The Grace of Giving

Text: 2 Corinthians 9:6

Series: Restoration Sermons

Date:

Speaker: Ed Rangel

Location: Waupaca Church of Christ

Bible Version: NASB 1995

Sermon Type: Expository

Learning Objectives

By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:

1. Identify giving as a grace — a spiritual disposition that must be cultivated, not merely a transaction.
2. Explain the sowing-and-reaping principle as it applies to Christian giving.
3. Describe the God who responds to liberal giving — the one who multiplies the seed and enlarges the harvest.
4. Understand that God loves a cheerful giver — and that cheerfulness is the mark of a heart that has grasped what grace means.
5. Connect giving to the unspeakable gift of Christ, which is the fountainhead from which all Christian generosity flows.

Thesis

Giving is a grace — not a tax, not a formality, not a matter of convenience. It is a spiritual discipline tied to the sowing-and-reaping law, offered to a God who responds to liberality, and ultimately inseparable from the unspeakable gift of Christ.

Burden

There is a reason Paul does not command the Corinthians to give — he calls it a grace (2 Cor. 8:7). The word is charis. The same word used for salvation is used for giving. That is not an accident. A person who has not grasped the grace by which he was saved will have difficulty practicing the grace of giving. Everything Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8–9 assumes that the giving is coming from a heart that has already been undone by the gift of Christ. The arithmetic is simple but the transformation it requires is profound.

Introduction

Paul's second letter to the Corinthians contains the most extended discussion of Christian giving in the New Testament. Chapters 8 and 9 together form a sustained appeal — not a command, as Paul notes, but a test of the genuineness of their love (2 Cor. 8:8). The occasion was the collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, but the principles Paul lays out transcend that occasion. This sermon takes 2 Cor. 9:6 as the controlling text and works through five aspects of the grace of giving: its law, its manner, its object, the God who receives it, and its highest motivation.

I. The Law of Giving — The Sowing Principle

A. "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully" (2 Cor. 9:6).

1. This is not merely agricultural wisdom imported into religion — it is a statement of divine law.
2. The same principle appears in Gal. 6:7: "Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."
3. God has structured reality so that liberality produces abundance, and stinginess produces poverty.

B. This law does not reduce giving to calculation — it discloses the nature of things.

1. A farmer who refuses to sow because he might lose the seed has already lost his harvest.
2. A Christian who withholds because he fears losing what he gives has already forfeited the reaping.

C. The law is not a health-and-wealth promise; it is a statement about the character of God's economy.

1. God does not owe the giver a material return on every gift — the "harvest" includes spiritual growth, expanded generosity, and the strengthening of God's people.
2. But God is not mocked; the one who gives as if giving costs him nothing will find himself spiritually impoverished.

II. The Manner of Giving — Freely and Cheerfully

A. "Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion" (2 Cor. 9:7a).

1. Giving must be purposeful: planned in the heart, not reactive or haphazard.
2. Giving must not be grudging: ek lupēs — out of grief, as though parting with something beloved.
3. Giving must not be under compulsion: God has no interest in money extracted by pressure.

B. "For God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:7b).

1. Hilaros — the root of our word "hilarious." Not a modest smile but genuine, overflowing gladness.
2. Cheerful giving is not possible without a cheerful faith — a person who is glad about what God has done for him gives gladly.
3. The cheerful giver has so internalized the grace of God that giving does not feel like loss.

C. Paul adds that true giving is also liberal: "on the basis of equality" (2 Cor. 8:13-14).

1. Not that everyone gives the same amount, but that each gives proportionally and from what they have.
2. The first-day principle (1 Cor. 16:2): systematic, weekly, as each has prospered.

III. The Object of Giving — The Poor Saints

A. The immediate occasion was the collection for the poor in Jerusalem (Acts 20:35; Rom. 15:26).

1. The Gentile churches took up an offering for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem — a concrete expression of the unity of the body.
2. "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35) — a word of the Lord not recorded in the Gospels but preserved by Paul.

B. The principle extends: giving supports those who need.

1. God commands care for the poor throughout Scripture.
2. The church has a special obligation to its own members: "especially to those who are of the household of the faith" (Gal. 6:10).

C. The giving that God values is not the giving that makes the giver look good.

1. The giving of the Macedonians was voluntary, beyond their means, and first gave themselves to the Lord (2 Cor. 8:3-5) — this is the model.
2. The heart posture precedes the transaction.

IV. The God Who Responds to Giving

A. God is the one who multiplies the seed of the liberal giver.

1. "Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness" (2 Cor. 9:10).
2. God is not passive in this arrangement — He actively responds to liberality.

B. God can make all grace abound so that the giver "always having all sufficiency in everything, may have an abundance for every good deed" (2 Cor. 9:8).

1. The giver is not left impoverished — God sees to it that the liberal soul has enough to continue giving.
2. This is a statement of trust: the giver can be confident that the God who commanded giving is also the God who provides for the giver.

C. The result of liberal giving is that "the ministry of this service is not only fully supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing through many thanksgivings to God" (2 Cor. 9:12).

1. Giving generates thanksgiving — not just in the recipients, but as a corporate overflow of gratitude to God.
2. The gift that goes to the poor arrives before God as worship.

V. The Highest Motivation — The Unspeakable Gift

A. Paul ends the chapter not with a further appeal or a summary of the law but with: "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" (2 Cor. 9:15).

1. Anekdiēgētos — untraceable, beyond description. Paul uses the most extreme word available.
2. The gift is Christ — the giving of the Son who was rich and became poor so that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).

B. This is the fountainhead of all Christian giving.

1. A person who has truly grasped what Christ gave will never ask "how little can I give?"
2. Every gift given in His name is downstream from that one unspeakable act.

C. The outline captures the logic precisely: the grace of giving is Christ-motivated giving.

1. Not rule-driven ("I must give 10% or else").
2. Not peer-driven ("others are watching").
3. But grace-driven: because He first gave, I give.

Application

The test of whether giving has become a grace in your life is not the amount — it is the manner. Do you give purposefully? Do you give cheerfully? Do you give as one who has grasped what you have received? The first-day principle (1 Cor. 16:2) assumes you have thought about this before you arrive. A person who gives whatever happens to be in their wallet on Sunday morning has not yet cultivated the grace of giving. Plan it. Purpose it in your heart. And remember that God loves the cheerful giver — not the obligated one.

Conclusion

The grace of giving rests on five supports: the law of sowing and reaping, the manner of purposeful cheerfulness, the object of real need, the God who multiplies the seed, and the unspeakable gift of Christ at the center. Remove that last one and giving becomes moralism — either proud achievement or grudging duty. Keep it, and the arithmetic changes entirely. He gave everything; we give proportionally and gladly, knowing that the God who supplied the seed will see to it that the harvest comes in.

Invitation

If you have never received the unspeakable gift — never been washed in the blood of Christ, never been transferred into His kingdom — today is the day to come. Hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). Christ became poor that you might be rich in grace. Do not walk away from that gift. If you are a Christian who has let the grace of giving grow cold — who gives grudgingly or not at all — bring that to God today. He can restore it. Come as we sing.

Word Study

Scripture Interlock Table

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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 67. Doctrinal audit: core framework; giving as grace not moralism; first-day systematic giving (1 Cor. 16:2) named; no health-and-wealth distortion of the sowing principle; Christ's self-giving as the ultimate motivation. OCR fix: Acts 10:35 → Acts 20:35 (confirmed from context — "more blessed to give than to receive" is Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders, Acts 20:35, not the Cornelius passage). Note: Boles Outline 42 also treats giving — this is a distinct sermon on the grace dimension rather than the procedural/proportional focus.

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