Giving Principles

From Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 9:6-15), the following principles emerge.

1. You will reap in accordance with how you sow.

2. When you make a decision to give and/or are convicted to give, carry out that decision regardless of changes in circumstance. God will make sure you have enough.

3. When you give, enjoy it, knowing that it will:

• produce for you just as seed, which is sown, produces for a farmer and
• produce an overflow of thanksgiving to God.

The harvest you'll receive includes enough resources from God to overflow in good works and thanksgiving to God.

Because you should enjoy giving, you should not give reluctantly or under compulsion.

Can every passage be understood well enough to be applied?

One thing I've liked about my preaching pastor is that he uses much of his limited amount of time preaching to apply the passage rather than spending the majority of the time on exegesis (critical explanation) of the passage. I generally have felt that the exegesis task, which is essential, has been done by my pastor, leading to well done application of the passage. However, recently I've begun to question whether every passage can be adequately understood to be applied. Perhaps some passages are just not clear enough to be understood and therefore not able to be applied.

In politics, I have adopted an idea that I believe everyone should adopt: don't vote if you don't know. I'm moving towards a similar idea in homiletics (the art of preaching), don't apply it if you aren't sure what it means.

Is the end really contingent on the proclamation of the gospel to all people groups?

Jesus said "and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Mt 24:14)

The common teaching on this passage within the Christian community in which I live is that the coming of the end remains contingent on the evangelizing of every last tribe on the earth. However, there are significant indications that what Jesus meant was the widespread proclamation of the message of the kingdom without geographical or racial restriction.

In this regard, for example, even though Paul had not reached the unevangelized territory of Spain (cf. Rom 15:20–24), he spoke of the spread of the gospel in the most comprehensive language when he said "faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: "Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.'" (Rom 10:18, where Ps 19:4 is quoted by analogy).

Through the missionary work of the apostles, it appears that the gospel had "gone out to all the earth" during the first generation of Christians. If so, "the end" could already have come in the first century. The required conditions were all present. All the sufferings referred to in Mt 24:5–12 were experienced in the years prior to a.d. 70 and the fall of Jerusalem, and in varying degree they have been signs experienced by the church down to the present era.

So it seems likely that the signs of the end have been present to every Christian generation.

Christians will be blameless in the end

"God will establish you to the end: blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is God, by whom you were called into communion with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord." That is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians who "call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." How can that be? They (like me) clearly were not perfect. Yet, we are told that they will be free of any charge (i.e., blameless). And the source of this information isn't just any man or just one man. This was proclaimed by many men who each identified one source of this good news: the God of the universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, revealed it to them through his son, Jesus Christ.

Why isn't Christianity Simple?

"If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple [or illogical] if he has no facts to bother about."

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity