Making the Gospel Visible:From Grace to Giving to Gratitude to Glory

2 Cor. 9:1-159/18/16

It is perhaps fitting that I am standing before you this morning to open this passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 9 with you, and it is perhaps fitting because—if you know anything about 2 Corinthians chapter 9, it has something to do with the generosity of God’s people—and it is perhaps fitting that I am up here opening this passage with you because I have been the recipient of so much generosity from this body of believers. My family has received so much good, so much kindness from this family that I feel a little bit like Paul as he opens this chapter; he begins by writing, “It’s really superfluous—it’s really not necessary that I should keep on writing about this collection, about this matter of generosity,” and I feel the same way. Do I really need to stand up here and talk to you about generosity? And, of course, I do. And he does. And I think the reason for that, largely, is that this chapter’s not really so much about your generosity, our generosity, as it is about God’s generosity, and God’s grace in particular. And I think that all of us need a bit more of that in our lives. And it’s been my prayer for the past couple of weeks, as I’ve been marinating in this passage—my prayer for you and my prayer for myself—that we’d all come to a deeper, more clear understanding of what God’s grace is, and I think this passage will help us this morning come to a greater understanding. We all need to see God better, and so I hope this morning and my prayer this morning is that that’s what will happen for each of you, and it will happen for me as well.

So, if you’ve been trekking with us for any amount of time, you know we’re walking through this book, 2 Corinthians, and we’ve come to this part, chapters 8 and 9, that Keon last week entitled “The Collection Section” appropriately, because it’s focused on this collection of money that Paul was orchestrating from the Gentile churches, Gentile Christians, to then carry on to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem because they were experiencing a period of poverty and great need. And this collection was very important to Paul. He spent several years focused on this project, and I think this morning as we look at this passage we’ll get a glimpse of why it was so important to him. Paul, the man we think of as the apostle to the Gentiles, the man who preaches the gospel to the Gentiles, spent a great amount of time, a great amount of energy collecting money to help the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, and I think we’ll see a little bit of why it was so important to him this morning.

But I’d like to just jump into the passage without any further ado. If you remember, the last three weeks we’ve been in this section, chapters 8 and 9, and Paul’s been going over this collection, what it’s about, and he’s charging the Corinthian Christians to participate, to get their money ready, as they had agreed to do, and, if you remember from last week, we were introduced to three individuals, three men—Titus and two anonymous guys—that Paul is sending on ahead of him. Before Paul comes, he wants these three guys to go to Corinth to make sure everything’s in place before he arrives, because Paul would like to come into Corinth, pick up the money, and get on his way to Jerusalem. He’s going to build on that in the first five verses of chapter 9 and explain a little bit more about why he’s sending these three guys. So, let’s look at those verses, chapter 9, 2 Corinthians, chapter 9, verses 1-5. And, if you have a bulletin, you have sermon

1

notes there; there’s an outline that might help you follow along, and I’ve summarized this section simply as “Just in case…”

2 Corinthians 9:1-5: Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry for the saints, for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year. And your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I am sending the brothers so that our boasting about you may not prove empty in this matter, so that you may be ready, as I said you would be. Otherwise, if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we would be humiliated—to say nothing of you—for being so confident. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised, so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction.

So, Paul has been expressing his confidence that the Corinthians are going to come through; they’re going to get the money together to send on to the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. He’s been saying, “You said you were going to do it; I believe you’re going to do it.” But, their commitment to do this was like a year earlier; a lot has happened in the intervening year that would give him reason to be concerned that they might not follow through with their gift. And, if you recall, the whole letter of 2 Corinthians has been Paul largely defending his apostleship, because these “false apostles”—that’s what he’s going to call them in chapter 11—“false apostles” have shown up in Corinth, and they’ve been telling the Corinthian Christians, “You don’t need to pay attention to Paul. He’s not really a spokesman for God. He doesn’t really preach the gospel. He’s not really sent by the Lord Jesus. Don’t follow him; follow us and our message.” And so you can imagine, perhaps, that, if they listen to these “false apostles” and kind of abandon Paul, they’re also going to lose their enthusiasm for participating in “Paul’s collection.”

After all, Paul’s been the champion of this collection. He’s been saying, “We need to get money to these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem to help them,” and the Corinthians originally said, “Yes! We want to do that! We want to participate!” But, in the year that has passed, with the influence of these false teachers in place, Paul’s become concerned that they might not follow through. After all, “if Paul really is a huckster, if Paul really is a charlatan, then he might just take our money and run with it. So, why would we hand it over to him?” And so, Paul is writing here and being very emphatic about why they need to give, and his confidence is not resting in them; that will become very clear in this passage. His confidence is in God’s grace at work in the Corinthians. And so we might wonder, why does he even write this? Is he really confident, or is he expressing a little unbelief here? I don’t think so. He’s taking necessary precautions. He’s being wise in view of the circumstances. And so he’s sending these brothers to make sure that the Corinthians follow through with what they said they were going to do.

