GENEROUS LIVING – A DEVOTION
When asked to speak on this the question came to my mind, “Why
isn’t generosity one of rht fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22?”
Actually the same question was asked to me regarding forgiveness. Both
forgiveness and generosity is the centre of the gospel – Matthew 6:15 and
Matthew 25:31-46. The response I gave
was that the list in Galatians 5:22 is illustrative and not exhaustive.
Generosity is an essential part of love, even though I
Corinthians 13 does not mention it! More than that, it is an essential part of
the gospel, since all the judgement in Matthew 25:31-46 is based on the
generosity of the person. You cannot be a Christian and not be generous.
I want to look at this topic from the perspective of three
aspects of the gospel.
THE GOSPEL TO THE
POOR
In the Nazarene manifesto, Jesus says,
“The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;
he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
The tendency is to spiritualise this, and see the poor as
the poor in spirit, and the captives as captives of sin. But this cannot be
done in all fairness. While the
spiritualised meanings may be true, the physical meanings are also true. Hence
we see Jesus’ response to the disciples of John the Baptist in Matthew 11:4-6
as follows,
“Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again
those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up,
and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever
shall not be offended in me.”
Here all the people received physical healing, except for
the poor who had the gospel preached to them. Obviously in the context, the
gospel here was a physical solution to the needs of the poor. How does this
happen? I believe it happens by the transformation of the hearts of the rich so
that they are willing to share their wealth with the poor in the kingdom. Thus,
in the kingdom of God the poor experience not only physical deliverance from
poverty, but also from injustice, rejection and dehumanisation. This is the
essence of the gospel.
In John 17:18 and 20:21 it says,
“As thou hast sent me
into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.”
And
“Then said Jesus to
them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”
Whenever anything is repeated it increases its importance
and emphasis. So, Jesus is here emphasising the fact that we have been sent
like Jesus. The fact that this applies to us now is seen from John 17;20,
“Neither pray I for
these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;”
It is important to recognise the fact that each of us have
been sent like Jesus and are representatives of Jesus here.
Matthew 11:28 is a popular verse which we use to call people
to Jesus. So when we meet people in need we tend to tell them to go to Jesus.
But if we have been sent like Jesus, we need to modify it as follows,
“Come unto me, all you
who labour and are heavy laden, and the Christ who dwells in me will give you
rest.”
That would make a radical difference in our life as we find
that we have to share the time, money and whatever resources God has given into
our care. God expects us to be generous because we are believers, and because
we have been sent like Him. This is the love which fulfils the law in our
lives.
How does this work in practice? To the best of our ability
we try and see that lowly workers are well paid. We pay them more than our
neighbours do, since we have a concern for their poverty. In time of crisis we
make ourself available to them, to help and find solutions, which are out of
reach to them. While we do not promote dependency, we do provide assistance in
emergencies.
A question we all have to ask ourselves, and many mission
leaders also need to ask themselves, “Can we pay less than the minimum wage
prescribed by the government, and call ourselves Christian?”
THE GOSPEL OF THE
KINGDOM
If we try and identify the essence of the gospel from the
four gospel rather than the epistles of Paul, we get a very different picture
from what is preached nowadays. Today’s preaching focuses more on Paul, who
wrote a commentary on the gospel of Jesus and was meant to explain some
portions which were not clear – like the doctrine of justification etc. Paul
did not change the gospel, and it would be a mistake to preach only from Paul
and not the gospels.
It is a good exercise to try and write out the essence of
the gospel from Mathew, Mark, Luke and John without referring to Paul. The
first thing which strikes is that Jesus preached an invitation into the kingdom
(Matthew 4:17) rather than just an invitation into heaven (John 3:16)! One went
with the other and you could not ignore one and preach the other.
It is the community of the people of God which is the good
news which was preached, and the people were invited to come and be a part of
this community. We see this community being practised in Acts 4:32-37, where
they shared their resources and all the needs of the people were met.
This community needs to be a reality for the gospel to be
preached, since the gospel invites people to this community. Hence Jesus says
in John 13:35,
“By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Our witness is the love and fellowship within the community
of the kingdom, the physical manifestation of which is the church. If this love
is not manifested, the witness dies. If there is one family going hungry to bed
in your church, the gospel does not exist.
What is the picture the church presents at this time in India?
Communities like the Sikhs and Parsis seem to have more integration than the
church. They look after their own, but we have failed to look after our own.
I remember a dacoit who had become a watchman after
conversion, living close to my house in Kolkata. He would not go to church
since he felt that he was not treated with dignity in the church. He was seen a
‘poor’. The Railway officers in the Railway colony would not go to the Railway
church, since they would have to rub shoulders with the staff. They preferred
to go to the bigger and richer churches away from their home. The concept of
the kingdom seems to be dead in the Indian context.
Central to the concept of the kingdom is love and
generosity. Without this we cannot have the kingdom. Generosity is not just
sharing of financial resources and wealth, but looking at people with
acceptance and being generous in our evaluation and estimation of people. The
giving of dignity and value is more important in many cases than the giving of
money.
Since the gospel is an invitation to the kingdom, and the
church is the physical manifestation of the kingdom, there is no gospel without
the church.
