2 Corinthians 9:11

These verses stand in the middle of Paul’s long appeal in 2 Corinthians 8–9 about a collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem. In 2 Corinthians 8 he holds up the churches of Macedonia, who gave out of deep poverty and “beyond their power” (2 Corinthians 8:1–5). He reminds the Corinthians that they began this gift a year earlier and urges them to finish it (2 Corinthians 8:10–11), and he tells them that a gift is accepted according to what a man has (2 Corinthians 8:12). In 2 Corinthians 9 he explains that he has boasted to the Macedonians of the Corinthians’ readiness, and he wants their gift ready when he comes (2 Corinthians 9:1–5).

The collection met real need, for the church in Jerusalem had known famine and hardship. At Jerusalem Paul had agreed to “remember the poor” (Galatians 2:9–10). The gift also joined Gentile and Jewish believers together (Romans 15:25–27). As Paul puts it to the Romans, the Gentiles have shared in Jerusalem’s spiritual things, and so it is their duty to serve Jerusalem in material things (Romans 15:27).

Among the Greeks and Romans, a wealthy patron gave to his clients and expected loyalty and public honour in return. Paul puts giving on another footing. God is the great giver, his people pass on what he has given them, and the praise goes to him.

Verse 6 opens, “But this I say.” The Greek dé is a simple joining word (“and”, “now”, “but”), and here it carries Paul from his plans for the collection to the principle that lies under it.

Every farmer knows that the harvest follows the seed. A man who scatters a handful over his field gathers a small crop, and a man who sows the whole field gathers a large one. Paul’s readers, whether they lived in the city or the country, depended on these seasons and understood him at once. The verb speírō means to scatter seed, and Paul uses it of giving. Money given to the saints is seed put into the ground.

Pheidoménōs, “sparingly”, comes from the verb meaning to spare or hold back. It describes stingy giving, the small gift of someone afraid to let go of what he has. “Bountifully” translates epí eulogíais, literally “with blessings”, from epí, upon or with, and eulogía, a blessing, and by extension a bounty or generous gift. The bountiful sower gives liberally, as a blessing to others, and he reaps in blessings too. Paul uses the same phrase for the sowing and the reaping, so the harvest answers the seed in kind.

The two halves of the verse stand side by side so that the contrast is plain. Scripture states the same law in other places: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Solomon wrote, “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty” (Proverbs 11:24). Jesus said, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom” (Luke 6:38).

So giving is an act of faith in God, who honours it and multiplies it. Generosity puts what we have into God’s hands, and the harvest he gives is spelled out in the verses that follow.

Paul leaves the amount to each giver: “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give.” The verb proairéomai means to choose for oneself beforehand, to settle on something deliberately. The gift is a considered decision, made ahead of time and made freely. The heart, kardía, is in Scripture the seat of the mind, the feelings and the will, so the whole person takes part in the choice. Paul appeals here to the Corinthians’ own willingness and lets each one decide.

He then names two wrong ways to give. “Grudgingly” is ek lýpēs, literally “out of sorrow”, for lýpē is sadness, grief or heaviness. This is the gift it hurts to part with, given with regret as though it were a loss. “Of necessity” is ex anánkēs, “out of compulsion”, the gift squeezed out by pressure, whether by a rule or by what others expect. The law asked the same of Israel when it commanded help for a poor brother: “thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him” (Deuteronomy 15:10).

“For God loveth a cheerful giver.” The adjective hilarós, “cheerful”, describes the noun dótēs, “giver”, and English takes its word “hilarious” from it. Here it means glad, willing and ready, the giver who is prompt and eager to share. The verb for love is agapáō, the word Scripture uses for God’s own love. God values the heart behind a gift above its size, and a glad giver pleases him because such a giver resembles God himself, who “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” and will with him “freely give us all things” (Romans 8:32). Proverbs says, “The liberal soul shall be made fat” (Proverbs 11:25), and Paul reminded the elders of Ephesus of the words of the Lord Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). When the Philippians sent Paul a gift, he called it “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18).

Behind sparing and grudging gifts lies a fear: if I give this away, will I have enough? Verse 8 answers it. “God is able,” and the word is dynatós, strong or able, having the power to do a thing. What he is able to do is “to make all grace abound toward you.”

Cháris, grace, is God’s favour, and here it covers all that he gives: his saving kindness, his work in the heart, and the practical provision that makes generosity possible. Perisseúō, “abound”, means to overflow, to have more than enough, and Paul uses it twice in this verse. God makes grace overflow toward his people so that they may overflow in good works.

The word “all”, pâs, comes again and again: all grace, all sufficiency, all things, every good work. Alongside it stands pántote, “always”, which means at all times, on every occasion. The promise reaches every occasion of need and every kind of need, and God gives his people whatever they need for the work he sets before them.

“That ye ... may abound to every good work” states the purpose of the grace, for hína, “that”, introduces the goal. God gives so that his people may give. The good work, from agathós, good, and érgon, work, is first of all the gift for Jerusalem, and beyond it every act of charity, service and righteousness. God made his people for this: “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Paul gives the Philippians the same assurance, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19), and Jesus promised that those who seek first the kingdom of God will have all these things added to them (Matthew 6:33). God’s people are blessed so that they can be a blessing, as he told Abraham, “I will bless thee ... and thou shalt be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). God’s generosity makes room for theirs, their generosity leads to more good works, and the end of it is glory to God (2 Corinthians 9:11–12).