I want to focus there on verse 5 for just a moment to see what’s going to happen if they’re not ready. What does Paul expect if they’re not ready as they said they would be? So, if you look at the end of verse 5, the goal of him sending these three men before he comes is that the collection, the money will have already been gathered, and it would be ready “as a willing gift.” They said they were going to give it; they committed verbally to do it, and he’s expecting that it will be ready. And he’s sending these three guys to make sure that it will, in fact, be ready. And his

2

concern is that, if he shows up and it’s not ready, it’s going to look a certain way. The ESV has translated the last phrase as “[it’s] not as an exaction,” or an extraction, not something jerked away from you or pulled from you by force, but the Greek word underneath it is a word that normally means greed, and I think it has this meaning here. I think Paul’s concern is this: “If you guys wait to give your money until I show up, everybody is going to see what’s really in your heart. Everybody is going to see your greed. Your greed will be revealed before all, because you will have proven that you really wanted to hold onto your money for yourself. You didn’t want to part with it; you didn’t really want to give it. You said you would, but your greed hijacked your commitment.”1 And Paul says, “I don’t want that to happen.” And so, the way to avoid that is to go ahead and give freely without Paul showing up and applying the pressure that would be perceived as them holding back what they said they were going to give. And so, he’s doing this as a gift to them, sending these three men to help them get organized and get things together, and to make sure that they’re still favorably disposed to the apostle Paul.2

But the rest of the passage is really him explaining why they should give at all…and why you should, why generosity is a mark of the believer. And we get to see a good bit about God in this passage in his generosity, so let’s press on and look forward in verses 6-10. And the way that I’ve summarized these verses is a statement, a reminder that it’s God’s grace that actually guarantees your giving. It’s God’s grace that guarantees your giving. So, let’s see how this unfolds. Let’s look at verse 6-7 first: The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. So, he presses home the point by raising an analogy, a farming analogy. And you have to think: how would an ancient farmer have done farming, before the onset of mechanized, electronic farming equipment like tractors and plows and things of that sort? How did it work? Well, once you get the animals, the oxen, and the cart to come and press out the furrow—a row in your garden so to speak—the farmer, the sower, has to then actually plant the seeds manually. So, how does he do that? Well, he basically has a satchel that’s over his shoulder, and on the side of his body he’s got this little pouch, and that pouch is full of seed. Right? And so he walks up to his furrow, to the row that he’s already carved out, digs his hand into his bag, and he pulls out a handful of seed. And then what does he do? He does this: he flings open his hand wide, and seed flies everywhere. Some of it gets right in the furrow; some of it gets on the edges; some of it gets over there and over there. He just opens his hand and flings it wide; that’s a normal farmer. That’s what sowing looks like biblically. You take a handful, and you just throw it out there, open-handed, wide berth. That’s “sowing bountifully.” Now, that phrase is really unique and we’re going to come back to it in just a second, because that’s what he wants us to do; he wants us to “sow bountifully,” but there’s something underneath that that we need to see.

1 Cf. Scott J. Hafemann, 2 Corinthians (The NIV Application Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), pg. 365, who writes, “By contrast, its antonym, pleonexia (which the NIV translates ‘grudgingly given’), refers to the covetousness or idolatrous greed that parts with money only when forced to do so.”

2 More may be on the line than just their approval of Paul. Bound up in their response to Paul himself is their response to Paul’s gospel, which means that Paul is likely concerned about their very salvation. I like the way this is described by R. Kent Hughes, 2 Corinthians: Power in Weakness (Preaching the Word; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), pg. 172, who writes, “But there was a far more ominous possibility that Paul carefully states—namely, that his boasting in the Corinthians might prove ‘vain.’ It is the same word used in 6:1 to describe receiving the grace of God ‘in vain.’ Thus their claim to repentance and salvation would be shown to be false. This means that the authenticity of the Corinthians will soon be decided. The three envoys are actually agents of grace—insurance agents.”

3

But, what’s the opposite? What would “sowing sparingly” look like? And, you’ve got to know: no farmer would ever do this. This is just dumb, and you’ll see that it’s just dumb. What does “sowing sparingly” look like? Well, the farmer’s got his little pouch full of seed, but, instead of reaching in and grabbing a handful, he reaches in and grabs a single seed. He walks up to his furrow, gets down on his knees, and says, “I’m going to plant this one right here.” He takes a few steps forward, reaches in and grabs one more seed, bends down, and “I’m going to plant this one right here.” And he does that all along the row. One seed here. One seed there. One seed over there. One seed over there.3 Now, it’s likely that when the rains come, all of those seeds are going to sprout. Probably. Maybe not. But, I think you can tell: the harvest is not going to be really big. Whereas the normal farmer, the one who knows what he’s doing and throws out seed everywhere—not all of that seed is going to sprout for the harvest. True…but a whole bunch of it will. The harvest will be bigger because of that, and so Paul is saying, “Don’t let your giving be like the one who sows sparingly. Don’t take your money and hold onto it.” You see, the one who would sow that way, what’s he thinking? Why would he do that? And no one would. It’s a ridiculous image to prove a point: no farmer would do that. But what’s he thinking? He saying, “This seed is so valuable to me; I don’t want to part with it. But, I need food for next year, so I’d better part with some of it; I’d better part with a little bit of it.” And so, he puts a little here and a little there. But his value is in the seed itself: “I don’t want to part with this! It’s mine! I don’t want to separate from it.” And Paul is saying that we can be like that with our money and our resources. We can say, “This is so valuable to me for my needs that I don’t want to part with it. And even when I see needs out there, I just want to hold onto it for myself.” And Paul is saying, “Don’t do that.”

Rather, sow open-handedly. Fling wide your resources toward the needs that are in front of you. But the phrase that he actually uses here is much more beautiful and much more poignant when you know what it is underneath. “Bountifully” translates a phrase in Greek that I think is important for us to bring out; it’s literally the one who sows “based on blessings.” And so the idea is: “God has blessed me with this seed. It’s not mine. It’s a blessing that has been given to me to pass on for others.” I sow, I fling out my resources to share with others based on the reality that God has given it to me freely. And notice the corollary: the promise that’s on the other side is that “we will reap bountifully,” we will reap “based on blessings,” same exact phrase. You see, there’s no mathematical calculus that goes on here where you’ve got this equivalence on both sides. You can’t put God’s grace into a mathematical equation: “If you give so much, God’s going to give so much.” God decides the currency; God decides the nature of the harvest that he provides for us.4 It’s based on his blessings. He’s totally free in giving what he wants, where he wants, when he wants, and how much he wants. And if we think like that, we should be free with

3 Cf. the description of Hughes, 2 Corinthians, pg. 173, who writes, “There are two ways to sow. One is to carefully place each seed in a furrow as if one were placing the Star of India in a vault. ‘Let’s see, here’s a seed for this one, and here’s one for this one. One must be careful with one’s seeds.’ This harvest will not be much! The other is that of the sower, striding long steps across the earth, reaching into his abundance, and sowing with generous swings of his arm. At springtime the earth will sprout accordingly, so that when fall comes, the harvest will be untold.”

