Paul writes today to encourage the Corinthian Church, and us, to give generously. However, he stresses that no one should give if they are reluctant to do so, nor should anyone feel compelled to give. Rather, we should give out of the joy it gives us. In the context of giving to charity, Paul writes that whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will reap generously. Many people interpret that to mean that if I give to charity generously, God will reward me with wealth. However, a sentence or two later, Paul writes that if we cheerfully good, God, who is able to bless us abundantly will cause us to abound in good works. So, in part, Paul tells us that if we give of our assets cheerfully, God will give us the ability to work even harder for Him. Paul follows that up by saying that God will enrich us in every way so that we can be generous on every occasion. Which leads me to the conclusion that if we give generously and joyously God will provide us the means to do so more.
Today’s passage begins with Paul reminding the Corinthian Believers about the importance of giving generously to help those in need. He tells us that we should give only what we willingly and happily desire to give, not out of a feeling of obligation. He then writes that God will reward us according to how we give: if we give sparingly, we will be rewarded sparingly, if we give generously, we will be rewarded generously. Further, the more we do for others, the more we will be able to do for others.
Having written that, I want to focus on Paul’s warning against being sucked in by those preachers who distort the Gospel message in order to benefit themselves. In fact, some of those he is writing about take his very comments about God rewarding us for generous giving to make change the Gospel to be about material wealth. Let us test the message of exciting preachers against Scripture; does the message they preach align with the message given us in Scripture?
The passage begins with Paul continuing the discussion on giving which he began in yesterday’s passage. He goes to great effort to make sure that the Corinthian Believers understand that he does not think that they need to be convinced to give, he is merely writing to remind them to gather the moneys they wish to donate. Pastors who struggle with preaching on giving can take heart that Paul similarly struggled. For the rest of us, what Paul writes about reaping according to how we sow. This is one of those passages which can be hard to fully understand. Paul is not promising that if we give generously we will become rich. He is promising that if we give generously, God will reward us greatly.
I have always wondered how to write about Paul’s “boasting” in this passage. I finally realized today how to express that. Paul was telling them not to be impressed by credentials, but by the content of the speaker’s argument. “The other guy tells you to be impressed because he is an Israelite. So am I. Not important.” Paul goes on from there to show that while he has every bit as good credentials as those who were trying to turn the Corinthian Believers against him, he never made a point of those because they were not important. Those who were arguing against Paul were guilty of two logical fallacies. First, they appealed to their own authority based on their credentials, rather than asking their listeners to evaluate the validity of their arguments. Second, they made ad hominem arguments by claiming that Paul was trying to take advantage of the Corinthians. Paul points out that this second attack was also hypocritical because those making them were profiting more from the Corinthians than he ever had.
Paul gives us two lessons about giving in today’s passage. The first, and the reason he wrote about it, is actually twofold. People often say they will make donations with the full intent of doing so, then get distracted by other events and forget to do so. Which means that we need to follow Paul’s example and remind people of the promises they have made. Perhaps just as important, we should not wait until our promises come due to begin the process of fulfilling them. The other point which Paul makes is that we should give cheerfully, not out of a sense of obligation or duty. God will bless those who give purely out of their own desire to help those in need. Closely related to that is the idea that there is no formula about how much one should give. Each person must determine how much they feel inspired to give.
Starting in Chapter 10, Paul makes the case for why the Corinthian Church should accept his guidance and teaching as opposed to that of those who were counseling them to disregard what he wrote. I want to focus on what he writes about how he addresses false arguments and human reasoning which is contrary to God’s. He does not attempt to counter the arguments with further human reasoning. Instead, he uses the weapons and arguments which God gives him. He captures his every thought and makes it obedient to Christ. He counsels us against judging teachers and teachings by appearances. Instead he advises us to judge them by their results. When someone has authority over others, do they use it to build them up? Or, to tear them down? Those who are serving Christ do the former, those who do the latter are serving themselves.
I skipped over Paul’s comments about giving to aid those in need in yesterday’s passage and I do not want to do that again today. In yesterday’s passage Paul wrote about the importance of setting aside the money to be given systematically rather than trying to come up with the whole amount one intends to give all at once. In today’s passage he writes about giving joyfully, not from a sense of obligation. We should give to those in need because we are grateful for what God has done for us. Between yesterday’s and today’s passage Paul lays out a great guideline for giving. We should not give more than we can afford, we should not give so much that we suffer hardship as a result. On the other hand, we should not refrain from giving because we are afraid we might need the money for some unknown expense down the road. God will provide for our needs, so we should not fear unexpected expenses. The more we give, the more we will be blessed. When Paul says that he is not speaking of material blessings, although sometimes God gives greater material prosperity to those who give generously. If the latter is the case, it usually means that God will be giving them even more opportunity to give to those in need.
