“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” -2 Cor 8:9
The principle behind generosity is found in the coming of Christ to earth. Jesus who is Himself God, who lacked nothing and needed nothing CHOSE to give of His richness to us. This is what we call generous grace – grace that keeps on giving. Ponder this for a second, our Lord was in heaven where the city itself is made of pure gold, where the walls are adorned with every kind of precious stone, and the sea is made of glass, and where angels and all heavenly things worship Him day and night. (Rev 2:18, 4:6) He left all of that voluntarily to become dirt poor for you and me.
Matthew 8:20 best summarizes His life here on earth, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.", all throughout His stay here Jesus never really had anything of His own, He was always borrowing stuff and depending on others to get by. Jesus had to borrow a teenagers womb at His coming; there was no room in the inn for Him so he was born in a borrowed stable; He borrowed a kid’s meager lunch to feed over five thousand; He borrowed a ride into Jerusalem by riding someone else’s donkey; He had his last meal in a borrowed upper room; He even borrowed the cross He was placed on for He was no criminal - we were; the sins He took upon Himself were not His own but ours; ultimately Christ borrowed a rich man’s tomb to be buried in!
If you think about it nothing is really ours we are only borrowing stuff too, soon it will either be tossed or passed down to another. But through all of this, what makes us rich here is not our independence but our deliberate choosing to use what we have to offer for the Glory of God. Christ has made us rich in grace and every blessing coming from heaven, by choosing to be generous with what He had. It’s been rightly said “Something plus Jesus equals everything, and nothing plus Jesus also equals everything”.
Matthew 8:20 best summarizes His life here on earth, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.", all throughout His stay here Jesus never really had anything of His own, He was always borrowing stuff and depending on others to get by. Jesus had to borrow a teenagers womb at His coming; there was no room in the inn for Him so he was born in a borrowed stable; He borrowed a kid’s meager lunch to feed over five thousand; He borrowed a ride into Jerusalem by riding someone else’s donkey; He had his last meal in a borrowed upper room; He even borrowed the cross He was placed on for He was no criminal - we were; the sins He took upon Himself were not His own but ours; ultimately Christ borrowed a rich man’s tomb to be buried in!
If you think about it nothing is really ours we are only borrowing stuff too, soon it will either be tossed or passed down to another. But through all of this, what makes us rich here is not our independence but our deliberate choosing to use what we have to offer for the Glory of God. Christ has made us rich in grace and every blessing coming from heaven, by choosing to be generous with what He had. It’s been rightly said “Something plus Jesus equals everything, and nothing plus Jesus also equals everything”.
- WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT PERSONAL GENEROSITY FROM CHRIST’S PUBLIC GENEROSITY? READ MATTHEW 6:21, WHAT DOES THIS VERSE SAY ABOUT YOUR GENEROSITY?
- “IT'S GIVING NOT KEEPING THAT LEADS TO RECEIVING” -Levi Lusko