4 Cf. Mark A. Seifrid, The Second Letter to the Corinthians (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), pg. 354, who writes, “To reap bountifully from what one gives is not to receive a wage for one’s labor. God himself chooses the currency of the return.”

4

our resources as well, based on what God has done for us, based on the ways that God has blessed us.5

But Paul presses home this farming analogy in verse 7 to every individual. You know, it’s a great thing that a body of believers—like Kilgore Bible Church—would pool our resources and give money away. We do that; our budget is shaped where a large portion of our budget goes out to missions and to other organizations. That’s the collective giving being pooled and then sent out. That’s good. But Paul is here pressing home the point for every single individual. “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart.” Notice that. Paul’s concern for these Corinthian Christians is that they made a verbal commitment to give. We never know how much; the amount is not important. They made a verbal commitment to give; many individuals within the Corinthian church made a commitment and said, “We’re going to give.” So, they decided to give. And Paul is saying, “You’d better follow through.” But here’s the thing: “as he has decided in his heart,” who knows what that is? Your neighbor doesn’t know how much or whether you’ve decided in your heart to give,6 so you could think that, “Nobody’s going to know. It’s not going to matter. The people who need money or need help, they don’t know that I thought, ‘Oh, I’d like to give,’ and then I backed out. They’d never know, so what harm is it?” Paul brings up this point to remind us of something that he told us back in chapter 5: “We all must stand before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for the deeds we’ve done in the body, whether good or evil.” You see, God will hold you accountable for what you’ve decided in your heart because God sees the commitments of your heart. And if you don’t follow through with those, it’s not that nobody doesn’t benefit—that’s true; people won’t benefit if you don’t follow through—but, the fact that you committed and then you backed out, God will hold us accountable for that.

So, he gives two negative pictures. So, if he wants you to give “as you’ve decided in your heart”—freely, based on your own decision and evaluation of your resources—how does he not want you to give? Well, he says two things: “not reluctantly,” the ESV says, or “under compulsion.” The phrase “not reluctantly” is literally “not out of grief.” And so what he’s saying is, “Don’t give because you feel bad.” I’ve given because I felt bad. I’ve thought, “You know, I haven’t given very much this year, and now there’s an opportunity before me; I kind of feel guilty because I haven’t been giving, so I want to give to this.” Paul says, “No, don’t do that.” That’s not a good motive for giving. That’s not a good motive for giving, and I’ll be held accountable for that motive. But he’s saying, “Don’t give when you feel guilty. Guilt is not a proper motivation for giving.”7 On the other hand, neither is compulsion. That is, don’t give because someone is manipulating you to or forcing you to.8 I’m sure all of you have either heard on television or on the radio or sat in the presence of someone who was trying to cajole you into giving, trying to manipulate you into giving, trying to twist your arm, and Paul is saying, “Don’t

5 Cf. Seifrid, Second Letter, pg. 355, who writes, “All our giving, or also our failure to do so, is a response to the prior goodness, grace, and blessing of God. Our response is that of faith—or of unbelief.”

6 Cf. George H. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2015), pg. 449, who writes, “In other words, the amount one gives is not to be a public decision, nor is to be publicly flaunted…, but it should be a matter of private conviction.”

7 Cf. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians, pg. 449, who writes, “In short, in making up their minds about what to give to the collection, he does not want the Corinthians to be motivated by grief or made to feel bad.”

8 Cf. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians, pg. 449, who writes, “Neither does he want them to be driven by ‘pressure’…, another word speaking of distress, but now the distress is from being constrained, forced to do something.”

5

give in to that.”9 Not only is the person who does the manipulating guilty and going to be held accountable for his manipulating behavior, if you give in to that—we are held accountable for succumbing, for not having the discernment to resist, and to instead give out of our own free decision, our own choice.

And, finally, what he expresses in the last phrase of this verse, “for God loves a cheerful giver.” Now, that raises the question, “What about when we don’t give like that?” I’ve given out of wrong motives; did God not love me when I did that? You’ve got to see what Paul’s doing here. Of course, God loves us even when our motives are broken and stupid, because they often are. God loves us still. God loves the reluctant giver. God loves the one who gives under compulsion. God loves us. That’s not the point. The point is he’s trying to motivate us to give properly. And so, he’s reminding us that God loves a cheerful giver, so that he’s saying, “Look: this is the kind of giving that God loves, and so wouldn’t you want to do it?” I mean, he’s saying, “God loves a cheerful giver,” so the Corinthians should say, “Well, if God loves that kind of giver, then, by golly, I want to be one of them! I want to be like that.” He’s motivating us properly. He’s not twisting our arms; he’s not trying to manipulate our feelings and make us feel bad. He’s saying, “God loves a cheerful giver,” and if God loves a cheerful giver, then I want to be a cheerful giver!

