1. He cannot need our gifts. We can give Him nothing that we did not first get from Him.
2. It must be somehow for our sakes. Giving is God’s way of getting for ourselves the highest good. The root of sin is selfishness. God would have us grow bigger, have a larger world to live in, find a higher joy; and the secret of all this change is giving. It is a curious fact that we call a man who gets but does not give a “miser,” that is, a miserable man. The true worth of money is never learned until we begin to make others happy with it. It is just so of learning. There is joy in getting knowledge; but a higher joy it is to teach those who do not know.
II. Nature teaches us many lessons on giving. The sun exists to give light, heat, and life. The sea is always giving.
III. God measures our giving by our purpose. “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart.” What did you mean to give, and what was your motive?
IV. liberal giving is perhaps the choicest, ripest fruit of the spirit. The Arab proverb says, “The water you pour on the roots of the cocoanut-tree comes back to you from the top, in the sweet milk of the cocoanut.” You may hang up a bar of slightly tempered steel, strike it with a mallet, and make it a magnet. Then with that magnet you may, by rubbing other bars with it, make them magnets too; and it is wonderful that instead of making the magnetic power of that first bar less, you increase it. (A. T. Pierson, D. D.)
Liberal giving
I. The tact and wisdom and tenderness of Paul in presenting and pressing the subject abe worthy of unqualified admiration. The apostle does not say how much a child of God should give, simply because he regards giving as a spiritual attainment, and not as an outward function. It is to be governed by spiritual laws and to move by spiritual impulses. He cites the case of the Macedonian Christians, not as a standard of comparison, but as a heart-incentive. The true giver in blessing others will always be a large receiver of blessings. The word which in the Received Text is translated “bounty” has in the margin its more literal meaning, “blessing.” The giver is a sower of seed. His gifts are the seed of a future harvest for which he may confidently look. There is here no appeal to selfishness, but the simple statement of a Divine law, and one of widest scope. The man who puts forth little physical strength reaps little vigour of body. The man who feebly uses mental faculty gains little mental power. The man who loves little is little loved and destroys his capacity to love. As giving is a spiritual grace, it can grow and reward its possessor only by use. We are at cross-purposes with our own faculties and with God’s plans respecting us if the power of giving lies unused within us. Our selfishness dwarfs and impoverishes us. Niggardliness is a most miserable investment. Put any Divine gift under the leadership of greed or of sloth, and it is sure to err and come to no good. In the great sum of things giving has a royal place. Do we not comprehend how the giver is a receiver? It is sufficient in answer to appeal to two things: first, to the homely evidence of experience; second, to the promises of God. But this testimony of experience reaches deeper than all rewards in kind. True giving is the act of the soul; it touches character; it is a grand power of moral discipline. It cleanses conscience and purifies the heart to give rightly and generously. It awakens a higher manhood in the soul. It crucifies the low, base lust of selfishness. It strangles closeness and stinginess and all the meaner and craven lusts of our nature to get beyond and above the greed of getting and keeping into the high and Divine realm of giving. Giving enlarges a man. It develops all that is good in him. It stirs him with higher impulses. It makes him a holier and happier man. But it must be giving in Christ’s sense and after His example. But this certainty of a Divine return to the giver rests also on the direct promise of God. Here is the giver’s security. What is given is not lost. It is a deposit in the exchequer of Heaven. God loveth the cheerful giver. He is able to bless him, and He will bless him.
II. The final thought of the apostle is the connection of giving and thanksgiving. Every gift is a “bounty,” a “blessing,” a “thanksgiving.” It is a free thank-offering out of the blessings God has given. True giving rises out of the catalogue of hard duties into the rank of happy privileges. The root of all giving is love, and love is full of thankfulness. And then, as the mind and heart of the apostle are filled with a sense of what a great blessing is this spirit of free and generous giving both to the giver and to the receiver, he ends abruptly the discussion with the well-known sentence, “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!” He rises from all human giving to the Divine, the gift of the Saviour. He contrasts our feeble gifts with the unspeakable one. He inspires our giving with that. He links our giving to that. To give is to be like God. (T. H. Robinson, D. D.)
Liberal giving
It is plain that God means that His people shall all be givers. Opportunities to give everywhere surround us. The Christians at Jerusalem were at just this time in great want. In part this may have been due to their experiment of a community of goods, and in part to their repeated and long-continued persecutions. Christian giving should be--
I. Primarily, though by no means exclusively, to needy saints (2Co_5:1).
II. Prompt and energetic, that so it may be adequate and sure (2Co_9:2-5). The good name of a church is no small part of its power. It is this which makes its teachings respected, and its example a stimulus to others. It is in all things a good rule to be deliberate in planning, and then swift in execution. For thus it is that good intentions become worthy deeds.
III. Not sparing but bountiful (2Co_9:6).
IV. Deliberate and cheerful (2Co_9:7).
V. Trustful. This is enforced by the apostle by a twofold consideration (2Co_9:8-10).
VI. Mindful of the great blessings sure to come of it (2Co_9:11-14). (MondayClubSermons.)