When Paul defends his authority to speak on behalf of Christ and of God, he makes the argument that he is no less than those whose preaching he disagrees with. He states that his authority builds up those over whom he has authority rather than tear them down. In doing so, Paul echoes Jesus’ teachings about leaders being servants. So, authority in the Church comes from building up and strengthening others, not from making them dependent on the one with authority. Authority does not come from being superior to others, in which case authority would be enhanced by weakening those over whom one has authority. Rather authority comes from making others stronger and more capable. In addition, elsewhere Paul exhorts us not to think more highly of ourselves than of others, here he reminds us not to think ourselves less than them either. True leaders are those who help us recognize our worth without either holding themselves as better than we are or allowing us to make them feel small.
Paul writes that God will reward us if we give generously to those in need. This is not a form of prosperity gospel. Rather what Paul is writing here is more in line with what Jesus said about the widow who gave her last two coins. There are two aspects to the way God blesses us when we give generously. Giving to help those in need teaches us financial discipline, which results in us wasting less of our money. However, there is more to God’s blessings than that. When we give generously, God blesses us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. We recognize that we do not need many of the things we spend our money on and learn to be happy with fewer material goods. Actually, that is not quite correct. As we stop trying to attain happiness through material goods, we gain more happiness. Further, we discover the happiness of making other’s lives better. There is also a material aspect to what God will do for us. God will always provide for our material needs. As we give from the excess He has given us to help those who have less, as we become the conduits by which He provides for the material needs of others, God gives us more to give. If you give $10 for those in need, next week you will likely discover that you have $20 to give (often because you discover another $10 worth of things that you can live without).
Paul tells us that we should give generously to those in need, in particular to our fellow believers who are in need. In many ways what he writes here is a reflection of the guidelines to giving we can draw from Luke’s account of the sharing undertaken by the early Church in Acts. In Acts we were told that no one was under obligation to give of their wealth to help others. Here, Paul tells the Corinthians that their giving should not be under compulsion. We should cheerfully give as we are able. God is more than able to supply our needs and will do so. If we give generously, God will reward us generously…although we should not make the mistake of thinking that the reward which God gives us will necessarily be material. Nevertheless, the more generous we are in our giving, the more generous we will be able to be going forward. This comes to be in two ways. As we give generously God may reward us financially so that we can give even more going forward. However, even if He does not, the joy of giving will cause us to ferret out ways in which we can reduce our expenses so that we can give more.
At the end of his letter to the Corinthian believers Paul makes a defense of his ministry against the teachings of other teachers whom some of the Corinthian believers were more impressed with than they were with Paul. His defense contains two lines of argument. He warns the Corinthians not to be impressed by the credentials and personality of people whose teachings contradict what they already believe. Paul does not go into detail about what these other “apostles” are teaching, but he makes it clear that even those who follow them acknowledge it contradicts what Paul taught. These teachers were building on top of the foundations of belief which Paul had laid among the Corinthian believers, yet contradicting his teachings. These “apostles” presented themselves as having great credentials and wonderful accomplishments. For the most part all the Corinthians knew about the credentials of these “apostles” is what they said about themselves. Which brings me to Paul’s second line of argument. Paul laid out to them his own credentials, credentials which had been attested to by others, many of which had been directly witnessed by Corinthian believers.
From this we learn to judge teachers and leaders by how their teaching and leadership lines up with what we already know about the Gospel. A true leader or teacher from God should encourage us to go to Scripture for ourselves and see if what they are teaching is supported by Scripture. Any teacher who claims authority to interpret Scripture in a way which only those with “secret” knowledge would understand is suspect. The second part of Paul’s argument reminds us that we must occasionally explain to people how we came by our understanding and knowledge of the Gospel. We should not ask people to accept our understanding of the Gospel on the basis of “appeal to authority”, but we do need to remind them that we learned from authoritative sources. To put that in personal perspective: I have no special knowledge and have no authority to demand your obedience or agreement, but I have studied the Scripture and the Holy Spirit has guided my thinking.