What is a cheerful giver? “Cheerful” is a soft word; it’s weak! This word is much stronger. We get two English words from this Greek word. The Greek word is hilaros. One of the English words we get from that is “hilarious.” So, I ask you: when’s the last time you took your wallet out, gave money away, and you just broke out into laughter because of it? It was just hilarious that I got to give my money away! I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way. But I think we should. We should break into laughter when God gives us an opportunity to give our money away. You see, it’s hilarious that God would use our resources—the resources that he has given to us—to help others. The other English word that we get from hilaros is “exhilarated.” Ex-hilarated. It’s thrilling to give our money away! And again, I ask you: have you ever taken your wallet out and given your money away, and it sent a spine-tingling chill up your back, where you felt like, “This is better than a roller coaster at Six Flags!” Because it is.

Why is this even true? Why does God love a cheerful giver? Well, isn’t it because God is a cheerful giver?10 God himself is a cheerful giver. He breaks out into laughter when he gives. It’s hilarious for God to give to us. It thrills God to give to us. It was hilarious to God, it was exciting for God to give his own Son to die and pay for our sins. He was excited to do it. Don’t think that he was begrudging because he had to take care of us poor, little, miserable sinners. He was thrilled! It was hilarious for God to do that, and so it ought to be for us when we want to give money to people, resources and whatever else.

So, verse 7 charges us to give like an exhilarated farmer. Think back to the sowing imagery again. The farmer is excited when he sows his seed open-handed. Why? Because he’s looking forward to the harvest. He’s looking ahead. He sows freely because he’s excited: “God is really going to make these things turn into food for me! God is really going to bring a harvest from

9 Cf. Seifrid, Second Letter, pg. 355, who writes, “All true giving must arise from spontaneous individual decisions, uncompelled by others.”

10 Point suggested by David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians (The New American Commentary 29; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), pg. 407.

6

this!” And so, he’s thrilled to go out there and do the hard work of sowing in a field. And so we should give like an exhilarated farmer.

Well, let’s look at verse 8. I think it would be helpful, beneficial, healthy, really good if we all memorized verse 8 and reminded ourselves of it every single day of our lives. Verse 8 says, 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. So, I’ve summarized this: God’s “all grace” provides “all sufficiency” for our “all giving” all the time. It’s hard to be more emphatic than this verse about God’s grace and what it does in our lives. But I think we need to get a clearer understanding of what God’s grace actually is before we think very clearly about what’s going on here. So, I’d like to take a few moments and explore that with you. We talk about God’s grace all the time, and we read about it all the time in our Bibles, and we talk about it in conversations together, but I wonder if, when we talk about it, if we really grasp what we’re talking about. So, I’d like to present to you a definition of God’s grace, and it’s not a dictionary definition of the Greek word or anything like that. It’s a definition that comes from looking at the whole of Scripture, and when it talks about God’s grace and what comes with God’s grace and what God does with his grace—it’s a theological definition that encompasses everything. And I hope you’ll see it as really simple.

To get at it, let me contrast it with two common definitions that you’ve probably heard of grace. One is an acrostic, where you take the letters of “grace”—G-R-A-C-E—and you spell out “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” How many of you’ve heard that before? “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” It’s a beautiful statement, but I don’t think it captures grace at all. In fact, there are two elements of grace, two key elements that it doesn’t say anything about. And so, I think we need to discard that one, as beautiful as it is. It is true, absolutely true, that God’s riches come to us at Christ’s expense, absolutely true! But that’s not what grace is. The second definition is the one that is more simple and more common perhaps. It’s two little words trying to capture, I think, the two elements of God’s grace, but I don’t think it goes far enough. It’s simply: Grace is unmerited favor. How many of you have heard that? Unmerited favor. That is getting after the two elements of God’s grace that we see in the Bible, but it’s not big enough. Unmerited favor is good, isn’t it? I think it means: God’s favorable toward us, even though we don’t merit him to be favorable toward us. That’s really good! And it’s really true! But grace is bigger than that. It’s more than that on both of those points.

So, let me present to you a definition of God’s grace that I think captures it better. God’s grace—I’ll say it slowly, and I’ll repeat it. God’s grace is his power exercised to bring good to those who deserve only bad. God’s grace is his power exercised to bring good to those who only deserve bad. Let’s take our launching point from that “unmerited favor” definition. “Favor” suggests that God is for us, that God’s posture toward us is favorable, that he looks at us favorably, and that is absolutely true. But there’s more than that. God doesn’t just look at us favorably; he acts to bring good to us. He brings good into our lives. That’s grace. It’s not just looking favorably, but it’s bringing good to bear. Grace is a power word. It relates to God’s power and his activity; it’s not just that he looks at us favorably—as good as that is—it’s that he does good for us. He brings good to our lives.

7

The “unmerited” part of that, again, is really good that we don’t do anything to earn the good that God brings into our lives, but our plight is worse than that! It’s not just that we are neutral before God; it’s not just that we don’t deserve God’s goodness, or that we can’t earn God’s goodness. That’s true. But the truth of the matter is we deserve God’s wrath. Only. God’s wrath; God’s “bad,” if you will. Every human being on the face of the planet, whether male or female, old or young, whatever ethnicity you are, whatever place you come from, deserves only bad from God, deserves only his wrath. I wonder if you know that about yourself. When you read the pages of Scripture, I think it paints a pretty clear picture of humanity. Ever since the Fall recorded in Genesis chapter 3, we are all born into this world in the kingdom of darkness. We are all born into this world into a family of rebels against God. We are God’s enemies by nature. We deserve his wrath. We don’t come to God with a ledger that’s simply got a zero balance. We come to God, from the first moment we come into this world, “in the red.” We have a debt before God when we first breathe air, perhaps even before that. The debt that we owe to God starts there; we are in the negative from the beginning of our lives. And guess what? When you start living, the red just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The debt just keeps getting worse. We don’t get anything, we don’t put anything “in the black” before God by our lives.

