Offering Sermon

What Grace Does With What You Have

Let me ask you something honest. When the offering plate comes around, or the basket is passed, or the moment arrives when you are asked to give, what happens inside you? Is there a flicker of resistance? A quick mental calculation? A vague sense of obligation mixed with a little guilt? Or maybe something else altogether, something quieter, something that actually feels like freedom?

The way we respond to that moment reveals more about our theology than almost anything else we do on a Sunday morning. It reveals what we believe about God, what we believe about ourselves, and what we believe about the people sitting next to us and the people we will never meet. Giving is not a footnote to the Christian life. It is a window straight into the heart of it.

So today I want us to open two passages from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, chapters eight and nine, and I want us to sit with them long enough to let them do what they were written to do. Not to make us feel guilty. Not to fill a budget line. But to show us what grace actually looks like when it gets into a person's hands.

The Central Claim

Here is the governing conviction of this message: grace-shaped generosity is not a duty pressed upon you from the outside. It is a grace working its way out from the inside. When you understand what God has done for you in Jesus Christ, giving becomes one of the most natural expressions of that understanding. That is the argument Paul is making, and it is worth following carefully.

What The Macedonians Teach Us

Paul opens chapter eight by pointing to the churches in Macedonia, which would have included places like Philippi and Thessalonica. He says something almost startling in verses two and three. He tells the Corinthians that these Macedonian believers gave out of extreme poverty, that they were in a deep trial of affliction, and yet they gave with overflowing joy. He says they gave beyond their ability, of their own accord.

Read that again. Beyond their ability. Of their own accord.

Paul is not describing people who were pressured into giving. He is not describing people who were shamed into it or manipulated into it. He is describing people who begged for the privilege of participating. Verse four says they begged us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints. These are not reluctant givers. These are people who understood something so clearly that generosity became an act of joy rather than an act of loss.

What did they understand? Paul tells us in verse nine. He steps back from the practical discussion and gives the theological foundation for everything he is saying. He writes: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

That single verse is the engine of the entire argument. The Macedonians gave generously because they had been given to generously. They had seen what it looked like for someone to empty himself for the sake of others. Jesus, who was rich in every eternal and divine sense, took on poverty, limitation, suffering, and death so that those who deserved none of his riches could receive all of them. The Macedonians had received that grace. And once you receive that kind of grace, it changes the way you hold everything else.

This is why Paul calls giving a grace in verse seven. He says: But as you excel in everything, in faith, speech, knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love for us, excel also in this act of grace. He does not say excel in this duty. He does not say excel in this requirement. He says excel in this act of grace. Giving is grace in motion. It is the overflow of what God has already poured into you.

Willingness Before Amount

Now Paul makes a critical pastoral point in verse twelve that we must not rush past. He says: For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

This is liberating. God is not primarily interested in the size of your gift. He is interested in the posture of your heart. Willingness comes before amount. Eagerness matters more than the number on the check. A person of modest means who gives with a willing and joyful spirit is giving exactly what God is looking for. A person of great wealth who gives grudgingly has missed the point entirely.

This does not mean the amount is irrelevant. Paul is about to address that. But he wants the Corinthians, and he wants us, to understand that the starting place is not the calculation. The starting place is the heart. Are you willing? Are you eager? Do you see this as a privilege or a burden?

If you are honest and you find that it feels more like a burden right now, that is not a reason for shame. That is an invitation. It is an invitation to go back to verse nine and spend some time there. Go back to the truth that Jesus became poor so that you might become rich. Let that truth do its work. Because when grace gets a grip on your heart, willingness tends to follow.

Equality And Justice

There is another dimension to this passage that we should not skip over. In verses thirteen through fifteen Paul introduces a word that might surprise us in this context. He talks about equality. He quotes from the story of the manna in the wilderness from Exodus 16, where God provided bread for Israel in the desert. The people who gathered much did not have too much, and the people who gathered little did not have too little. There was a kind of equity in God's provision.

Paul is applying that principle to the collection he is taking for the suffering believers in Jerusalem. He says the Corinthians' abundance at the present time should supply what the Jerusalem church lacks, so that there might be equality. This is not socialism. This is the body of Christ functioning as it was designed to function. When one part of the body suffers, the other parts respond. When one community has more than it needs and another community is in genuine need, the grace of God flows through the generosity of his people to bring about something that looks like justice.

Your giving is not just a personal spiritual exercise. It is participation in the justice of God. It is a way of saying that the needs of people you may never meet matter to you because they matter to God. It is a way of pushing back against the idea that what is mine is only mine. Grace says otherwise.

Sowing, Reaping, And The Right Motive

Paul then moves to chapter nine and introduces the agricultural image that many of us know well. Verse six: The person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the person who sows generously will also reap generously.

I want to be careful here, because this verse has been used in ways that go beyond what Paul actually says. Paul is not promising that if you give more money you will receive more money. He is not guaranteeing financial return on spiritual investment. What he is describing is a principle of generosity that runs through the whole of God's economy. Generous people tend to live generous lives. People who hold tightly tend to live tightly. The principle is real, but it is not a formula for personal enrichment.

What Paul does promise is this, and it is far better than a financial return. Verse eight: And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work. God's provision for the generous person is sufficiency for every good work. Not luxury. Not excess. Enough. Enough to keep giving. Enough to keep serving. Enough to keep participating in what God is doing in the world.

And then verse seven gives us the most important line about motive in the entire passage: Each person should do as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.

Not reluctantly. Not out of compulsion. God loves a cheerful giver. The Greek word behind cheerful is the word from which we get our English word hilarious. God loves a hilarious giver. Someone who gives with such freedom and joy that it almost looks reckless. Someone who has been so captured by the grace of God that giving feels like the most natural thing in the world.

That is the kind of giver grace produces.

What This Means For You Today

So what does this mean for you, right now, in this moment?

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have received the greatest gift ever given. You have received the grace of the one who was rich and became poor so that you could be made rich in ways that nothing in this world can take from you. That grace is the foundation of everything. And that grace, when it takes root, produces generosity. Not because you have to give. Because you get to.

If you are still exploring faith, still trying to figure out what you believe, I want you to hear this clearly. Christian giving is not about keeping the lights on. It is about bearing witness to a God who gave everything. When you see a community of people giving generously and joyfully, you are seeing the grace of Jesus Christ on display in human hands and human wallets. That is worth paying attention to.

And if you are a believer who has been giving out of habit or obligation, who has never quite connected your giving to the grace of verse nine, let today be a turning point. Go back to that verse. Sit with it. Jesus became poor for you. He held nothing back. He gave himself completely. And in response to that, you get to open your hand.

Do not give because you are afraid of what happens if you do not. Give because you have seen what grace looks like, and you want to look like that too.

A Pastoral Prayer

Father, we come to you as people who have received more than we could ever repay. You gave us your Son, who became poor so that we might be made rich in every way that matters eternally. Teach us to hold what we have with open hands. Produce in us the kind of willing, joyful, grace-shaped generosity that reflects who you are. Let our giving be an act of worship, a declaration of trust, and a participation in your justice. And where our hearts are still closed or fearful or calculating, do the work that only you can do. Make us cheerful givers, not because we have to be, but because we have seen what you have done. In the name of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us. Amen.

Sources Consulted

Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1997.

David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians, New American Commentary, Broadman and Holman, 1999.

Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, New International Greek Testament Commentary, Eerdmans, 2005.

Thomas R. Schreiner, Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ, InterVarsity Press, 2001.

The Christian Standard Bible, Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.