Themselves First

Now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the churches of Macedonia.

Paul is about to talk about money, and the first thing he mentions is grace. It would be easy to read that as a gentle way into an awkward subject, but he means the word. Before he says a word about what the Macedonians gave, he tells the Corinthians what God gave them.

Who they were

The churches of Macedonia were born in trouble. At Philippi, Paul and Silas were beaten with rods and put in the stocks. At Thessalonica a mob stormed Jason’s house looking for them. At Berea agitators followed them from Thessalonica and stirred up the crowds. Writing later to the Thessalonians, Paul remembers that they welcomed the message “in spite of your great suffering.”

So when he says these churches gave in “the terrible ordeal they suffered,” he is reporting. And the gift was headed for “the poor among the saints in Jerusalem,” as he puts it in Romans. Poor believers were giving to poor believers they had mostly never met.

Arithmetic that does not work

In the terrible ordeal they suffered, their abundant joy and deep poverty overflowed into rich generosity.

Read that as a sum. Joy plus poverty equals generosity. Poverty is listed as one of the ingredients. Paul does not say the Macedonians got past their poverty and then became generous. He says the joy and the poverty together spilled over.

It is worth being plain about what the verse does not say. It does not promise that their giving would make them prosperous. It does not say the ordeal ended because they gave. Paul describes grace at work in poor people, and he says nothing about their poverty going away.

They asked

“For I testify that they gave according to their ability and even beyond it. Of their own accord, they earnestly pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.”

Nobody talked them into it. The pleading ran from the givers to the apostle. And the word the BSB renders “privilege” in verse 4 is the same Greek word Paul used for “grace” in verse 1. To the Macedonians, being allowed to give was itself a gift.

Themselves first

Then comes the sentence that explains the rest.

“And not only did they do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us, through the will of God.”

The order matters. Before any money went to Jerusalem, these people had already handed themselves over. What reached Jerusalem was what naturally comes out of people who already know whose they are. It bought nothing from God, and it was no fee paid to Paul.

This is where most conversations about giving start in the wrong place. We begin with the budget and try to work backward to devotion. The Macedonians began with devotion, and the budget followed.

What Paul refuses to do

Having told this story, Paul could easily turn it into pressure. Look at these poor, suffering churches; what is your excuse? He comes right to the edge of that, and then steps back.

“I am not giving a command.” “For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.” “It is not our intention that others may be relieved while you are burdened, but that there may be equality.”

The Macedonians gave beyond their ability. That was their freedom, and Paul reports it with admiration. But he does not make it a rule for anyone else. What he asks of Corinth is that they finish what they had already wanted to do, in proportion to what they actually have.

And between the example and the instruction he sets the real pattern: “though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” The movement is downward. Any reading of this chapter that ends with giving as a strategy for getting richer has turned that verse upside down.

For today

Start where they started. Before you decide on an amount, the prior question is whether you have given yourself to the Lord. Asking it first does not dodge the money question. It is the only place from which the money question makes sense.

Then look at what you have. Not what you wish you had, or what someone else gives, or what you are afraid you will need later. Paul says a gift is acceptable according to that, and he means it as a release.

Hard circumstances did not shut the Macedonians out of generosity, and they will not shut you out either. But if giving has come to feel mostly like guilt, it is worth going back to verse 5 and checking the order.