provinces: Macedonia and Achaia. The leading Biblical city in Macedonia was Philippi, while that in Achaia was Corinth. Paul and his associates were promoting a missionary fund to meet the financial needs of Christians in Jerusalem. One year earlier the Corinthians had promised that they would do something about it. During this year the Macedonians had responded liberally and had given out of their deep poverty (II Corinthians 8 :2 ). The people in Corinth had not yet actually made any response to what they had promised. They lived in the prosperous commercial center of Corinth where money was more readily available. Paul first of all tells how the Macedonians gave under grace (II Corinthians 8 :3 , 5). He observes that they had given beyond their power. They gave first of all of themselves. Richard Halverson has stated: “ Money is an exact index to a man’s true character. It is not how much he makes, but how he uses it that really counts.” When man understands that he has given himself to God, then he realizes that all he has is the Lord’s. We may th in k we have many possessions but u ltim a te ly everything is traceable to God. For this reason making a gift to the Lord is not really generosity. It is merely a matter of honesty. If a person complains about giving money to God, it simply means he is not yet given himself to the Lord. But, in the sphere of God’s grace , the earnest Christian realizes that all that he has — ten-tenths — really belongs to God, but God has allowed him to be a steward or trustee over it as long as he lives in this world.
merely means that there are certain segments of national life which cannot be regulated by the laws of another nation. Paul’s life was governed no longer by an institutional relationship with God . He had a personal relationship through Jesus Christ. In Paul we have a human example of what God’s grace can do. As a spiritually bankrupt individual, he had all of his debts paid by the saving grace of Christ. He then experienced that “ where sin did abound, grace did also much more abound.” Here he learned what the living grace of God was all about. Daniel Webster was asked to tell what the greatest thought was that had ever entered his mind. He replied, “ My responsibility to Almighty God.” This statement should be reechoed as a testimony of the believer and his church. The doctrine of God’s grace is one of t h e m o s t m a g n i f i c e n t , overwhelming, infinite truths in the Bible. A very graphic and p ra c tic a l p o rtra y a l of the Christian’s responsibility to this grace is found in II Corinthians 8 and 9. Yet in some church circles the subject of these chapters is almost a hushed topic. It is the most earthy type of teaching on which a pastor could select to p reach . It is money! Paul, however, lifts this subject out of the murky mire of mundane things and places it upon the high spiritual plateau of a gracious exercise. Under the Roman conquest, Greece had been divided into two T H A N K S G I V I N G U N D E R GRA C E
Page 26
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker