The Church 3

What are our responsibilities? (2)

(2 corinthiens 8.1-15))

Jason Procopio

We’re in our third week on the life of the church, and as I said the first week, a number of circumstances this past year led us to take a couple weeks to teach on this subject. One of those circumstances, as you know, is the financial situation in the church.

Our rent increased in September of last year (now we’re just getting a very generous discount on the Espace Saint-Martin’s normal price instead of an insane discount), and our giving hasn’t increased enough to make up for it. As you know, we are legally a non-profit, and everything we do works solely on gifts from our members and from other Christians willing to support us. So we need to talk about the subject of giving.

Now if you’re cynical, you’ll do the calculations: the church is in a bind + we need people to give more = we’ll go to the Bible and make them feel guilty for not giving more.

That’s not what is happening here, and I’ll tell you why. Unless I’ve missed one, every single time the Bible talks about giving, it’s actually talking about something more than giving. It’s talking about how giving teaches us to be dependent on God. Or it’s talking about how holding onto our wealth at all costs can lead to idolatry.

Or, as in the case of the text we’re in today, it’s talking about what it looks like to serve the church, and most especially, what motivates our service. So we’re not just talking about this because of the particular situation we’re in; we would have talked about it even if we were doing just fine financially. Because the reality that Paul lays out in this text is simple: few things tell us where our hearts are as well as our relationship to our finances.

So go with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. In this chapter, Paul addresses a specific mission that has taken up a lot of his time: that of taking up a collection for the Christians in Jerusalem, who were being persecuted. So whenever Paul visited churches, and in some of the other letters he wrote, Paul encouraged the churches there to give to their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, to ease the burden on the local church there.

Now obviously, that’s not the same situation we’re in today; we’re not being persecuted, and we’re talking about giving to meet the needs of our local church. But the principle remains the same, because it’s not about to what or to whom we are giving—it’s about why we give, and what our giving says.

Follow the Macedonians’ Example (v. 1-8)

He begins by telling the Corinthians about how another church recently gave—the church in Macedonia. V. 1:

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, 2 for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

This sounds really strange; this is not how most of us would think this works. We would assume that being reconciled to God by faith in Christ would mean less affliction, but here we see this isn’t true: the Macedonian Christians were going through a severe test of affliction;they were in a state of extreme poverty. And yet, they were happy in God, filled with an abundance of joy.

How could that be? They could only be filled with joy to such an extent if their joy did not depend on the things they had. The only way these Macedonian Christians could have such an abundance of joy in that situation is if their joy came from somewhere besides their comfort, besides their material ease—in other words, from God himself. And because their joy was in God, they saw what little they did have as expendable; because their joy was in God, they naturally loved what he loved—in this case, their brothers and sisters in Christ. And their joy in God was so strong that their poverty gave them an opportunity, to express their joy by sharing the very little they had.

Their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

Paul continues in v. 3:

3 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— 5 and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

They gave according to their means—so probably less than other churches that were wealthier. But they didn’t stop there. Giving according to your means means that you look at your budget, you see what you can spare, and you give it. But Paul testifies that they gave beyond their means: they looked at their budget, they saw what they could reasonably spare, and they said, “Let’s give a little more.” And they did this (v. 3) of their own accord, 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. They were under no compulsion, under no obligation—they did it of their own accord, and they wanted to do it, so much that they begged him earnestly to let them take part in the relief of the saints. Because they knew they belonged to the Lord (v. 5: they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us), they considered that their earthly possessions, whatever they were, did not belong to them, so they gave themselves to their brothers and sisters through their giving.

So now Paul comes back to the Corinthians, saying, “Look at the Macedonians as an example, and let Titus bring your contribution to the church in Jerusalem.” V. 6: 6 Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. 7 But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.

Now at this point we would start to get nervous. “It’s all fine and well for the Macedonians to do this, but they did it out of their own free will: Paul, you can’t command us to do this.” So Paul makes it clear in v. 8: 8 I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. Can you see how that’s almost worse? I’m not commanding you to do this; I’m saying if you don’t do this, it will tell you something about yourself.

If you love God, you will love his people and his work. And if you love his people and his work, and you see that those people and that work need help, you will desire to help them. The Macedonian Christians proved their love was genuine not just by giving, but by wanting to give.

If I could put it as bluntly as I can: if you want to measure your love for God, a good place to start looking is your bank statement.

Now I know some of you are going to balk at that, but what Paul’s saying in v. 8 is really important. Think of it this way: no one has any problem spending money on things they love. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty here, but just by way of illustration: think of how much money you all spent last year on vacation. Think air fare or train fare, think food while you were on vacation, think souvenirs, think tickets to museums, or whatever else. No one has any trouble spending money to go on vacation. Why? Because we love it! We love rest and relaxation. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, or that you shouldn’t do it, but it does show what you love. Look at your bank statement, and if you remove the essentials, like rent, utilities, food, etc., what you have left over is a good indication of what’s important for you.

