How much ought we to give? In proportion with our income, as God moves our hearts. And how ought it be handled? With the utmost integrity. At the heart of giving is the matter of worship. God reigns supreme not only in believers’ heads but also in our hearts and through our hands. Christ’s lordship ought to be evident in both our affections and our practical obedience. If Jesus is Lord of our lives, our possessions and expenses will reflect that reality.

What does it mean to be godly? Far from some remote, disengaged experience, much of the Christian life involves practical obedience. Godliness in Scripture wears working clothes, so to speak. Chapter after chapter, God’s Word confronts men and women with essential issues, impressing on our hearts the urgency of living as those made new in Christ.
One example of such obedience is offered in 1 Corinthians 16, where the apostle Paul connects godliness with giving. In the chapter’s opening verses, his practical instruction regarding the Corinthians’ giving suggests that giving is itself an expression of worship, as essential to the church as preaching, singing, fellowship, prayer, etc. In short, learning to give properly is a central part of learning to worship properly. We have never truly learned to worship the Lord until we’ve learned to give to the Lord.
What Is the “Collection” to which Paul Refers?
In verse 1, Paul speaks of “the collection for the saints.” This wasn’t an isolated initiative in Paul’s ministry; he mentions it at least three other times in the New Testament (Acts 24:17; Rom. 15:26; 2 Cor. 8:2). Viewed together, these verses reveal that it refers to a collection for the poor in Jerusalem.
Despite its significance as a religious and cultural center, Jerusalem was at this time a poor city. Devout Jews who lived beyond the city’s borders would send money to those within to make sure the economy didn’t disintegrate. And Christians within Jerusalem were poorer yet. Having professed faith in Jesus, they were outsiders among their own, making it that much harder for them to make ends meet financially.
At least in the early years of the Jerusalem church’s founding, the community was self-sufficient. They “had all things in common,” sharing with the poor and needy among them (Acts 2:44). But that practice was only sustainable for so long. Resources would eventually dwindle. When the funds were depleted, the Jerusalem Christians were left in dire straits.
Why the Concern?
Being a Jew himself, we can see why Paul would be concerned with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. But why did he care to involve other congregations in relief efforts?
It seems Paul saw the collection as a tangible expression of unity in the whole body of Christ. Jerusalem believers were largely Jewish; Paul’s missionary journey converts were predominantly gentile. Each group was skeptical of the other. So in calling upon the gentile Christians to help the Jewish Christians, Paul was doing nothing less than reminding them of the Gospel: that God had reconciled Jew and gentile to Himself in His Son, making one new man in place of the two (Eph. 2:15). And that bond was to be expressed in tangible ways, including taking from one’s own resources to meet others’ needs.
The giving to the Jerusalem saints was not only an expression of corporate unity; it also was to be a mark of God’s work among the Corinthians. Indeed, to this day, giving is a key evidence that God is at work in our lives, just as a failure to give should, according to Scripture, lead us to question the very authenticity of our faith (1 John 3:17). In calling on the Corinthians to give, Paul wanted the church’s members to prove their faith genuine.
When was the Collection Taken?
In verse 2, the apostle emphasizes the importance of regular giving, instructing the church to take up a collection “on the first day of every week.” Christian giving, in other words, is to be routine without becoming merely a routine.
The day on which the Corinthians were to give their resources is also significant.
Read More
Related Posts:

…the movement is unmistakable, and it is unidirectional. Evangelicals who set down the path toward LGBTQ acceptance rarely turn around and head back in the other direction. And once the revisionist jump—that really wasn’t a jump—is complete, the tolerance and inclusion don’t usually last long. Sex is too powerful a thing to allow for competing visions. And so Neuhaus’ Law almost always proves true: Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be outlawed.

I don’t often agree with David Gushee, the liberal Christian ethicist whose “battles,” by his own description, have included “issues like climate change, torture, LGBTQ inclusion, and white supremacism.” But he spoke the uncomfortable truth when he observed years ago that when it comes to LGBTQ issues, there is no middle ground: “Neutrality is not an option. Neither is polite half-acceptance. Nor is avoiding the subject. Hide as you might, the issue will come and find you.”
I thought of those words, written way back in 2016, in recent weeks as I read of Michael Gerson’s tacit approval of gay marriage and of Dr. Bradley Nassif’s claims that he was expunged from North Park University because he upholds traditional views of sex, sexuality, and marriage. These aren’t the first cases of a self-described evangelical or evangelical institution moving into the revisionist camp, nor will it be the last. I hope I’m wrong, but I have my mental list of writers, thinkers, schools, and organizations that eventually will make the same move.
I almost wrote “jump” in the last sentence instead of “move,” but “jump” is not really the right word. Rarely do evangelical leaders and institutions leap all at once from the open celebration and defense of orthodoxy to the open celebration and defense of (what they once believed was) heterodoxy. In fact, when evangelical capitulation on LGBTQ issues makes the news it is rarely a surprise. There are almost always a series of familiar steps.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by D. Blair Smith |
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Solus Christus was needed in the sixteenth century and is needed in the twenty-first century in order to press upon us the fact that our relationship with God can be mediated by none other than Christ alone.

Whatever age we live in, whether the age of the Reformers or the present age, we are tempted to pollute the beauty of Christ through our idols. John Calvin said it’s in our very nature: “Man’s nature…is a perpetual factory of idols…Man’s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity.”
The doctrine of solus Christus was highlighted during the Reformation as the Reformers identified the problem of a church that was casting shade on Christ; of a church that was arrogating to itself prerogatives that belong to Christ alone. This problem impressed upon the Reformers the need to purge anything that would throw shade upon the absolute brilliance of Christ’s supremacy in our salvation. The Reformers clearly identified this problem and brought a biblical and theological solution that provides application for our own day.
The Problem of a Strong Church
In the early sixteenth century, the church was at the center of people’s lives in Western Europe. Over the previous centuries, the Roman Catholic Church had devolved from the “Company of the Saved” to the “Salvation Company.”
What is meant by “Salvation Company”? Luther recognized that in his day people had become enslaved to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, and instead of looking to Christ for their standing before God they looked to the Church. It was thought that because of Christ, Mary, and the saints there was a storehouse of grace in the Catholic Church. Priests were its sole dispensers and the faithful had to come to them.
In 1520, Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, where he attacked the sacramental system of the church. That system, Luther said, represented a captivity that had become its own Babylon, holding captive the people of God from cradle to grave: In the church one was baptized as an infant, confirmed as a youth, married as a mature person, and received extreme unction on one’s deathbed. Each of these sacraments, along with ordination, were seen as conveying grace when administered by a priest. The grace conferred was supplemented throughout one’s life by two further sacraments: regular confession of sin to a priest and the reception of the Eucharist through a priestly Mass.
From cradle to the grave, the Christian was dependent upon the Catholic Church, tethered to the sacraments in order to receive the grace by which one can be saved.
Luther looked to Scripture and saw only two sacraments. The effect of his teaching was to shift focus from the Catholic Church and its clergy to Christ alone—salvation not from a company with priests turning on the taps of grace, as it were, but salvation in a singular person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Stripped of this ornate sacramentology, one might ask where one went for grace? If the Catholic Church had it very wrong, what were believers to do? Where would Reformers such as Luther point them?
Read More
Related Posts: