Paul went on to say that there should be a kind of equilibrium, with the less needy churches helping those with the greatest needs, and he described details about who would come at the time of the collection, and how it was being done with integrity.

Here is how the passage continues:

There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the saints. For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action. But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow, but that you may be ready, as I said you would be. – 2 Corinthians 9:1-3

That word hollow in Greek is kenoo, which means empty, or false. Paul is being polite and gentle here, but what is really going on is that Paul has some concerns that the Corinthian promises to give may have become empty promises. He has good reasons for having this concern – false teachers in the Corinthian church have been attacking Paul’s motives, his methods, his teachings, everything about him. And if many in the church have begun to believe these things, how likely is it that they are going to give a bunch of money and send it off with Paul?

But there is another reason I believe Paul has this concern, and this is a much more universal reason. We humans often have a hard time giving up our money. We may be quick to promise to give it, but when it comes down to it, we have a hard time letting go, just like Bilbo and that famous ring.

Here is a transcript of the movie version of the scene. Bilbo and Gandalf are in Bilbo’s house.

Bilbo: You will keep an eye on Frodo, won’t you?

Gandalf: Two eyes, as often as I can spare them.

Bilbo: I’m leaving everything to him.

Gandalf: What about this ring of yours? Is that staying too?

Bilbo: Yes, yes. It’s in an envelope, over there, on the mantel. No, wait, it’s here in my pocket. Huh. Isn’t that odd, though? Here, after all, why not? Why shouldn’t I keep it?

Gandalf: I think you should leave the ring behind, Bilbo. Is that so hard?

Bilbo: Well, no! And yes!

And that can be like us – when we purpose to do something like give a certain amount, but when it comes down to it, we have second thoughts.

Paul goes on:

For if any Macedonians come with me and find you unprepared, we – not to say anything about you – would be ashamed of having been so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish the arrangements for the generous gift you had promised. Then it will be ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given. – 2 Corinthians 9:4-5

Here, even more, we sense that Paul is worried that they are having second thoughts, or that they will change their mind when it comes down to actually giving the gift. It is a big gift, collected weekly over a year’s time or more.

The phrase "grudgingly given" is interesting. In the Greek it is pleonexia. It sounds like a disease, and it is. It is the disease of covetousness. You may ask, “How is this coveting?” Well, it is coveting because they have already agreed to give it. There may not be a written contract, but there has been a clear understanding between Paul and his companions on one side, and the Corinthians on the other. This means, practically speaking, this money isn’t really the Corinthians’ any longer. If they are wishing to undo the arrangement, or are going to be grumpy while giving it, they are coveting.

But beyond this, it is fascinating to me that in English we separate the ideas of coveting and that of being greedy, whereas in the Greek they are one and the same. We would define coveting as wanting something that doesn’t belong to us and being greedy as not wanting to give up what does belong to us. To us these are totally different concepts, but not in the New Testament. Does this make you a little uncomfortable?

It does for me. We are used to associating the word coveting with the 10 Commandments. We all have a sense, rightly or wrongly, that breaking those is somehow really bad, not just bad. So we tend to partition in our mind the idea that we must not covet. But being greedy, well, if we are honest, we may tend to think that this is something we could do better in, but hey, we’re not like Scrooge or anything. Again, in the New Testament there is no such distinction.

How serious is greed/covetousness? Very! In the Bible, it is in many lists of the “very bad stuff”. Jesus makes such a list in Mark 7:22. It’s in the list in Romans 1:29, describing the depravity of fallen man that rejects Christ. It’s in Paul’s lists in Ephesians 4:19 and Colossians 3:5, and Peter’s in 2 Peter 2:14. How serious is it? Paul says in Ephesians 5:3 that among Christians there should not be even a hint of greed or covetousness. I Timothy 6:10 says it has made people wander away from their faith. Greed/covetousness is deadly serious.

Continuing with our passage:

Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. – 2 Corinthians 9:6

Now, let’s think through this verse. It is about farming, right? If you only sow a little seed, you will only get a small harvest. If you want a really big harvest, you need to sow a lot of seed. What does this have to do with giving? Since the verses before and after this one are about giving, we can be sure that Paul is really talking about giving here.

Does this mean that if you give a lot of money to God’s work you will get rich? I do not believe that is what this means, although God may choose to bless you materially when you give. Many people can testify to examples of this, and so can I.

When I became a Christian back in graduate school at the University of Illinois, it took a while before I started to attend church. I needed some gentle convincing, over time, from people, from the Scriptures, and from the Holy Spirit, until I saw that, yes, the church is God’s creation, designed to bless and encourage people and to bring more and more people to Christ. To become a Christian and not become a part of a local body of believers is like buying a new car and just taking home the floor mats.

Well, it took even longer for me to begin to give to our local church. Once again, I needed some gentle convincing, over time, from messages I heard, from the Scriptures, and from the Holy Spirit, until I saw that the only reason I wasn’t giving was that I wanted to keep all the money for myself. I finally gave a percentage of my most recent assistantship paycheck. And this is no exaggeration: the very next week, in the middle of the semester, I was offered a supplemental grading position out of the blue. The result, even with increased giving, was that I took home more now than I ever had before I had begun to give.

But I certainly do not think that God has to reward material giving with material blessing. But what I can say is that God always rewards material giving with some kind of blessing. In fact, the Greek word for generously, eulogia, can also be translated as with blessing. And if it is storing up what Jesus called treasure in heaven, then that has to be a lot better than a higher paycheck here on earth.

One thing that is interesting to me is that this principle of God rewarding giving is nothing new with Paul. Jesus said much the same. For example:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. – Luke 6:38

And this idea of God rewarding giving is even in the Old Testament. For example, consider these proverbs:

One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. – Proverbs 11:24

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. – Proverbs 11:25

He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward him for what he has done. – Proverbs 19:17

And let me tell you what one of these blessings for giving is: it is a freed heart. Just as Bilbo felt tremendous relief when he finally let go of that ring, the hold money has on us, the temptation to be greedy or covet, loosens its hold when we give. I can tell you that apart from that pay raise I received when I first started to give, even more powerful was the change in my heart.

Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. – 2 Corinthians 9:7

Now it saddens me that many people use this verse in a way that is almost the opposite of what it means. They see the part about giving what you decide to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, and then say, “Well, I don’t desire to give anything.” Or “Well, I only desire to give some loose change each week.” But that’s not what this is saying. Those are not deeply thought out, prayerful determinations of what to do; those are decisions made without thought, without prayer, without careful consideration; they are actually kind of flippant. But the Greek word for decided is proaireomi, and it means what I have described, a careful, deliberate, literally predetermined (as opposed to impulsive) decision. It’s the opposite of a high-emotion meeting where, based on the excitement there or because everyone else is doing it, you impulsively (excitedly or grudgingly, either one) empty your wallet. No, this is something you pray about, perhaps seek counsel about. If you are married, this is something you consider carefully with your spouse; in any case, it is a measured purposeful decision.

And people also miss the final part of the verse. God loves a cheerful giver. The root word there is agape. I don’t know why, but as I thought about this verse, the thought occurred to me about how, you know, it is very hard to buy gifts for some people. We have some family members like this – it seems like they have everything they want, and they are very particular about what they like. Well, the somewhat silly thought occurred to me about buying God a gift. Talk about someone who has everything! But it says here that God loves a cheerful giver. That means that when we give to God’s work and do so cheerfully, we make God smile. Not only that, we get God really excited. Can you picture the God of the Universe saying, “Thank you! I love that! You are so cheerful! Wow, you really made my day!” This is not at all far from what this passage is saying.

And I tried to think of other places in the Bible that say “God loves…” and I don’t think there are many. There are the salvation verses like “God so loved the world…” but I could not think of any others that are specific like this. God loves a cheerful giver.

