Why Give?
Giving is Love for Others.
Before he ascended, Jesus established a community of love - in the Greek, the word is agape (John 13). Agape is the picture of people graciously welcoming and providing for one another. This was fleshed out in mutual concern and responsibility for the spiritual, physical and emotional well-being of everyone who came to be a part of the Body of Christ, belonging to one another in him. It was relational and economic. Tangible. In short, it was the Church.
Fundamentally, the act of giving to the Church is an expression of this agape love as it provides the spiritual leadership, pastoral care and basic provision for the needs of the community, including the basics of meeting space and administration. Since the earliest days of the Tabernacle, our God has called his people to be generous to one another and also to provide for the worshipping culture.
Giving is Worship, Our Response to God.
Giving financially is also a form of worship, a response to God’s boundless grace and generosity acknowledging and expressing that all we have, as individual members of one Body, comes from God. Giving glorifies and honors his abundant generosity and reflects it back toward him as those made in his image and likeness. Giving also says we aren’t afraid of lacking anything because God is our source and we trust him.
Giving is for Everyone.
Throughout history, giving was a dignity and opportunity extended even to the poorest in the community. Consider the widow Jesus praised for her generosity, though she gave only two, nearly-worthless, copper coins. Jesus called hers an abundant gift. So everyone who has an income can give something. But should everyone give? We get uncomfortable when told we should do something, especially when it comes to money. The truth is, shoulds make the world go round. Wisdom is discovering how the world works and how we should respond to what we know. Imperatives are what lead us to make better decisions, which is why Christ and his apostles offered many healthy “shoulds” to the community of grace. And giving was one of them. The Scriptures teach us we should give to honor God, to keep our loves rightly ordered and to express through giving our love for those who benefit from the Church - her provision of Word, sacrament, pastoral care and equipping, to name a few.
Giving is a Biblical Means to Blessing.
We are stewards, not owners. A steward is a person who has been entrusted with and who manages another’s resources according to the owner’s vision and values. Each of us was created for stewardship by God (Gen 1:28), both a ruler with authority to govern resources and a servant accountable to the owner of the resources. Jesus taught stewardship and blessing in Luke 6, the Sermon on the Plain. He was merely restating and renewing the blessing principle in Malachi 3:6-12. He said:
”Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” The message that God blesses those who give has often been exploited. But unadulterated by greed, this principle is Biblical and therefore immutable. Because we are stewards of God’s blessing, he has promised to bless us when we are faithful with them. Jesus also said in Luke 16 that what we do with our temporal blessings (“little”) determines what God will entrust to us beyond them (“much”). So giving is an invitation to greater blessing. It’s not only freedom from scarcity and idolatry, but it also avails us to divine abundance. If we are not good stewards, living in scarcity or greed, we will worry more about or fixate on our money, regardless of how much we have. This robs us of the joy of being the stewards God created us to be.