GOSPEL OF REPENTANCE
Jesus began His message calling for repentance in Matthew
4:17,
“From that time Jesus
began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
What does ‘repent’ mean? The Greek word is a combination
from ‘meta’ and ‘noia’ the former meaning change and the latter mind. So it is
a change of my mind, or a turning of my mind. But what is the change or turn
sought? Most people see is as repentance from ‘sin’. But if we look In the New
Testament this is not made clear anywhere.
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says,
“No man can serve two
masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Here the repentance is from mammon or wealth. What does it
mean to serve wealth or to worship wealth? I take it as meaning to have a
dependence on wealth, and to see it as the provider for your needs. So Jesus is
saying that you either see God as your provider or you see mammon as your
provider. You cannot hold to both beliefs.
You see the importance of this in Jesus’ dealing with two
person, the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 and the rich young ruler in
Matthew 19:16-22. In the former Jesus does not seem to take her sin as a major
problem, and tells her, not to worry, but do not repeat the act. But to the
rich young ruler He is far more severe and says that he needs to sell his
possessions, give it to the poor and then follow Jesus. In today’s church, the
rich young ruler would be feted and the woman send empty away. But in Jesus’
kingdom, she was filled and the rich was sent empty away.
Essentially Jesus was saying that one cannot enter the
kingdom, with a love and trust in money for our day to day lives. So the
repentance called for is repentance from trust in money and in material things.
Trust in money and material things is essentially idolatry,
and therefore Paul writes in Colossians 3:5, covetousness, which is idolatry.”
One of the concerns I have is that we are not a religion of
works but of faith. Yet we ask people to repent from their sins and then come
to Jesus, which is essentially a work. Jesus calls us to a repentance in our
faith, and not in our works. The repentance from sin comes after the repentance
in our faith.
In I Timothy 6:10 it says,
“For the love of money
is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from
the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
In James 1:13-15 it says,
“Let no man say when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempts he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of
his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it brings forth sin:
and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”
These passages say that sin comes essentially from our
desire for the material. And why do we desire the material? Because we think
that it can provide for our needs and our security. But when we repent from a
trust in the material, its hold on us is broken and we can be free from sin.
That means we can only repent from our sin when we have repented from our trust
in the material for our needs.
We as people seem to have an addiction for money and we need
to get over that addiction. Then only can we be truly generous as a part of our
lifestyle. The warnings in the Bible are clear enough for those who want to
hear them. Let me set before you some verses.
I John 2:15-17
“ Love not the
world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father,
but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he
that doeth the will of God abides for ever.”
James 4:4
“Ye adulterers and
adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
I Tim 6:9
“But they that will be
rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts,
which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
ILL EFFECTS OF A LACK
OF GENEROSITY
In Acts 10:4 it is written,
“And when he looked on
him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy
prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.”
The generosity of his heart had come before God and added
weight to his prayers. God is looking for generous hearts, and rejoices when He
finds one.
If we look at the judgement scene in Matthew 15:31-46 the
basis of judgement is generosity. Those who were generous had salvation, while
those who were not did not have salvation. Does this mean a gospel of works?
No! It means that if you have turned from trust in the world to trust in Jesus,
you will naturally be generous. If you are not generous, the first repentance
has not taken place and salvation is not there.
Matthew 6:22-23 reads as follows,
“The light of the body
is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
What does it mean to have an eye that is evil? The same
expression is used in Matthew 20:15 where the master asks the labourers who
objected to the same payment being given to those who worked for lesser hours,
“Is it not lawful for
me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?”
Here the phrase possible means ‘jealous’, but I prefer to
see the meaning as looking with a lack of generosity. Rather than rejoicing at
the good fortune of the other, one is jealous and angry at his good fortune. So
if we do not look at the world with generous eyes, Jesus says that our lives
will be full of darkness.
Hence generosity is an essential aspect of our Christian
life.
In Matthew 10:39, Jesus says,
“He that finds his
life shall lose it: and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it.”
What does it mean to find one’s life and lose one’s life? I
would say that if one fulfils all his dreams and ambitions in this world he
goes straight to hell. He who gives up his dreams and ambitions in this world
finds life.
Is it wrong to have dreams and ambitions? No. But before we
met Christ all our dreams and ambitions were of this world. When we met Christ
it all changed. We no longer trusted in the material and our dreams and
ambitions were replaced by dreams and ambitions of the kingdom. If our dreams
and ambitions after accepting Jesus as our Saviour has not changed, there seems
to be a problem. This problem could affect your generosity.
CONCLUSION
There will be bad experiences. People whom you were generous
with will let you down. One family we helped financially with an agreement that
they would return the money in instalments monthly. They gave a few instalments
and then stopped. In a period of time they became wealthy with a standard of
living well above ours but did not return the money. When asked they gave various
reasons why they were not able to return the money immediately. We are sill
good friends exchanging birthday greetings and keeping in touch over events in
each others family, but the money is never mentioned or returned.
Such bad experiences tend to make you ungenerous, and are
from the devil to turn you away from the nature God wants you to have. Whatever
others may do, we need to be generous. May God bless you as you walk this path
of generosity.
To conclude, here are my three points:-
¢ Jesus proclaimed the gospel as the
answer to the needs of the poor
¢ The kingdom of God was meant to be a
solution to the needs of the people
¢ We are called to turn away from
trust in the world to trust in God so that we can be a solution to the needs of
others
