Second Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Second Corinthians 8:7-15

[Each week, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Hopefully, it's helpful to others as well, since most weekends, our Bible lesson is one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world. To see the first pass at this week's Bible lesson, look here.]

Second Corinthians 8:7-15
Verse-by-Verse Comments:
7Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.
1. Both of Paul's letters to the church at Corinth indicate that, reflective of the culture of that Greek city, the Christians there were prone to excess. Someone has aptly described Corinth as "the Las Vegas strip of the ancient world." Corinthian culture was not so much interested in keeping up with the Joneses as grinding those neighbors in the dirt.

But, here Paul approaches the next topic of this letter in a manner typical of his approach to those either with no faith or who were weak in faith. In the book of Acts, where Luke, the writer of the Gospel of the same name, tells the story of the Church from Jesus' ascension until about thirty years later, we're told about what happened when Paul went to the city of Athens, also in Greece.

Paul was disturbed by all the shrines the Athenians had erected to various "gods." The old Paul, the guy known as Saul who was a Pharisee, would have rhetorically gone after the Athenians with both guns blazing, spouting the injunction of the First Commandment to have no other gods but the one true God revealed to the people of Israel and ultimately, through Jesus Christ. And, at one level, he would have been right to do so.

But Jesus Christ has changed Paul. He isn't interested in scoring debating points that prove how righteous he is and how unrighteous others are. He wants instead, to help people know Jesus Christ. It's through Jesus that we sinners can turn from sin (repent) and trusting in Jesus as our God and Savior, be given new and everlasting lives.

If these shrines to idols that so disturbed Paul had been in the homes of Christians, he, like Jesus, would have been a little more "medieval" on them. Instead, Paul begins by marveling how religious they were, mentioning one shrine to an unknown God, who he claims to be the one true God, and even quoting the Greek poets so appreciated in Athens as a way of meeting them where they were. (Acts 17:16-33)

Jesus is, in fact, Paul's model for this approach. When you read the Gospels, you notice that the only people Jesus ever excoriates or condemns are the religious folk who know God's will and yet deliberately flout it or ignore it. In other words, Jesus only gets in the grills of those who should know better.

But consider Jesus' behavior toward the woman caught in adultery, or Zaccheus, the extortionist-tax collector, or the countless numbers of sinners with whom He willingly spends time: He never upbraids them. He teaches them and gently brings them along.

There are times when He grows angry or frustrated with His own closest followers. But even with them, when they act or speak out of ignorance of His will or ways, His method is to be gentle, to meet them where they live and to take them to the next level of their faith.

Paul meets the Corinthians where they are: "I know how much you want to excel at things," he tells them. "There's a very important way in which I want you to excel, in generosity."

8I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others.
1. Paul understands an important principle of all leadership and especially of Christian leadership. This is how I summarize it:

Never require by command what can be evinced by persuasion, especially persuasion empowered by the Holy Spirit.

2. Paul wants the Corinthian church to choose, out of the love implanted in them by Jesus Christ, to be generous givers. He's already used Second Corinthians 8:1-6, especially verse 3, to show them what generous givers who choose to give look like.

9For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
1. Paul now mentions the example of generosity: Jesus' voluntary giving of His life on a cross to take our punishment for sin. He uses financial imagery to describe this divine transaction.

2. It's important to remember that in this chapter, as William Loader puts it:

Paul is not, here, arguing that God has done so much for us and we ought therefore to show our gratitude by our financial gifts ('and they ought to be big!!'). He is not waving the big stick of God's right to be worshipped with money. There is nothing about paying back God's generosity nor about secret rewards for divine investments such as our own personal prosperity in this life or the life beyond.

Christian giving is all about partaking of the privilege of participating in Jesus' mission of grace and love in the world. (Second Corinthians 6:1) Paraphrasing a point made in the New Interpreter's Bible: If the Corinthians understand that it's God's grace that makes them children of God, then they won't be able--and won't want--to stem the overfloow of that grace through giving.

10And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something— 11now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have.
1. One year earlier, the Corinthians apparently welcomed Paul's call to join in the general offering for the impoverished and persecuted church in Jerusalem. (I discuss that here.) But their initial enthusiasm has not been matched by their ensuing action. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, as the old saw advises. But what is clearly true is that intending to do the good thing without doing it leaves the good thing undone.

2. Without condemnation, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to act by commending their original enthusiasm.

3. Paul is always "Mr. Practicality," inveterately offering all recipients of his communications, including us, practical ways to enact the Christian truths he commends. Here, says The Interpreter's Bible, he offers two suggestions: (a) recapture your original enthusiasm for giving to Christ's people at Jerusalem; (b) Follow through on your desire by doing the offering. This he states twice.

13I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between 14your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. 15As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”
1. Bryan Findlayson notes:

Paul now presents the basic principle behind his argument. It is the principal of fair-dealing. My "plenty" should supply the "needs" of my brothers and sisters in the Lord, in such a way as to allow them to use their "plenty" toward my "needs."

"Givers," says Chris Haslam about this passage, "should attain a 'fair balance' (v.13); relieving the poverty of others but not impoverishing themselves."

2. Paul quotes Exodus 16:18, part of the story of God's leading of the people Israel through the wilderness. During the long journey, God provided food to His people through manna, a bread-like substance, which he told them to pick. Some were obviously physically capable of gathering more than others. They were to share. According to Exodus:

But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.

3. Paul speaks of how the church at Jerusalem, Jewish Christians, through its faithfulness, had made it possible for the church at Corinth, largely made of Gentile Christians, to know Jesus Christ and His salvation. As the Jerusalem church had given out of its wealth--the Gospel of Jesus, Paul asks the Corinthian church to give of its material wealth. He makes an analogous argument with the Roman Church (Romans 15:27).

4. Two givens lay behind Paul's words in this entire passage:
a. As the Interpreter's Bible puts it:

Reciprocity and care among believers are givens for Paul.

It makes sense when one remembers the command that Jesus gave to His Church in John 15, to love one another as He has loved us.

b. As the Interpreter's Bible also tells us: We believers are rich because God shares everything with us. (Also see First Corinthians 3:21-23; Luke 12:13-21; 14:15-24; 16:19-31)