That’s what Paul’s getting at. The Macedonian Christians proved their love not just by giving, but by the way they gave. This is the earnestness of others he’s referring to. They gave, not out of their abundance, but out of their lack, and in so doing, they proved their love for their brothers and sisters—they told the Christians in Jerusalem, you are more important to us than our finances. So now, Paul says to the Corinthian Christians, just as the Macedonians proved their love, prove yours! I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.

Follow Christ’s Example (v. 9)

At this point, Paul could have stopped talking—this argument in favor of showing what you love by sacrificing what you have is already persuasive. But that’s not the only argument, or the best argument, he has. 2 Corinthians 8.1-15 works on a kind of pivot: you’ve got v. 1-8 on one side, v. 10-15 on the other side, and v. 9 is the pivot it swings on. It’s the ground for everything that came before, and the reason for everything which comes after:

9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

We need to take a step back in order to fully understand the weight of this sentence. We are so familiar with the idea that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” that we can become numb to how amazing it is. At the very beginning of his gospel, the apostle John writes this (John 1.1): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In v. 17, John makes it clear that this “Word” he is talking about is Jesus Christ. John will leave no doubt in his readers’ minds that Jesus is a man—he is a physical man who walks, who talks, who eats, who gets tired, who gets thirsty. But he wants to make it abundantly clear, right from the outset, that Jesus is not just a man. This man was “in the beginning”—a clear reference to the very first verse of the Torah, which reads, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This is no mere rhetorical flourish on John’s part; he’s not simply using biblical language to create an emotional response. He’s saying that when Moses wrote that sentence, he was talking about Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He makes this point even clearer in v. 3, when he says, 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. This man, Jesus, was in fact the agent of creation in the creation narrative—this man is God himself.

Why is this important? It’s important because the idea of God existing in the form of a man is absolutely scandalous. If you’ve read the Old Testament you know that the presence of God is a terrifying thing: in the tabernacle, the Most Holy Place was the area where the ark of the covenant was kept, where God’s presence dwelt with his people. Only certain people at certain times could enter it, following very specific rituals to do so. And if anyone were to even set foot in that room without following God’s specific instructions, he would be immediately killed (Exodus 28.35). When Isaiah sees his vision of God in Isaiah 6, he can do nothing but proclaim (Isaiah 6.5), “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” In other words, “OK, I’m done—now that I’ve seen the Lord, I’m as good as dead.” John begins his gospel by stating that this Jesus is none other than God himself, and therefore should not be a man. This claim—that God himself, the one who created all things, had become a man—was blasphemous. And that’s exactly the point. When we read the gospels, we are meant to see this jarring contradiction: God, the Almighty, the Creator of all things, the King of the universe, the sovereign Lord of all, had become a man. As Frederick Buechner wrote: “The incarnation [Christ becoming a man] is a kind of vast joke whereby the Creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers… Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.”

Now, let’s say that we’ve dealt with this idea—God became a man, okay. If that were true, what would you assume this man had come to do? If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you would assume that if God were to become a man, it would be in order to rule on earth—to be set up as king. The Jewish people were oppressed; they had gone from exile in Babylon to Roman occupation in Jerusalem. They needed a leader to free them. So if this were true, of course this man would be that kind of leader! But no—how do we see the God-man behaving? He heals people. He teaches people. He serves people. He works first as a carpenter, and then as a homeless, itinerant minister. He renders to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. He does not resist rebuke or persecution or arrest or even death by crucifixion. Although he could destroy all the legions of the Roman army with a single word, although he could literally melt the Pharisees’ faces off like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he lets the people he himself created lead him to the cross.

The point Paul’s trying to make is this: God does not expect us to do anything he didn’t first do himself. Jesus Christ, though he was rich, became poor. He had the glory of being at the right hand of the Father; he had the glory of being God himself, equal with the Father. But as Paul says in Philippians 2.5-8, Christ didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And why did he do it? V. 9: FOR YOUR SAKE.

He served us by leaving behind all the richness of the glory he had with the Father and lived a painful, needy, human life in a human body, in which he sweated, in which he bled, in which he became tired, in which he suffered hunger and thirst, in which he was beaten and led by Roman soldiers to a hillside in Jerusalem to be crucified for crimes he didn’t commit. And he didn’t just suffer death; he also suffered a life without sin. None of us can imagine the weight of this—why do we give in to temptation? Because it’s painful to withstand it. So imagine how painful it was for him to withstand every temptation, to the very end. He lived his entire life, knowing every temptation that is common to man, yet without sin (Hebrews 4.15). He lived a perfect life for us, and died a sinner’s death for us—he took our sinful lives upon himself, and suffered the penalty for those sins, and he gave us his perfect holiness, so that we might receive the reward for his holiness. This is better than winning the lottery! This is wealth beyond imagination: we are rewarded with an eternal reward on the basis of someone else’s performance. It’s astonishing.

No one ever gave as Jesus gave. No one ever renounced what Jesus renounced. He gave up everything, made himself nothing, for us: though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

This is what the Macedonians understood. This is why their joy was in him, and not in anything they had: he had given up the unimaginable for them—so what was it to them to give up their worldly possessions, small as they were? They understood the weight of what Christ had done for them, so saw their participation in the support of the saints as a joyful service they could render to participate, at least in a small way, in that same kind of generosity.

Give For Your Joy (v. 10-15)

10 And in this matter I give my judgment: this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. 11 So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.

So the Corinthians also had begun doing this work: they had begun living out their generosity, not out of obligation, but because they desired to do it. All Paul is doing here is encouraging them to keep going in that: “Finish the work you started! It’s good that you desire to be generous…but there’s often a gap between wanting to do the right thing and actually doing it. So do it: if you have joy in Christ, complete your joy!” And I love this last part: so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. In other words, the Macedonians gave above and beyond, but this is not a competition. If you can’t give more, then don’t—be wise about it:

12 For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

No one’s going to fault you for not giving what you don’t have. You may desire to do more, but merely be unable to. But if you can, then do it! Imitate your Savior by giving generously, because one day you may well depend on the generosity of others:

13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness 14 your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. 15 As it is written, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”

This is the way the Christian church should function. Those who have been saved by grace know they have been saved by grace, know all that Christ gave up to save them, and desire to give up what they have in order to serve others. Those who have a lot don’t consider their wealth of any value to themselves, but rather as an opportunity to glorify God by giving to those in need, by giving to those who spread his gospel and make his name known elsewhere. And those who have nothing can count on their brothers and sisters for help, in order to not have to worry about their material need, but rather be able to consecrate themselves fully to the work of glorifying God.

A Call to Complete Our Joy

So Paul begins his argument in v. 1-8 (the Macedonians’ generosity), gives the basis of his argument in v. 9 (For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich), and applies his argument to the Corinthians in v. 10-15 (complete your joy by giving generously and wisely). I could drum up an application for this message, but as a general rule if the Bible itself provides the application, it’s best to just go with it. So the application for us today is the same as for the Corinthians back then.

a) Serve…and be served.

As Paul says, it’s a matter of fairness: we give to the church because we know one day we’ll need the church to give to us—maybe not in the same way, but this is how it works: your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.

When we serve the mission of the church, the mission of the church serves us. When you give to your church, you are giving to the work of the gospel. And if you love Christ, if you love the gospel, anything that truly serves the needs of the gospel is in fact a service to you, for as a result, the glory of God will shine more brightly, and you’ll have the joy of seeing his glory more clearly.

And this is the other reason why this passage, which talks about giving, is actually talking about something bigger. It’s not just about giving; Christ’s generosity toward us which produces generosity in us applies to every kind of service we perform in the church—when we do everything we saw last week (admonishing the idle, encouraging the fainthearted, helping the weak, showing patience with one another, etc.), we are acting this way for two reasons: 1) because that’s how Christ served us; and 2) because one day we’ll need the same service, and the church will be there to serve.

b) Pray to want to give…and do what you want.

10 And in this matter I give my judgment: this benefits you, who a year ago started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. One of the “graces” Paul talks about in v. 1 is the desire to take care of those brothers and sisters in need, so that they can be freed from the worry of their material need and dedicate themselves to building up the body and proclaiming the gospel. This desire is not something that is natural—it is something the Spirit did in them, a grace that God showed them. So the generosity we’re speaking of here is not generosity out of obligation—when a kid begs their parents, “Mommy, Daddy, can we please play for ten more minutes?” they’re not asking out of any moral obligation they feel. They want to play, it’s a joy for them to play, so they ask if they can play. This is what’s going on here. It would be easy to guilt you into giving; but the generosity Paul is talking about comes out of a desire to do it. 11 So [he says] now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. If you want to play, if it’s a delight to play, then complete your joy and play!

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have had to say that—no one has to tell us to do what we want to do. But with money it’s not so simple, because there’s fear involved there as well: no matter how much I may want to give, I see the worst case scenarios playing out in my head: What if the heater breaks? What if I lose my job? What if, what if, what if? So Paul is encouraging them: if you desire to do this, then do it—don’t let yourself be held back by fear, as if God won’t take care of you! Remember God’s generosity in sending you Christ, remember Christ’s generosity in giving up everything to save you.

Again, this is a grace that God gives us; we can’t produce this desire in ourselves. So, our first response to this text should be to pray. Let us pray to remember the Macedonians. Let us pray to remember their joyful generosity, to which not even extreme poverty was an obstacle. Let us pray to remember the generosity of our Savior. And then, let us complete our joy. Let us pursue contentment in Christ by trusting him to provide for our needs. Let us pursue our joy in him by giving generously to see his glory shine in this city.