If that’s the case, then what’s the remedy? Grace! Grace! God acts good toward us! He does good in our lives even though we only deserve his wrath. That is way bigger, way bigger than “unmerited favor.” We are not only not deserving, we are ill-deserving. God’s remedy for that is grace, to actually do good to his enemies, to sinners such as us. And even when we become Christians we don’t start accruing merit before God. Even when you become a Christian, you don’t start filling up “the black” with your deeds. We don’t start accruing credit from God by our Christian lives. No; it’s all grace! The black side fills us; we suddenly have a bank account that’s full, and the debt’s been completely erased when you become a Christian. That’s grace! Nothing you do does that. Nothing you do takes a single line out of the debt column of your life.

So, if that’s what grace is, how does it work in this context in verse 8? “God is able,” it says. That word is a “power” word: “God is powerful to make all grace abound to you.” Look: God doesn’t scatter his grace a little over here, a little over there, a little over there; he doesn’t give you a little bit of grace, and you a little bit of grace, and him a little bit of grace. He gives all grace to you, and all grace to you. He gives all of his grace to each of us, and he never empties; he never depletes. His power never reduces. He gives all grace to us, not just a little bit. He makes all grace abound to you. What’s the result? What happens when God makes all grace abound to you? “So that having all sufficiency in all things at all times.” All sufficiency! All sufficiency! Not just kind of sufficient; not just a little bit adequate; but completely sufficient. You don’t make yourself adequate; you don’t make yourself sufficient for anything that God calls you to do.11 God makes you all sufficient. God makes you completely adequate for whatever he calls you to do. You see, this context is about giving, but at the end of this verse he talks about “every good work,” not just talking about giving, although that’s true as well.

I want to get after what this means, because I suspect, if you’re like me, when you look at your life on any given day, and you start evaluating, “What do I have?” Whether it’s from the context of, “What has God given me?” or not, God’s called you to do something or you feel like God’s

11 Cf. Seifrid, Second Letter, pg. 358, who writes, “One does not have ‘sufficiency’ in oneself, but only in relationship to the God who acts toward us in grace.”

8

called you to do something or you just want to do something, you start assessing your abilities and assessing your resources, and you start determining, “Do I have what it takes to do this? Do I have what’s needed? Am I sufficient to do what God’s called me to do?” And I suspect, if you’re like me, there are days—weeks, months, years?—where you look at your life, and you say, “I don’t have enough.” Whether it be money in the bank, or whether it be energy, or whether it be time—how many of you in the last week have said, “I don’t have enough time” to do whatever? When you look at your life and you assess it and you say, “I don’t have enough,” what do you do? What do you do in that moment when you realize you don’t have enough? Do you cry out for God’s grace? Do you cry out for the remedy that’s offered here? But here’s the beauty of it, and the mystery perhaps: even in those moments when we look at our lives and we honestly assess things and we don’t have enough—and the reality is, we don’t have enough—do you believe this verse that says, “God is able to make all grace abound to you” so that you will have “all sufficiency in all things at all times”? Because what I think this verse is telling us is not that every moment of every day throughout your Christian life you’re going to have what you need all the time. I don’t think it’s teaching that. But I do think it’s teaching that God is at work providing what you need even when you don’t have what you need. So, when you look at your life and you say, “I don’t have enough! I don’t have enough!” do you believe that God is at work to provide enough right then and there at that moment?

Let me try to illustrate this for you. There are three players involved in this chapter, in this “collection section,” three players, three churches, three groups of Christians. There are the Corinthian Christians whom he is addressing here. And so, he’s telling these Corinthian Christians that God’s grace, God’s “all grace” is coming to you to make you have all sufficiency, so that you can provide money for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. How is he doing that? How is he providing all sufficiency for them? Well, if you know anything about the church in Corinth, from 1 Corinthians we learn that there are a lot of rich people in the Corinthian church, a lot of wealthy people, a lot of wealthy people in the Corinthian church, a lot of money lying around. So, we could say, “That is one way that God has made all sufficiency abound—all grace abound for all sufficiency to the Corinthian Christians.” They have what they need to help the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem because God has provided them with wealthy Christians. And then beyond that, God has also stirred up their hearts to actually commit to give. Right? God did that, too. So that’s how, in Corinth, God made his grace abound so that they would have all sufficiency for this particular good work.

What about the Christians in Jerusalem? Do they have all sufficiency in all things at all times? They’re the ones who raised their hands and said, “We need help! We’re having a severe test of affliction! We are suffering in poverty here! We need help!” So, how is God providing all sufficiency for them? Well, one way he’s doing it is through this collection! So that, even as they speak, as they raise their hands and say, “I need help!” God is working in the Corinthian Christians to provide money for them, to provide sufficiency for them for whatever he’s calling them to do. So, God using all of his grace to provide sufficiency for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem looks very different than it looks for the way he provides all sufficiency for the Corinthian Christians.

But then there’s the third group, the Macedonian Christians. The Macedonian Christians, if you remember from chapter 8, the Macedonian Christians—Paul went to them, told them, “The

9

Corinthians have committed to give money to help these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem,” and the Macedonian Christians were experiencing a severe test of affliction themselves, experiencing extreme poverty, too. You know, at that moment, they could have said, “Well, the Corinthians have so much money, can they help us, too? We need money! Will they send us some?” That’s not what they did, though. They experienced an overflow of joy in the midst of their poverty, and they begged Paul, “Let us give money to the Jewish Christians, too!” So, even in their extreme poverty, even in their severe test of affliction, God was making all sufficiency for them! God was providing all that they needed in their poverty to do what he had called them to do! And so, I paint that picture for you because it’s easy for us to look at our neighbor, to look at other Christians, and say, “Look at all that God has given to them,” and then we look at our own lack, and we say, “God must not be blessing me,” or, “God must not care about my needs. Why doesn’t God help me like he helps them?” And we fall into the comparison trap, and we begin looking at other Christians with envy, with greed perhaps.

And God wants you to trust him, that he is providing you with all sufficiency, even when it looks like your bank account’s empty, even when it looks like your body won’t do any more for you, even when you don’t have the time that you’d like to have, God is at work in your life with his grace to provide all that you need in all things, in all circumstances, at all times. Do you believe that? Can you believe that? Is it unbelievable to believe that God is at work for your good every moment of every day for all of your life to provide all that you need all the time? Can you believe that? That’s what this teaches! You see, there’s no more—for the Christian, there is no more of God bringing punishment to your life. There is no more of God’s wrath being poured out in your life. No more! Not one drop! All that God does in your life is good—every circumstance, all the time, every day of all of your life. Even through the bad stuff, he’s working his grace for you. He’s working his power for you.

And so when you read about grace in the Bible, and when you talk about grace in your life, you need to remember both pieces of that. Grace is not just that he’s looking at you with a smile. That’s true. But grace is that he’s busy in your life. He’s doing stuff! Good stuff! All good stuff! But you also need to remember the other side: you only deserve God’s wrath. Only. You haven’t done anything that causes God to be gracious to you. God is gracious because God is gracious. Period. But we’ll come to that in just a moment.

So, this is the way the Christian life works. God’s power is at work to bring good to you and through you all the time. The call is for us to believe that that’s true, to believe that he’s doing those things even when we evaluate our lives and we see a lot of negative, a lot of pain, and a lot of bad. God is still at work; he hasn’t taken his hand off of any of his children. And he never will.

And so Paul presses this point home for these Corinthians to remind them that they can do what they’ve promised to do because God is providing for them what they need to do what they promised to do. And then in verse 9, he quotes Scripture to back it up. He says, As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” Now, if you were just reading through this, and you didn’t notice that Paul was quoting Scripture, and you didn’t go find the Scripture and see what he was quoting, you would think naturally that he’s talking about God in verse 9. The subject of verse 8 is God, and so, as you

10

press on reading, your natural assumption would be that he’s talking about God distributing freely, God giving to the poor, God’s righteousness enduring forever. Which is all true. But when you find out where he’s quoting, that’s not what’s going on.12 He’s quoting Psalm 112:9. Psalm 112 is a little acrostic poem in Hebrew, where each of the verses13 begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, from beginning to end. Psalm 112 is a poem about the righteous man. What does the righteous man look like? What does the godly man look like? Well, one of the things he does is this: he distributes freely, he gives to the poor, and his righteousness endures forever.

But why is that true? And we do go back to God here in verse 10: He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food—that’s God—will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. So, what’s he saying? He’s saying that your giving does not make you righteous. Your giving portrays your righteousness; it depicts your righteousness in Christ. We don’t give to become righteous. We give because we are righteous. We don’t give and we don’t do any obedience to become righteous. We obey because we are righteous, because we’ve been counted righteous in Christ, or as 2 Cor. 5:21 said, we have “become the righteousness of God.” Therefore, we give; therefore, we obey. So, grace-enabled, glad-hearted generous giving depicts our righteousness in Christ.

Verses 11-15, then, paints a larger picture of what’s going on here, and it focuses in on gratitude, gratitude and glory to God for your generosity. Let’s read verses 11-14, and then we’ll make some large observations here. Verses 11-14: You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.

So, God graciously enriches us so that we will be generous so that they—the recipients of our generosity—will express gratitude to God and glorify God. Notice what he says there in verse 11; he promises to these Corinthian Christians, “You will be enriched by God through his grace in every way to be generous in every way.” It’s not just about giving money, but every form of generosity: giving your time, giving your strength of your back in service, but the focus is giving money for this collection. And the ministry of this service will produce thanksgiving to God. Notice verse 12: “the ministry of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints”—that’s a good reason, but it’s a minor reason for giving to this collection. The major reason is that it “also will overflow in many thanksgivings to God.” The beneficiaries of this collection will give thanks to God. They might say, “Thank you, Corinthians,” because it’s polite, but truly they must

12 However, Paul may be applying some intentional ambiguity to highlight the constant connection between our righteousness and God’s righteousness. Cf. Hafemann, 2 Corinthians, pg. 368, who explains, “Within its original context, the vindication of the righteous man in the psalm, in view of his ‘good works,’ is based squarely on the ‘good works’ of the Lord manifest in the divine provisions of redemption and food outlined in Psalm 111. The ‘righteousness’ of the one who gives to the poor ‘endures forever’ (Ps. 112:9) only because it is created and sustained by the Lord’s ‘righteousness,’ which also ‘endures forever’ (111:3). All human righteousness owes its existence to and is an expression of God’s righteousness.”

13 Actually each of the poetic lines, with each verse being comprised of two poetic lines each.

11

give thanks to God because they recognize that the source of the Corinthian generosity is God! He’s the one who works it in their hearts and provides the material resources for it, and so all the thanks goes to God!14

Now, the title of this sermon, you might have noticed, is “Making the Gospel Visible: From Grace to Giving to Gratitude to Glory.” And you might recall from a few weeks ago, Pastor Barry that we’ve formulated a vision for this church body: We exist—Kilgore Bible Church exists to make the gospel visible, and there are a lot of ways that I think we do that as a body. Generosity is one hallmark of that, and I want to see exactly how that works because it’s drawn right out of this passage, and all of those components fit together, but I want you to see how they fit together. So, if you could put that graphic on the screen:

I know some of you are visual learners, and so I’ve attempted to create a visual representation of the major point of this chapter. And so let’s see if we can talk through this briefly and see how the pieces fit. I think this is really important for the way that you think about what you do in your life—how you obey God, what you do as a Christian needs to fit into this big circle. So, notice the four components—grace, giving—five components—grace, giving, gratitude, and glory, and the gospel right in the center of it all. So, how does this work? Well, according to this passage,

14 Cf. Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pg. 646, who writes, “These recipients would be told that it was God who had instilled the desire to give (cf. 8:10-11) and had provided the resources to give (cf. 9:8, 10).”