And God is able to make all grace abound in you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: “He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” – 2 Corinthians 9:8-9

We sing this first verse as a song. But now you can see the context. What is the context? Giving! Being generous! Seeing a need and joyfully giving to fill the need. What happens when a person is like this, giving generously and actively looking for where to give more? They are doing their Father’s work. They are doing Kingdom business. And what this verse says is that God sees this, and He can make all grace abound in this person so that they can abound in this work; that is, He can gift them, in every possible way, so that they can do more and more of this work. God is able to do this. This is God we are talking about!

Now, I do think we need to be careful here and not wander into prosperity gospel stuff. That is not what this chapter is saying. We need to also remember that one way God pours out His grace on us is by bringing us to a point of weakness, where we come to the end of ourselves. It is at these points we can say, like Paul, “When I am weak then I am strong.”

But God is able to equip us for a greater and greater work as we give and serve and live for Him. If it doesn’t seem like He is doing that at a given point in our lives, it is because it is a greater gift to us to make us weak, to make us come to the place where we lose our pride, or our independence, or our reliance on ourselves. God is the perfect Father and He knows what we need. In fact, that is what this verse says, isn’t it? “Having all that you need.” Sometimes we need correction. Sometimes we need humbling. Sometimes we need trials.

Remember the greater context of this chapter – giving. Giving, of our money, our time, our strength, our everything, directed to God and His kingdom, and doing it cheerfully, is what God loves and what God rewards with abounding grace, in the fullness of what that entails.

Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. – 2 Corinthians 9:10-11

Verse 10 is continuing in the same vein as the verses before. The previous verses said that God is able to equip you to abound in every good work. This verse says in effect that God will do it. God will give you an SUV? No, it doesn’t say that. It says that He will increase your store of seed and enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be spiritually fruitful. In terms of your money, it will produce something worthwhile.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. There is a propagation effect from our doing good. You have probably seen the idea of how a butterfly flaps its wings in a rainforest and there are propagation effects, all over the world. I don’t know how true that is, but in the Kingdom of God, there is real truth to this. God has entrusted us with our lives, and our lives can affect eternity. We can do things that have eternal effects. And by this I don’t just mean how we personally share the gospel with people, although we should certainly do this. I mean that someone’s giving to a local church might keep them able to pay for a church secretary, and this frees up the pastor to encourage someone else (otherwise he would have been doing secretary work at that time) and that person he encourages then talks to a friend who was thinking about suicide but decides not to do it, and in later years that person gets saved and has three children, one of whom leads several people to Christ. The start of all this was someone’s giving to a local church.

We cannot see the front side of the grand tapestry that God is weaving with our lives. We don’t, in this life, get to see much of what the harvest of our righteousness looks like. Unlike George Bailey, we don’t have an angel like Clarence to show us the what-would-have-been. But that makes it no less real.

I think there are two errors we can make about our giving. The first is that we fall into an Old Testament law-based mentality about giving. We can misapply verses in the Old Testament where God is angry with His people for withholding their tithes and think that God must be angry with us when we don’t give what we think we should. When we do this it shows that we misunderstand many things. First, we misunderstand God’s anger – the Israelites were under a covenant, a contract, with God, and part of that contract was the tithes. The whole system – the Levites and priests not having land of their own – was predicated on the tithing system, without it, these people would starve, or they would have to go wander around, offering themselves as religious professionals as what happened in the end of the book of Judges. But we are not under that covenant; we are under grace. Christ has fulfilled the Law.

And the other problem with this feeling that we are under the wrath of God because we don’t give, or don’t give the proper amount, is that we are elevating this sin to a special level (if it even is a sin – simply giving a certain amount is not a sin; covetousness/greed, on the other hand, is certainly a sin) that incurs God’s special wrath. When we do this we show that we misunderstand sin – and we also show that we misunderstand the character of God and we misunderstand our standing in Christ.

