Now concerning
the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you
also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something
aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting
when I come.
1 Corinthians
16:1-2
In this
passage, St Paul establishes three principles about giving.
Systematic. It was
convenient for the Corinthian Christians to give when they attended weekly
meetings but today giving by monthly standing order may suit people with
regular salaries. People who are self-employed with irregular incomes may find
it useful to benchmark their income and giving every quarter.
Proportionate. Our giving
should reflect the extent to which we have prospered: our income. Whether Abram
or the Israelites living under the Torah tithed their income or assets,
Christians are to give in proportion to how they have prospered – their income
– week-by-week or over other regular time-periods.
Theological. I think Paul
forbade a collection during his visit because he did not want to exert undue
pressure, even inadvertently. He wanted the gifts to be motivated by gratitude
to God and objective thinking, not by rhetoric, guilt or any other
sub-Christian motivation. We shall return to this principle when we consider
fundraising in detail
Given, all
that we have read about how St Paul applied the ‘Old Testament’ practices to
Christians, we can conclude that 10% of income is a place to start thinking
about what proportion to give. It may, therefore, seem
that I have come full circle, taking a long time to say what most Christians
thought they already knew: that Christians should tithe. But I think that we
have yet to scratch the surface of what the Bible teaches about Christian
giving.
What strikes
me about 1 Corinthians is that it seems to have been written to a group of Christians
more concerned about what they could get away with than how closely they could
aspire to Christ’s ideals. Paul has to deal with about 11 questions on key
issues of behaviour: on sex, from whether it is right for a man to marry his
father’s wife to whether it is good to marry at all or to even be engaged; on
financial issues, from business fraud to buying cheap meat in the marketplace that
may have been offered to idols. Had those Christians been keen to live as Jesus
described, and sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, is it likely that
they would have needed such guidance? Or any guidance on generosity?
I will return
to this theme next weekend.
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
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