12

God’s grace generates our giving.15 God’s grace is at work in our hearts to make us want to, to make us feel generous, and God’s grace is at work in our lives to provide the resources to give. So, God’s grace kicks it all off. God’s power at work for good in your life, even though you deserve only bad, produces giving. So, you see the arrow from grace to giving.

What does giving then do? Once we give to someone else—these Corinthians are going to give their money to these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem—what does that produce? It produces gratitude, gratitude in the recipients. The Jewish Christians are going to give thanks, not to the Corinthians—although they might—but thanks is going to go to God because God is the source of it all.16 And so, gratitude then flows out of our giving, gratitude in the recipients of our generosity.

But Paul also says that they will glorify God. That’s the final leg of this journey. Gratitude will be stirred up so that—gratitude is to say, “Thank you, God, for this. Thank you for this, this gift, this act of generosity from the Corinthian Christians.” But then to transition to glorify God happens, I think, in two ways. It separates off from this event of giving and it begins to look at God as who he is. So, then, they are moved to say, “Thank you, God, for this gift. I love who you are, God. Your generosity is on display here, and I want to praise you for who you are, separated from what you’ve given to me, just for the sake of who you are.” But the second way that we glorify God is by our deeds, so that the Jerusalem Christians—they receive this gift, they pour out their thanksgiving to God, they begin to glorify God, and then they move out into service themselves, and they go out and they do good deeds. They pour out generosity to others, perhaps, that would glorify God. Their lives are then shaped by this whole movement, and it all starts with God’s grace at work in others, even. And, so ultimately, this chain is continuous: God’s grace is the source of it all, it flows through it all, back to his glory ultimately.

But the gospel is the center of it. I want you to see this here in verse 13; he says, “By their approval of this service”—so, the Jewish Christians are going to approve of this service, they’re going to receive it with gratitude—“and they will glorify God” why? “Because of your submission”—your obedience—“that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ.” So, what’s he saying? He’s saying, the gospel of Christ, the message about Jesus’s death for our sins has gripped these Corinthian Christians, has changed them, so that they are generous, so that they are giving! And so the gospel itself has motivated their giving. The gospel itself has produced their giving. The gospel really is the source of it all.

Now, what does he mean by gospel, more specifically? Well, he mentioned it back in chapter 8. He summarized the gospel for these Corinthians in chapter 8 verse 9. He said, 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. That is a summary of the gospel applied directly to their situation, so that Christ, in his wealth of riches, his eternal riches, put that all aside, laid it all down to become poor for us. He became impoverished, so that we might become rich, so that we might be enriched to give, so that we might be enriched to become generous! So, how does

15 The word “generates” is borrowed from Garland, 2 Corinthians, pg. 409, who helpfully notes, “Abounding in every good work comes from abounding in God’s grace. Every good work does not earn grace; grace, already received, generates the good work.”

16 Cf. Garland, 2 Corinthians, pg. 409, who writes, “God bestows the material wealth that we share with others, and consequently God, not the giver, is the one who is to be blessed and thanked.”

13

our generosity make the gospel visible? Because as we make ourselves poor to make others rich, people can see that’s exactly what Jesus has done, especially when we talk about, when we say, “I’m giving this way,” or “They’re giving this way because they’ve been gripped by the way God has given to them in Jesus Christ.” He has made himself poor, so that we might become rich, and so we make the gospel visible here.17 We don’t make the gospel visible if we give under compulsion, if we give just because we’ve been cajoled into giving. That doesn’t make the gospel visible. We don’t make the gospel visible if we give for ulterior motives, because we want status. That doesn’t make the gospel visible. It makes the gospel visible when our giving impoverishes me and makes you rich, and I don’t take any credit for it, but it all goes back to God’s grace. That’s when we see the gospel on display.

But notice also that it’s not just the giving that the gospel produces. It also produces their gratitude, the gratitude that is then stirred up is because ultimately Christ has made himself poor. You see, these Jewish Christians are looking at these Gentile Christians, and they’re celebrating that the Gentile Christians have become obedient to the same gospel that the Jewish Christians have become obedient to! And they’re finally seeing this connection between them, and they’re welcoming them. They’re able to say, “We need help from Gentile Christians.” Do you know how proud Jewish people typically are of their heritage? For them to say, “I need Gentiles to help me,” is an evidence that the gospel is at work in the life of a Jewish person. So, because of what Christ has done for them, they are able to look at the Corinthian Christians and say, “I see that the gospel has done its good work in you, too!” And, ultimately, of course, the gospel brings God glory. Jesus’s death brought God glory. And all of its effects in our lives bring God glory as well. But notice also that it’s God’s grace that produces the gospel. There are no arrows that go up to grace; I want you to see that point. There are no arrows—there is nothing, nothing outside of God that produces grace. God is gracious because God is gracious! Period! There is nothing that we do that makes God gracious to us. Nothing! Nothing we can do, nothing we will do, nothing we have done. It is grace that he gave his Son to die for us; it is grace that he gives himself to us in our lives day by day; it is grace that he produces generosity and every other form of obedience. You could replace the word “Giving” up there with any form of Christian obedience, and the only thing that you would lose is good alliteration because the “g” word would be gone. But you could put “faith” in that box; you could put “repentance” in that box; you could put “service” in that box; you could put “preaching” in that box; you could put any kind of obedience to what God has called you to do in that box and the circle would still work exactly the same way. But this passage is talking primarily about giving, and so there it is.

