Giving Is More Blessed Than Receiving Bible Verse

What about giving? In Acts twenty:35, the Apostle Paul quotes Jesus as his closing word of encouragement to the Ephesians saying "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of difficult piece of work nosotros must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blest to give than to receive.'" Paul was departing for Jerusalem to preach the gospel, and he stopped at Ephesus, a church he had planted and where he had ministered longer than any other place. He called for the elders of the church and gave one of the most impassioned sermons in Scripture. Yet, the crescendo is this quote from Jesus, a quotation non mentioned in the Gospels, and was by direct word from Jesus, or, peradventure, had come to him from Peter or another of the Twelve. The climactic word? "It is better to give than to receive." Do you find that a little odd? Surely, ane might ponder, Paul could have given a more inspiring discussion to that going abroad gathering than "a stewardship" admonition. Is there something more in these few words than merely a concern most giving in the Church?

3 Points to Agreement the Significant of "information technology is better to give than to receive."

1. The Apostle Paul used the bulletin of giving to encourage the Church building.

The Apostle Paul gives a corking gift to the Ephesians as he is about to depart from them. His gift is to remind them of the blessing of generosity. Isn't it interesting that one of the concluding things that he says is to remind them to requite? This was not a self-serving reminder ("Now, yous all send in your pledge cards, you hear!"). No, Saint Paul did not enquire for money. Indeed, he talked about how he had earned his own way. However, the corking apostle of the middle prepare costless was concerned about the souls of the Ephesian Christians. In an flush customs like Ephesus, the natural homo impulse is to accrue. "To receive is better to requite" is the base attitude of not only an unregenerate heart but a believer in the midst of sanctification. So, it is interesting that Paul uses his final words to the Ephesian to encourage a spirit getting.

2. The Campaigner Paul used a message of giving that he had received from the Lord Jesus.

If y'all have a Bible or a Bible mobile device that presents Jesus' words in reddish yous volition see that this famous statement on "giving is improve than receiving" is attributed to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All the same, there is no Gospel record of Jesus uttering these words. Indeed, without this utterance past Paul, we would not know that Jesus gave this teaching. So, did Paul make it up? Well, of class not. The Apostle John tells usa that the works of Jesus, and he intends by his mention of "books" to mean both words and deeds, exceed what John and his colleagues have recorded: "And there are too many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen" (John 21:25). This statement does not intend to give credence to counterfeit works about Jesus, equanimous past those who were not eyewitness (and, thus, not breathed forth by the Holy Spirit), but rather to emphasize that the message of John (and past extrapolation, Matthew, Mark, and Luke) provides all that is necessary to constitute the person and nature of our Lord Jesus and to provide precisely what is needed for you to believe. The old Puritan Presbyterian standard commentator, Matthew Henry, put information technology thus:

"If it exist asked why the gospels are not larger, it may be answered, Information technology was not because they had exhausted their subject; [Instead] Information technology was not needful to write more;It was non possible to write all; [and] Information technology was not appropriate to write much."¹

The Campaigner Paul, as authoritative spokesman of the Lord, is a remarkable exception to the other apostles. He says that he is the last of the apostles and the to the lowest degree of the apostles (1 Cor. 15:ix). Nonetheless, he is remarkable besides for beingness taught direct past the resurrected Christ. For we read, "I will become on to visions and revelations of the Lord" (two Cor. 12:1); and "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you" (1 Cor. 11:23). The other disciples, also, considered Paul's writings to be that of the Lord (2 Peter iii:16). So, while these words were non recorded in other parts of the Scripture they were spoken by Jesus to Paul and they are completely compatible with the residuum of the education of Scripture.

One might surmise that Paul chose this revelation from Jesus to more emphatically emphasize his own personal business concern for the Ephesians. It is like maxim, "If at that place is merely ane matter I would say to y'all to help you in the very areas where I run across problems, it is this—every bit Jesus said—'information technology is better to requite than to receive.'"

3. The Apostle Paul used the message of giving as a way to teach other spiritual lessons.

The larger context of Paul's teaching in Acts twenty points to a deeply spiritual message that uses his experiences, lessons, and history of planting the church, to cultivate spiritual fruit in the Ephesians. So, likewise, Paul's quotation of Jesus that "giving is improve than receiving" is non a proper noun-it-and-merits-it formula for self-promotion or privatized prosperity, but is, rather, a truth that opens upwards other truths to heal the pathologies of the human soul. The matter of giving is a "gateway" teaching into a more than comprehensive diagnosis and handling of the soul. So, Paul used a message of Jesus to bargain with presenting matters—possibly, a lack of priority of missions to other churches or areas where the gospel was needed—that, if followed, would, also, bring healing to other areas of the Ephesians' lives.

And so, let us inquire the question, how is information technology better to give than to receive?"

3 Applied Reasons Why information technology Is Meliorate to Give Than to Receive

The telephone call to give is an invitation to a piece of work of the Holy Spirit in other parts of i's life. Let u.s. consider three reasons why it is amend to requite than to receive.

1. It is better to give than to receive considering giving liberates us from a privatized faith.

It is better to requite than to receive considering giving releases us from the isolation of self. To receive something is a privatized act.

