Acts 20:35 I have showed you all things, how that so laboring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus… The few "words of the Lord Jesus" here preserved for us by St. Paul, are his crystallisation of a truth which is as deep as the nature of God, which penetrates his whole creation, and on which certainly Jesus' own life turned. It forms a key to the whole disclosure of the Divine character which lies open to us in the mission of the Son. Yet it needs no more than a very moderate knowledge of human society to discover that mankind at large act on an opposite rule. That each should take all he can get and mind Number One, are the commonplaces of worldly wisdom. Gladly to take, but to give with reluctance, is, as we say, human nature. At the same time there are certain deeper facts of life which prove this Divine maxim not to be at variance with true human nature, but only with the present unnatural state of human character. In order to see this it is needful to attend to — I. WHAT THESE "WORDS" DO, OR RATHER DO NOT MEAN. 1. They do not mean that it is an unblessed thing to receive. God has made us all dependent upon His own giving, and also dependent mutually upon one another. We must receive before we can give; and whenever we begin to give someone must receive. The relation is blessed on both its sides. Service, therefore, like mercy, is twice blessed; "it blesseth him that gives and him that takes"; but of two blessednesses, saith Jesus, the higher is that of giving. Now, does not the human heart respond to this comparative estimate? Nearly all men will agree that the domestic relations form the happiest part of life. But this family blessedness turns far more on what we give than on what we get. The infant, for example, which receives everything and gives back nothing, has a blessedness infinitely feebler than that of its nursing mother. They do not mean that giving is more pleasant. Very often it is quite otherwise. Perhaps all giving means temporary loss and suffering. It is eminently so, at least, with the noblest sorts of giving, e.g., a mother's devotion to her child; yet her giving is more blessed than its receiving because it expresses nobler affections, trains her to nobler habits. I ask again, does not the world echo this thought of Christ's? In the articulations of society each one has something to give, and he must give it. But we count that man noble who gives to the general good the largest amount of costliest service. III. THE CONDITIONS ON WHICH GIVING BRINGS BLESSEDNESS. These conditions may be summed up in one brief law — That the act of giving is only blessed when it is moral; and always blessed in proportion to its moral pureness and nobleness. 1. There is an unconscious giving. This mutual ministry of help pervades creation. Earth gives of her strength to feed her inhabitants, and of her hidden treasures to enrich them. The beasts lend to man their skill and muscle, and bequeath to him their very bodies when they die. But it is needless to add that all this unconscious and involuntary exchange of benefits in dead or in brute nature, brings no blessedness. A child knows that there is no real worth, nor blessedness, in any giving which is not the intentional act of a conscious agent, which is not, in short, moral. When the human worker is content to work like an animal in the mere struggle for existence, his work may be ever so precious a gift to society, but he is no longer blessed in his giving, and — 2. There is reluctant giving. We make presents because they are expected; we entertain our friends that they may entertain us; we pay compliments for politeness' sake; we subscribe to charities under the constraint of opinion; we lend to our neighbour wishing he had not asked us. Now, to whatever extent the wish retracts what the hand bestows, to that extent giving brings no blessedness, because it is immoral in motive. It brings rather cursedness, both because it is to that extent false, wearing a show of charity which is not genuine, and because it argues a division of the man against himself. 3. There is a giving which is not simply defective through the weakness of charity, but at bottom utterly base through the want of it. It is a mean thing to oblige a man with a slight accommodation in the hope of extorting or coaxing from him a greater return; to pay court to a great man, not from loyalty, but for the paltry vanity of being noticed, or the ignoble desire to profit by him; to use one's influence for an importunate suitor, only to get rid of his importunity; to give handsome sums to public charity that one's name may appear well in the advertisements. We must be simpler in our giving if we would be blessed in it. Evil is never so cursed as when it walks in the stolen white garb of good, nor selfishness ever so unblest as when it mimics charity. III. RISING ABOVE HUMAN GIVING, LET US GAZE UPON THE DIVINE — the ideal after which men are to be remade in Christ. God has this solitary preeminence in blessedness, that He gives everything and receives nothing. On this account, as on every other, His is the noblest life, because He is forever imparting of His own to all, and gets in return only what He first has given. It utterly baffles imagination to conceive what streams of reflected gladness must pour back upon the heart of the Infinite Lover from even one small section of the world which He has made so happy. The sunshine and the field s delight us sometimes for a little; they delight God always; and when we, with our love and tenderness, sweeten each other's life, that adds more sweetness to the life of God. The rarest joy granted to man below is the joy of leading a brother into the light and love of our common Father; but He, our Father, has the luxury of leading all of us into light, of teaching every child He has to know at least a little of the truth and to love the good a little. God has tasted a still deeper blessedness. When God made all things good, or when He makes His fair world glad, He gives only as rich men give stray coins away, feeling no loss. But can God feel loss? or touch the mysterious blessedness which underlies the pain of sacrifice? For us sinful men and for our salvation, God has — so to speak — drawn upon the resources of His moral nature, and expended not His thoughts, or strength, or pity only, but Himself. He left nothing ungiven when the Son gave Himself for us. Jesus' life was one of giving. Because He received so little from His fellow men and gave them so much, His life reveals God. Just here there was realised the supreme blessedness of the Divine nature; for here the Divine character realised in act its supreme nobleness. Down through the mysterious anguish of giving Himself away in utter loss, and pain, and death, the Divine heart pierced to a blessedness than which nothing can be more blessed, the blessedness of daring to die for the saving of the lost. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. |
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