So, two more points, and then we’ll be done. It’s important to see the reality of this Jewish-Gentile divide here, and Paul draws our attention to it. Why Paul is so concerned about this collection is because it really does make his gospel visible, because, you see, his gospel unites Jew and Gentile in a way that nothing else can. God has brought Jew and Gentile together into one new man, we learn in Ephesians 2, and this is a reflection of that, so that a Jew is able to say, “I need help,” and receive help from Gentile Christians. And then he points out in verse 14, how

17 Cf. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians, pg. 459, who writes, “In this case the genitive τῆς ὁμολογίας is understood as a genitive of producer…, the confession of the gospel prompting the obedience. The apostle had already written at 8:9, ‘For you know the grace demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ: though he was rich, he became poor for your sake, so that by his poverty you might become rich,’ and challenged the Corinthians to follow the pattern of the Messiah, marked out in the gospel. Thus, ultimately, the Corinthians’ robust participation in the collection for the saints at Jerusalem was a manifestation of their confession of the gospel.”

14

are the Jews going to respond? They’re going to “long for you and pray for you.” So these Jewish Christians in Jerusalem are going to desire, long for Gentile Christians! The barrier between them is gone! They’re able to say, “I need them and they need me!” And that is beautiful! The gospel breaks down all barriers because of ethnicity or gender or social status or whatever. There is no more of that in Christ to hold us apart. God’s grace enables these Gentile Christians to care for and to fellowship with Jewish Christians, and we could apply it to any other barriers we have, race and ethnicity or whatever. We’re talking about the nature of Christian community. You see, Christian community is not to have those kinds of hostilities or those kinds of walls; the walls have been broken down by Christ. And it’s really the result of the gospel that any of that happens.18

The gospel itself creates community. One of my great wrestlings as we focus so much on community-building here is that we’re going to try to create some façade, or some illusion of community. We can get together because we’re the same age, we’re the same skin color, we’re the same stage of life; we can get together, we can spend time together, and we can experience a lot of joy and unity, but the kind of community that the Bible talks about is based on something much deeper than that. And so, as much as we emphasize community, I want to remember and keep reminding ourselves that it’s the gospel itself that actually creates genuine community. We are united in Christ. Whatever other distinctions we may have, or whatever other commonalities we might have, what is important that we fellowship around is what God has done for us in Christ. That’s what connects us; that’s what will never change no matter what. We don’t have to manufacture community by our programs, and I don’t think we’re doing that here. But we need to remember that the gospel creates this freedom and this unity that cannot be sacrificed, broken, or otherwise pulled apart, when we remember that it’s rooted in what God has done for us, totally apart from who we are or what we’ve done.19

Finally, verse 15: Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! All credit goes to God. All credit goes to God. Whatever is rightly called good in this world comes from God. Period. All credit goes to God.

Now, we come to the conclusion of this “collection section,” and you might be wondering, “How’d it go? What’s the rest of the story?” So, I’d like to take just two minutes and summarize that for you. We do get some biblical evidence of what happened. What happened next? What was the aftermath of this? You can flip back in your Bible, if you want to follow along, but in Romans chapter 15, Paul mentions this collection one more time. 2 Corinthians was written and then delivered by these three guys—Titus and the two anonymous brothers—to these Corinthian Christians, and we wonder, “How did they receive it?” Well, a few months later, as Paul’s on his way to Corinth to pick up the money—or on his way, actually, to Jerusalem, to deliver the

18 Cf. Seifrid, Second Letter, pg. 366, who writes, “This ‘longing’ for the other—in the eyes of the Jerusalem Christians, the Gentile Corinthians were radically ‘other’—is not a mere emotion. It includes action, the only action that the impoverished believers in Jerusalem could take: ‘they shall long for you, in petition on behalf of you.’ The distance between Corinth and Jerusalem does not hinder their fellowship. It merely reduces it to its essential nature: they are bound together by God in Christ.”

19 This paragraph was spurred by my own angst in conjunction with the comments of Seifrid, Second Letter, pg. 366, who writes, “The Gospel itself creates community. We need not manufacture it by our plans or programs. We need only receive the community of dynamic exchange that the Gospel creates: ‘and they shall long for you.’”

15

money, he writes the letter to the Romans. And it seems that he’s actually writing from Corinth when he writes Romans.20 And so, at the end of Romans 15, he mentions this collection, verses 25-32: Paul writes, At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. (And remember that Achaia is just the region that Corinth is a major city of.) For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. So, they were pleased to do it. So, it seems that the letter of 2 Corinthians was well-received and effective.

But then Paul expresses a little bit of concern about the other end. How are the Jewish Christians going to receive it? He goes on, verse 28: When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. I know that when I come to you I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. So, he seems to express a little bit of concern that the Jewish Christians may not accept this very favorably. So, he’s a little bit nervous; he’s asking the Roman Christians to pray for him as he finishes up.

Finally, we get a hint of what happens in actuality in the Book of Acts. Acts chapter 21—there’s some debate about this passage, whether it’s actually talking about when Paul brought the collection. I believe it is, and so, here you go.21 Luke is writing the Book of Acts, and Luke was accompanying Paul for this, and so Luke is writing and he says, When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God. Nothing mentioned about the collection there, but that last line suggests to me that they do exactly what Paul said they would do in 2 Corinthians 9:13—By their approval of this service, they will glorify God. So, Paul’s labors were not in vain. And we can pray the same for our own labors, that God’s grace would abound to us for every good work.

20 See the probable historical reconstruction of Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (The New International Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), pgs. 2-3.

21 For a good discussion of this issue, see Harris, Second Epistle, pgs. 100-101.

16