Now he that supplies seed to the sower and bread for eating shall supply and make abundant your sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness
Paul is finishing his appeal for a collection to help poor believers in Jerusalem. He steadies the Corinthians by pointing them away from their own accounts and toward God's supply. Two questions run through the verse. Is it a prayer or a promise? And what is the harvest God multiplies?
An older English translation reads the verse as a wish. Kelly says Paul is not wishing but stating a fact, and he points the reader to Isaiah 55:10.
This is not a wish or a prayer, as the older English version makes it… Compare Isaiah 55:10. It is an assurance. The God who richly provides for us loves to give us both the means and the openings to bless others. He delights to acknowledge and reward these fruits of righteousness as if they were ours, though in truth they come from His grace and are His work through us.
Paul draws the picture from farming. A gardener knows how fast human effort runs out. One writer makes the point from an ordinary garden.
It is God who provides the seed so that things can grow and fruit can appear. God is the real source of all fruitfulness and blessing… We can provide the very best seed for our gardens. We can dig the ground. We can do everything the gardening books tell us. But if the rain does not come and the sun does not shine, nothing will happen.
Paul names two supplies: bread is for eating, seed is for scattering. So what God adds has a purpose beyond your own table.
God did not give these blessings to make His people comfortable in this world. He gave them so that they would be enriched in every way and made generous, so they would have something for anyone in need.
Here "righteousness" means the way a believer acts. The setting shows why giving to fellow believers counts as righteous and not just kind.
Paul is dealing with the care of poor believers in Jerusalem. Remember that the apostle John plainly ties that kind of care to love between believers… So when we acknowledge the duty to love God's people and act on it by meeting their need, as here, that is righteousness… This side of righteousness — practical righteousness, as it is sometimes called — is too often forgotten. Yet it fills a large place in Scripture.
What do "multiply" and "increase" promise? The reaping is real, but God chooses the currency, and the enrichment has a purpose — more giving.
If he gives sparingly, he reaps sparingly. If he gives generously, he reaps generously. Either way he reaps, and usually in spiritual things… God enriches him so that his giving can go on and grow. That enrichment may not come in material things. God may choose to enrich him in spiritual things instead, so that the man who began by giving a little money ends by handing out a rich store of spiritual blessing.
The harvest does not stop once the need is met. Kelly follows what such a gift produces in the people who receive it.
It meets their needs, but it also overflows and rises into many thanksgivings to God. Those who receive it praise God, because such giving shows submission to His name… It stirs them to pray, with deep longing for the people who show such grace.
- Supply — God gives both the bread you eat and the seed you sow. The verse is an assurance about Him, not a wish about you.
- Sowing — The seed came from His hand, so scattering it is safe. He gives both the means and the openings to bless others.
- Separation — Bread is for eating; seed is for sowing. God gives more than you need so you will have something for someone else.
- Increase — The harvest is certain, but God does not measure it in money. He enriches the giver, often in spiritual things, so the giving can keep growing.
- Thanksgiving — The fruit does not stop when the need is met. It overflows into praise and prayer offered back to God.
enriched in every way unto all free-hearted liberality, which works through us thanksgiving to God.
God's promise here is not just that givers will have enough. He makes them rich in one direction — toward open hands — and what they give travels on to end as thanks offered to God.
Some older English versions read verse 10 as a prayer ("may He supply"). One commentator says it is not a wish or a prayer at all.
It is an assurance that the God who richly provides for us loves to give us both the means and the opportunities to bless others. He delights in acknowledging and rewarding these fruits of righteousness, which really come from His grace, as if they were ours and not His through us.
The generosity God rewards was His own supply in the first place, yet He credits it to the giver.
The enrichment is not a payout. It is fuel — and it may not arrive as money.
The man who sows seed by scattering what he has to give deals with a God "who is able to make all grace abound." ALL grace — note that — grace of every kind, grace in spiritual things and grace in material things. So the generous giver is "enriched in every way to all free-hearted liberality." God enriches him so that his giving can keep going and grow. This enrichment may not come in material things. God may prefer to enrich him in spiritual things, so that the man who started by giving a little money may end up handing out a rich store of spiritual blessing.
The same writer turns this around as a diagnosis: believers stuck in "chronic weakness" and short on joy may find that "the explanation lies in their lack of compassion and generosity and openness of heart and hand."
One word in Scripture carries both "simplicity" and "liberality". A writer explains why the two ideas sit so close together:
"He that gives, let him do it with simplicity." Some translate that word as liberality, but in fact the two things are very similar. A man who gives simply will give generously. The need will appeal to him, and it will stir up the love inside him. True love is wise. It is not blind.
So generosity starts with a simple heart, not with the size of the gift.
Since the gift ends in thanksgiving to God, the motive behind it matters.
Look at the motive, and the gifts and acts of kindness that God acknowledges turn out to be thank-offerings to Him. So they are part of the beauty that adorns the righteous in His eyes. A man may give away everything he owns to the poor without one spark of love, because pride or self-seeking unbelief can make such sacrifices too. But faith works by love.
Paul says the thanksgiving is produced through us. He is handling this collection himself, and he follows what the money does after it leaves the giver's hand.
He commends them to the rich goodness of God, who was able to make them abound in everything. Then they would be in a position to multiply their good works, enriched to all generosity, so that through the apostle's service their giving would produce thanksgiving to God in others… Those who received the gift blessed God that their benefactors had been brought to confess the name of Christ, and to act with this practical generosity toward them and toward all. That thought stirred them up to pray with earnest desire for the people who met their need, because of the grace of God shown in them.
This giving does two things at once. The second reaches further than the first.
It is an honourable service and a ministry of love. It meets their needs, but it overflows, and rises into many thanksgivings to God… Love working in the heart supplies poor believers with things that would otherwise be used up and gone. If that is its blessed effect, what shall we say or feel as we think of Christ? Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.
- Source. The enriching is God's own supply, handed back to the giver as fuel — He "delights in acknowledging and rewarding these fruits of righteousness, which really come from His grace."
- Shape. The riches point one direction: God enriches him "so that his giving can keep going and grow" — often in spiritual things rather than money.
- Heart. The word translated "generosity" also means simplicity. "A man who gives simply will give generously" — yet a man can give away everything "without one spark of love."
- Reach. Paul's service carries the gift on. It meets a need, then draws out praise to God and "earnest desire" in prayer for the givers.
- End. The money "meets their needs, but it overflows, and rises into many thanksgivings to God" — and every such gift points back to God's own indescribable gift.
Because the ministration of this service is not only filling up the measure of what is lacking to the saints, but also abounding by many thanksgivings to God;
Paul is writing about money. Gentile believers had made a collection for poor Christians in Jerusalem. Yet he describes the handling of that money in the language of the sanctuary. The gift does two things at once: it fills an empty cupboard, and it raises thanks to God.
The need in Jerusalem had a history, and the relief sent to meet it did more than feed people.
We find a mention of this collection for the saints in 1 Corinthians 16:1-4, and again at much greater length in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9... The Acts of the Apostles gives us a twofold explanation of what gave rise to the need. There was a famine in those days (Acts 11:27-30). The sharing of possessions the believers in Jerusalem practised at the beginning (Acts 2:44-45) had also left them especially poor. Their poverty, however, gave the occasion to cement the practical bonds of Christian fellowship between Gentile and Jew.
Paul's word for this service is the word for the work of the Levites — the family in Israel set apart to serve at the sanctuary.
It makes the entire body of the Church answer to the pattern of the Levites. It shows that the Holy Spirit sanctifies the Church to serve our great High Priest, just as the Levites were set apart to the service of Aaron and his house. So the word leitourgia is used of the Church's service in 2 Cor. 9:12 and Phil. 2:30, and not only of Paul's, as in Rom. 15:16.
Paul could have stopped at the good done to the poor. He keeps going, because natural kindness and the love the Spirit gives do not look to the same end.
The whole of this passage shines brightly with the moral beauty of the gospel. Natural kindness is as shallow as its source, and looks no further than the thing in front of it. True love, which is the chief fruit of the Spirit, does its busy work in the light of God, and in its power to build up it tends to His glory. To supply the wants of others is the beginning, not the proper end, of charity. The apostle looks ahead to this ministry of love, and dwells on the later and lasting fruits of their generosity rather than on its immediate effect.
"Overflowing" is the key idea. The money runs out at the point of need. The thanksgiving does not stop there. It rises past the people who receive the gift, up to God.
It is an honourable service and a ministry of love. It meets their wants, but it overflows, and rises into many thanksgivings to God. It draws out praise from those who receive it in this subjection to His name.
God Himself gains from it.
The service "is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God," and God is glorified. So the gift not only supplies the wants of the saints; there is also a harvest for God Himself in which He delights.
Everyone involved ends up giving thanks. Even the poor pay back what they cannot pay in money.
The saint who has been helped and relieved gives thanks to God again and again — for the gift, and for those who brought it to him. Before long God so blesses and enlarges those who gave that they begin to give thanks that they were ever allowed to give. We have the very best authority for saying that "It is more blessed to give than to receive." And finally the poor saints, who have nothing to give in return, do repay the gift with answering affection and earnest prayer. The givers reap the blessing that flows from the love and prayers of those they have helped.
The gift also told those who received it something about the people who sent it.
Those who received it blessed God that the givers had been brought to confess the name of Christ, and to act with this practical generosity to them and to all... So the bonds of eternal charity were strengthened on both sides, and glory flowed back to God.
- Service. Paul's word for this money-handling is the word for Levite work. Giving to the poor is priestly service, and the whole church does it, not a special class.
- Supply. Filling the need of the saints is real and good, but it is where love begins, not where it ends.
- Overflow. The gift runs past the person who receives it and rises to God as thanksgiving. He gets a harvest from it that He delights in.
- Return. Receivers thank God. Givers thank God that they were ever allowed to give. Those with nothing to give repay in prayer and love.
- Result. Jew and Gentile had every natural reason to stay apart. The gift bound them together, and the glory went back to God.