
Part 2 of a 3 part blog. Part 1. Part 3.
When I spoke a few days ago on this topic, an image that seemed to grab people's attention was this bucket. The bucket is overflowing because of the incoming flow of water. I asked, 'Is this bucket's generosity to do with how wonderful the bucket is, or something else?'
This is what Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians 8-9. He's writing to ask them to participate in the famine relief appeal for which he is taking an offering. This offering is a theme that we also see in the books of 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, so it's not a peripheral matter. It's not peripheral because it's about the mutual concern of God's people in different places, and between races - Jew and Gentile. He's worked up to this central passage of the letter by making a robust case for the church to be missional (see part 1).
As you read 2 Cor 8-9 you can't help but notice the recurring theme of grace - the word appears 8 times in these chapters. Paul doesn't start with the size of the Macedonian gift, or their generosity, but with the grace of God. He talks of generosity as an outflow of grace. 'I want you to know about the grace of God that has been given the Macedonian churches, for out of poverty they have been able to be generous.', 'And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.' Generosity is an outflow of grace.
What is grace? Simply put, it is getting good things that you don't deserve. It's the opposite of Karma which says 'what goes around comes around'. Grace says 'You get what you don't deserve.' Grace says is not about you, your performance, what you do; but is about God's enabling and empowering - what God does.
Back in his first letter to this church we read 'What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?' Commenting on this theme, Tim Keller says 'If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources are in the end the gift of God.'
As Western people, we tend to focus on our earning potential, or our ability and cleverness, on our possessions, somehow proving ourselves as 'successful' to parents, friends, colleagues, the world of social media. But, they're not mine, they're His riches entrusted to me! It's all a gift of grace. We start with grace. We don't start by comparing ourselves to others, and comparison is a particular issue for our generation as we live in our social-media-connected world.
As a Christian we become channels for God's grace, which should predispose us to generosity. Tim Blaber, the pastor of my son's church, from whom I heard one of the most inspiring talks on this subject, says 'The Christian who is not generous is resisting the flow of grace.'
When Zacchaeus - the fraudulent tax collector - became a follower of Jesus, something in him changed and he immediately refunded and compensated the people he had defrauded, and gave loads of money to the poor. That's the flow of grace. It wasn't that Jesus taught him he needed to, or that there was peer pressure to do so.
When John Newton, slave trader, whose business and wealth was founded on slavery, became a follower of Christ, it radically transformed him, to such an extent that he become a champion of the abolitionist cause.
Generosity is not about how wealthy we are, but about the grace of God working in us. Generosity flows from grace!