Costly Giving

…that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor…

2 Corinthians 8:9

Uppermost in the apostle's mind is the thought of the incarnation of Jesus: though he was rich, yet … he became poor. When he had everything, when he was rich in power, when he had omnipotence at his command and could do all things in the universe, he became poor. He surrendered the independent use of his mind to the Father and the Father's will, and he became absolutely nothing!

When he was rich in love and had all the angels of heaven to adore him, he laid it aside. When he was rich in resources, he came so that he could say of himself the Son of Man has no place to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). He had no home, they had to borrow a manger in which he could be born; he had to borrow a penny when he wanted to perform a miracle; he depended on others for his clothes; he went about with no certain dwelling place. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he entered into the poverty of human existence and held nothing back, not even his own life. There on the hill of Calvary, on a rugged, bloody, cruel cross, he poured out everything he had. All that was his, all that he could call his own, his own life he poured out for us. John puts it in one pregnant phrase, Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (John 13:1). He went the entire limit; he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Now that is giving. That is what Paul is talking about. No reserves, no half-measures, no conditions, no holding back, pouring out everything that he had. That is the great pattern of giving.

We have never truly given until it costs us. There is something almost shameful about the way Christians continually seek some kind of an angle to get something for ourselves in giving. Is it not significant that we seek to give only if we feel we can deduct it from our income tax? There is nothing wrong with deducting gifts from our income tax, but what bothers me is the reluctance that Christians sometimes have to give anything beyond that. And yet the example of the Lord Jesus is that he gave without any expectation of return. He had no thought of anybody giving back to him, but freely poured out all that he had. Do we tend to give only out of our surplus, if we have something left over, to give that? But true giving means some degree of self-impoverishment. It is only when we have something less because we have given to another that it can be called true giving. It is to become poor when we have been rich; that is what giving is.

I can never out-give you, Lord, but thank you that you live in me and can make me the same kind of giver that you are.