I need to tell you a true story, a confession, about something I did when I was about 14 years old. As most of you know, I was raised Jewish, which in our family meant that the children went to Hebrew school and had bar/bat mitzvahs, the religious ceremony at age 13, that we celebrated Passover each year, having a Seder ceremony in our home and refrained from eating leavened bread for a week, and that we celebrated the “high” holidays, Rosh Hashanah (head of the year) and Yom Kippur (day of atonement). That was about it. We didn’t go to the synagogue for the Friday evening or Saturday service unless someone we knew was having a bar/bat mitzvah. We didn’t fully keep kosher, the dietary restrictions, except we avoided pork and seafood (except for pepperoni pizza).

We kept what my parents thought were the most important parts of our religion, and at the top of the list, was Yom Kippur. On this day Jews go to the synagogue, and they also normally do a complete fast (water included). We would do this as well. My thinking about this holiday, and about God at this time, was such that it was through my fast on this day and my brief “sorry, God” prayers on this day, that God forgave me for my sins of the past year, which to me were things like lying and cheating. Ignoring God for the whole year was not even remotely on the list.

Anyway, the synagogue services went through most of the afternoon, but we would go home around lunchtime and stay at home until dinnertime, when we would break the fast. (Apparently, this wasn’t a sin.) But what I did on that day, when I was 14, I have never told anyone until now. So what did I do? Early in the afternoon, when nobody was looking, I ate some cookies. I felt so guilty. I felt like the guy in the Telltale Heart, the story by Poe. I was sure that there were crumbs on my face, in my mouth, that my parents could smell the cookies on my breath. It was like the beating, beating heart in the story. But I got away with it, with regards to my family, anyway. But God knew.

What had I done? I could only imagine how angry God must have been. I had ruined my chance for forgiveness for a whole year’s worth of sins. I fully expected something terrible would happen to me – maybe I would contract a serious illness and die soon after, or I would get hit by a car, or something. But that year, nothing especially unusual, certainly nothing terrible, happened. And soon after this my faith and belief in God began to rapidly erode, until in college I was a full-fledged atheist. After all, if God wasn’t going to punish this, maybe He wasn’t there at all, I thought.

Now, with what I know now, I cannot even begin to tell you how wrong, on so many levels, my understanding of God was back then. But I truly believe that people who have a Law-based mentality about giving, and especially about what happens if you don’t give, are every bit as messed up as I was. Please, if you still have vestiges of this kind of thinking, remove them from your mind. If you remain unconvinced from today’s and last week’s teachings, do a personal study of all the verses in the New Testament about giving and see what you come up with.

But the second error we make about giving is that it is no big deal. Part of this error is to completely un-spiritualize giving. We can make it all about dollars and cents. We can come up with all kinds of justifications why we don’t give, or don’t give very much. We can say the church doesn’t need it, or we can’t afford it right now, or countless other variations like this. But to do this is to completely miss what Paul is saying here in this passage.

Something as seemingly mundane as giving some money is an incredibly profound, religious, spiritual act. It really does have eternal consequences. It really is an act of profound worship. It really produces a harvest of righteousness. God really loves joyful givers. God really rewards givers with greater opportunities, greater blessings, and greater responsibilities. Giving is one of the most spiritual things you can do, because it isn’t just talk; it’s your money. And God knows this.

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. – 2 Corinthians 9:12-15

Did you catch all that? The Corinthians’ gift to the Jerusalem church (and by the way, in case you were wondering, yes, they really did it; they really finished the job – see Romans 15:25-27; Achaia is where Corinth was) led to many people praising God. When we live for Christ, showing generosity rather than greed or covetousness, people praise God. They praise God for you, but don’t focus on the for you part – we don’t want to become puffed up. But, Paul notes, they also pray for you, because their hearts go out to you for what you have done, being good stewards of God’s surpassing grace. And only good things can happen out of people praying for you.

And Paul then ends this section of his divinely inspired letter to the Corinthians by bringing it all back to Jesus, where our attention should always ultimately go. And he thanks God for the greatest gift of eternity, the gift to us of His Son. And so should we.