Paul grounds his teaching in Scripture. “As it is written” uses gráphō, the ordinary verb “to write”, and it introduces a quotation of Psalm 112:9, from a psalm that describes the character and blessings of a righteous man who is generous to the poor: “He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever.”

Skorpízō, “dispersed abroad”, means to scatter. It pictures a wide, open-handed sharing of goods, the way a sower flings seed across a field, and so it fits the sowing of verse 6. “Given to the poor” names those who receive what he scatters.

Dikaiosýnē, righteousness, is uprightness of character and conduct. In Jewish thought, giving to the poor, called tzedakah, was itself an act of righteousness and part of keeping God’s law, and Paul, a Jew trained in that teaching, brings it to the Gentile churches. The righteousness here is the upright life of the generous man, shown in his care for the poor. Ménō, “remaineth”, means to stay, abide or endure. Money given away leaves the giver’s hands, and the righteousness shown in giving it lasts for ever before God.

God remembers such kindness. “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again” (Proverbs 19:17). Jesus told his disciples to give their alms in secret, and “thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly” (Matthew 6:3–4). The letter to the Hebrews says, “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love” (Hebrews 6:10). The cheerful giver of verse 7 is this man of the psalm, and his gladness shows in what he gives away.

Paul names God as the one “that ministereth seed to the sower.” The words echo Isaiah 55:10, where the rain waters the earth so that it may “give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.” A farmer depends on God for the seed he plants and for the bread he eats, and the believer depends on God in the same way for what he gives and for what he lives on.

The verb epichorēgéō, “ministereth”, means to supply or provide, and the “minister” that follows is the simple form of the same verb, chorēgéō. God supplies the seed, and Paul asks that he supply the bread as well. The KJV’s “both minister ... and multiply ... and increase” reads as a prayer, resting on the promise of verse 8 that God is able. The generous giver’s own table is in God’s care, because the God who supplies the seed also feeds the sower.

Two words for seed appear in the verse. Spérma is seed, the thing that is sown, and it stands here for the resources a believer has to give. The “seed sown” later in the verse is spóros, seed as it is scattered. God multiplies the scattered seed, so the giver has more to give.

The last clause looks to a harvest of character: “increase the fruits of your righteousness.” This is the dikaiosýnē of verse 9, the generous righteousness of the psalm, and God makes its fruit grow. The same phrase comes in Paul’s prayer that the Philippians would be “filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:11). The law of sowing holds in this field too: “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:7–9). Proverbs says of the generous, “he that watereth shall be watered also himself” (Proverbs 11:24–25).

Ploutízō, “enriched”, means to make rich. The passive “being enriched” shows that God is the one who does it, and “in every thing”, en panti, covers all that he gives, from material goods to spiritual gifts, wisdom and opportunities. The Corinthians were a fairly prosperous church in a busy trading city, and Paul tells them what their wealth is for. They are enriched “to all bountifulness.” The preposition eis, “to”, marks purpose or result, so God enriches them in order that they can be generous.

Haplótēs, “bountifulness”, first means singleness or sincerity, and from there the generosity that comes from a single, sincere heart. It is open-handed giving with no hidden motive and no calculation. David prayed over the gifts for the temple, “all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29:14), and the same order holds here.

This generosity “causeth through us thanksgiving to God.” Hóstis, “which”, points back to the bountiful giving, and katergázomai, “causeth”, means to work out fully, to accomplish or produce. The giving produces thanks. “Through us” is diá with hēmōn, and it refers to Paul and his companions, who would carry the gift to Jerusalem. Paul calls the collection “this grace, which is administered by us” (2 Corinthians 8:19). The Corinthians give, and the apostle’s ministry brings their gift to the saints.

Eucharistía, thanksgiving, is gratitude spoken aloud, grateful words offered to God as worship. The gift ends in praise to theós, God, the source of it all. Paul goes on to explain this in the verses that close the chapter (2 Corinthians 9:12–15). The service “supplieth the want of the saints” and “is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God,” and by it the saints “glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 9:12–14). Those who receive help thank the God who moved the givers, and those who see it give him glory. God gives, his people give, and the thanks return to God.

Behind every gift in these chapters stands the gift of Christ. Paul has just written, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). He sowed bountifully when he gave his life, and he spoke of that sowing himself: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). From that one seed comes a harvest of forgiveness, righteousness and life for people who were dead in sins (Ephesians 2:4–5). “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Christ gave himself willingly, “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2), and “hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2).

Christ is also the one who scattered abroad and gave to the poor. He went through Galilee teaching and healing every sickness (Matthew 4:23–24), he “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), and he humbled himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5–8). His righteousness remains for ever, and God gives it to all who believe (Romans 3:21–26), for God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the bread of life (John 6:35), and “of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). In him we are complete (Colossians 2:10) and blessed with all spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:3). The fruits of righteousness grow as we abide in him, the true vine (John 15:5), and it is God who works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). Our giving flows out of what we have received in him, and so we give thanks always for all things to God (Ephesians 5:20).

These verses give us every reason to give gladly. What we have came from God as seed, and he has promised to keep supplying the sower. We can decide in our hearts what to give, set it aside willingly, and give it with confidence, because God is able to make all grace abound toward us. The same principle reaches past money to time, skill, service, forgiveness and the sharing of the gospel, wherever we can spend ourselves for the good of others and the kingdom of God. And every such gift goes past the person who receives it to God, who is thanked for it.