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Thousands think that if they are outwardly decent, if they veneer their lives with a decorous respectability, they are very good Christians; and that, though they neither love God nor their neighbour, but are simply walking after their own heart's lusts. But it is not all men who are able thus to scarify the surface of their spiritual being. Deeper natures, tortured by the scourge of conscience, seeing how useless it must be to give to God that which costs them nothing, feel impelled, since they will not give Him the pure life and the loving heart, to give Him something else of a costly kind. It is this feeling which led to the awful horror of human sacrifices. But all this externality of affliction, of suffering, is vain. God is no Moloch; He delights in innocent happiness, and not in self-chosen suffering. Bodily suffering has ever proved itself vain to expel spiritual sin, and God would fain deliver us from sin, which cannot be done by vain attempts to anticipate the penalty. With such sacrifices God is not well pleased. We can in the fullest sense offer no sacrifice to God that will save us. It cost more to redeem our souls, so that we must let that alone for ever. That has been done for us. But in a lower sense the word sacrifice is applied in this verse to that which we can offer to God. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." "But to do good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." The type of all such passages is that magnificent question and answer in the prophet Micah (Micah 6:6-8). Do not let any of us pretend that we do not know what God requires of us. To communicate: What does it mean? It means unselfishness as regards what we possess, not to keep to ourselves what we have, to use our gifts in whatever way seems best for the good of the world, to remember that we are the stewards of what God gives us, and not the owners; to be cheerful givers; to learn the exquisite happiness of living for the good of all others, to have the heart at leisure from itself to soothe and sympathise: with such sacrifices God is well pleased. And to do good: it is not only to give; indeed, the indiscriminate, careless charity which gives to silence greedy demands or satisfy a conventional conscience; the reckless, foolish giving which only fosters the plague-spots of pauperism and imposture is worse than useless, it is a curse. Almsgiving, to be any use at all, must be thoughtful and discriminating. To do good: there you have the summary of a true life. We are on earth to give, and not to receive. We are not our own. Am I in this life of mine doing any real, unselfish good? Millions do positive harm. Like barren trees, they not only bring forth no fruit, but curse the ground with the blight of their bitter foliage and their unprofitable shadow. Millions, if they do no direct or positive harm, yet do absolutely no good. They sleep and feed and go through some sort of mechanical routine in their profession for themselves — no more. Their life is no true life; they die, but they have never lived. But among the millions who do deep harm, and the millions who do no real good, how many are there who can really be counted among the lovers of their fellow-men? These do see how often from efforts apparently infinitesimal and insignificant, lonely, inefficient, and as it seemed obscure, vast blessings come, and even when good men see no great positive result of their self-denial they feel within them the peace of a calm conscience and a blessed sense that their humble endeavours are accepted of their God.

(Archdeacon Farrar.)

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KJV: But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

WEB: But don't forget to be doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.