When we receive a gift from someone else—of money, goods, or even the gift of encouragement—nosotros experience at minimum a sense of appreciation and often a time of great joy and comfort. No i would want to miss out on the gift of dear, or the gift of support when we need information technology! But that is not what Paul is concerned with, in Jesus' statement. Receiving is practiced. However, receiving is a pleasant joy that is experienced, mostly, in isolation. In receiving, I feel the blessing. There is nothing wrong with such a response. Indeed, we are all recipients of God's grace in Jesus Christ.

Yet, in assessing, diagnosing, and treating the spiritual ills of the Ephesians, Jesus, through Paul, taught that as good as receiving is, the giving is fifty-fifty better. Why? Whereas, receiving is often personal, giving leads to joy with others. If God wanted the Ephesians to feel the joy of the Lord in community, He would call them to know the joy of giving. Paul taught the Ephesian to requite to those in the customs who were poor and hungry and in need. In doing then, they become part of something larger than themselves. They become a truthful community.

The control for united states to give is not merely to support local ministry building, foreign missions, and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Jesus is concerned with your growth in grace. To give is to feel being a function of a movement that is bigger than you are. To give is to experience the liberation from a privatized religion into a global move of Christian religion, and this opens upward our hearts for even greater spiritual blessings.

ii. It is better to give than to receive because this is an imitation of Christ.

The Bible says that Jesus did not cling to His divine privileges in heaven, but He left His regal robes of kingship to come to earth and have up the grade of a human (without always ceasing to be God). The passage in Philippians 2, like Acts 20:35, is related to our giving of ourselves to others to imitate Jesus and, thus, get more fully integrated into the motif of Christ: the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, and the glorious and certain hope of a new heaven and a new earth. Notation the breadth and depth of this teaching and the timeline, from eternity past to eternity future:

"Do nix from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Allow each of you expect not just to his own interests, merely as well to the interests of others. Accept this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to exist grasped, only emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And existence found in human course, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even decease on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every proper name, so that at the proper name of Jesus every genu should bow, in heaven and on earth and nether the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:3-11)

The essential nature of the incarnation is i of giving. Thomas à Kempis wrote the classic, the imitation of Christ. In that remarkable volume, which I've used to my own devotion, Thomas à Kempis demonstrates how the imitation of Christ causes believers to begin to look more similar the life of Jesus. We began to take on the family resemblances of our Lord. Giving is, therefore, part of growth in Christ. To withhold, to only receive from others, is to thwart the Spirit-controlled growth in the likeness of Christ. Then, it is meliorate to give than to receive because to give is to imitate Christ and thus to become more similar him in our lives.

3. It is better to give than to receive because giving is an act of worship.

To give not only brings us into the life of community and abroad from the isolation of selfishness; it not only is an imitation of Christ and stirs one to God's mission in the world, but Giving is a supreme act of worship. Indeed, I wrote a book on this for my own congregation which was afterwards used in others. My encouragement to them was that blithesome generosity would more nearly complimentary them from the distractions of the earth to worship in spirit and in truth. The essence of worship is giving:giving praise, giving cheers, giving our supplications and needs to the Lord. So, to give abroad one'southward possessions—oneself—is a defiant deed in the presence of a fallen nature. This happy defiance, however, cultivates a soul that is costless to prioritize Christ; a will that is more virtually bent to grace-induced obedience, and, thus, to enter into a posture of total worship.

Giving is an human action of worship considering it ushers us into a mission that is larger than ourselves, a life of discipleship that is shaped on the life of Jesus and cultivates a lifetime of doxology.

The goal of giving is birthday related to the worship and the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives. And that is why giving is better than receiving. The thing is, because of all of these truths, yous volition stop upwards receiving far more than yous could ever give. To receive by giving is the powerful paradox of lavish generosity. To dice to self is to feel true life. To forgive is to exist forgiven. In all of these things, manifestations of the unmarried gospel truth of God'southward gift to the states, we come across that giving out of our receiving the souvenir of Christ—His life given every bit the righteousness nosotros demand, His decease given as atonement for the sin nosotros have committed—is onlythe power of the cantankerous.

Notation:

i. As quoted in Lange, John Peter, and Philip Schaff. A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: John. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008.

MICHAEL A. MILTON(Ph.D., University of Wales; MPA, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MDIV, Knox Theological Seminary; Cert. in Higher Education Teaching, Harvard University) serves as the Provost and James Ragsdale Chair of Missions and Evangelism at Erskine College and Seminary. A Presbyterian minister (PCA, ARP), Milton has penned more than than thirty books, hundreds of articles in journals, magazines, stance columns, and newspapers. As president of the D. James Kennedy Institute and Faith for Living, Milton has served as a public theologian. His piece of work has been cited on numerous national media outlets equally he provides celebrated Christian insights into faith and life in a changing world. Dr. Milton's record of ministry includes seminary chancellor, president of 3 seminaries, senior minister of one of America's historic churches, founder of iii congregations, and a Christian academy. A composer and artist, Mike and Mae Milton reside in the mountains of Western Due north Carolina. Learn more at michaelmilton.org/nearly. [from a printing release past McCain& Assembly.]

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