Generous Living

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