2 Corinthians 8-9 are famous for their discussion of Christian giving. The message of these chapters has been grossly misapplied in nearly every class or sermon I’ve heard.
Did you realize that the word “money” doesn’t appear even once in these chapters? Paul’s topic is “giving,” not “money.”
That shifts the attention from the object to the action and allows us to examine attitude.
We could talk about “money” all day. It is impersonal. Money doesn’t make choices. It leads to conversations about quantitative things like investments and budgets and bills and expenses and calculations.
Talking about money is generally comfortable. We can talk about not having enough or others having a lot, but we’re talking about something that’s tangible and separate from us.
But talking about
giving is a whole other matter! Conversations about giving force us to into examining our hearts, our allegiances, our priorities. They expose to what extent we are willing servants. They reveal how willing we are to sacrifice and suffer for the sake of others and how willing we are to consider others better than ourselves (
Philippians 2:3).
The topic of giving exposes our motives and our gods.
Mankind may desire God, but he desires miracles more. If miracles require God, and if God seems difficult to acquire, then man will create his own miracles and become his own god.
Whether through sorcery or power or psychology or science or technology or illusion or self-deception, man will take the path of least commitment to get his miracles, seeking the bread of earth rather than the Bread of Heaven.
Food rules this world. The populace puts into power politicians who promise the most bread for the least work. For food, the world will follow the antichrist straight into Hell.
People love the idea of the bread of life and salvation until their tummies grumble. Then they turn their backs on spiritual sustenance and pursue a synthetic Christianity that promises, even allows, them to make demands upon God for health and wealth.
The Bread of Heaven has never been as popular - and has never had such faithful followers - as the bread of the world.
Few, very few, have spiritual appetites as large as their bellies.
Q1: What are some wrong motives for giving?
Q2: What excuses do people use for not giving?
Please stay with me as I provide some background before digging into the text.
There had been a terrible famine in Palestine because of a terrible drought. Many people were deprived of their livelihood. Many Christians in Jerusalem didn’t have enough to eat.
Read Acts 11:28ff for context,
“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.”
So Paul decided to use the Gentile Christians to bring relief to Jewish Christians, uniting the church and breaking down walls that separated these groups.
In fact, wherever Paul traveled in his ministry to the Gentiles, he told them about the needs in Jerusalem.
When he told the Macedonian Christians (which included the Philippians, Thessalonians, and Bereans), they responded with overwhelming support – even though they were extremely poor themselves.
Paul used the examples of the Macedonian churches to teach the Corinthians (and us!) about giving. Throughout chapters 8 and 9, Paul will address:
- Proper motivation for giving
- Proper attitude in giving
- Proper reasons for giving
- Proper way to give
Q3: If you encountered a church in the Macedonians’ circumstance – facing extreme persecution, unable to feed itself or pay its bills, would you ask them to help another struggling church? Would you ask a church that meets in a rickety building in the slums of Chicago to help the churches devastated last month by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, or those destroyed by earthquakes in Mexico City last week, or those wiped out last week by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico? [Keep in mind, the churches are the people, not the buildings]. Would you turn to churches in Haiti or Malawi to assist them? Or would you turn to a wealthy suburban church in San Mateo, California?
Q4: If you did ask those poor churches for assistance and they responded “We can hardly pay our own bills and our people are starving! How can we feed people across the world” how would you respond?
Q5: Why do you think Paul chose the poor Macedonian churches to care for the poor Palestinian churches?
8:1 And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. 2 Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.
Paul begins with the ultimate motivator: The grace God gives. Despite the severe trials in their own lives, these Macedonian Christians had overflowing joy.
You see, these Christians’ joy was greater than their trials which resulted in their generosity greater than their poverty!
These Macedonians gave because their hearts were overwhelmed with the unmerited favor (grace) God gave them. It caused them to want to give unmerited favor to others.
In contrast to the Macedonians, at this point in history Corinth was an excessively wealthy place. These Christians lived lives of extreme luxury and indulgence.
8:3 For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, 4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.
So we learn that Paul actually didn’t ask them to help the Palestinian churches. Maybe he didn’t even think they could help. Global news in that day relied upon travelers, so he no doubt told them about the struggles their brethren were facing. But it was entirely on their own that these destitute Gentile churches decided to find ways to address the needs of their struggling Jewish brethren!
How often would we see this in 21st century American churches? No capital campaign, no pledge cards, no heart string pulling. Just concerned Christians begging for the privilege of doing what was necessary to help Christians they didn’t even know, even when helping seemed impossible.
We’ve lost something in our day. We’ve lost the ability to feel deeply for others we don’t know, and the further away from us they are the harder it is. It’s not that we don’t care. They just seems remote and inaccessible. Maybe it’s because we have such efficient and constant communication channels. Maybe that has numbed us a bit.
Every day we hear about destruction and death and poverty and crime. The TV and Radio and Newspaper and Internet make us aware so much need, we can’t possibly help it all. We move from one headline or news story to another, not having the opportunity to dwell very long on any of them.
In April 2009, Gary Schwitzer, associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, reported that the average length of TV news pieces has dropped to near 45 seconds. That is half of the previous industry standard of 90 seconds. [
www.tvweek.com/news/2009/04/under_the_knife.php]
Another industry source wrote,
In Paul’s day, his news about the Palestinian Christians may have been the only news of suffering that this church had heard for a while. And I’m certain he spent a very long time telling them about it, with love and pain in his words rather than the neutral tones we hear in mass media news.
Q6: How do we overcome this desensitizing that we all experience? How do we recover the sting?
Q7: Do we really want to feel that deeply?
8:5 And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the LORD and then to us in keeping with God's will.
How different this is from the emotional appeals I’ve seen in some churches!
Several years ago, at a friend’s request, I visited a charismatic megachurch in Columbus for a Wednesday night special event. When they passed the collection “baskets” they were actually plastic buckets with handles that looked like they were from gallon ice cream containers. The pastor encouraged everyone to look at those sitting next to them and say “Is that all you’ve got to give? You can tip better than that. Where do you think you are, McDonalds?” Personally, I felt like barfing in the bucket.
When these Macedonian Christians were convicted about the Palestinian churches, they didn’t respond by giving themselves first to Paul. They gave themselves to God and then, within God’s will, to Paul. In other words, their generosity wasn’t because of Paul’s emotional appeal. It was because they consulted God and asked Him what to do, and were led by God to give themselves to Paul for the sake of those other suffering Christians.
