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.
they glorifying God through the proof of this ministration, by reason of your subjection, by profession, to the glad tidings of the Christ, and your free-hearted liberality in communicating towards them and towards all;
Paul is writing about a collection taken among Gentile churches for poor believers in Jerusalem. Here he tells the givers what their money will produce: those who receive it will test the gift, see a real faith behind it, and praise God for it.
A Bible dictionary sums up the word behind "approval" in a single word:
Simply "proof." 2 Cor. 9:13.
The gift itself becomes the evidence. One writer names what it produces beyond the relief it brings:
Handing out this provision did not only supply the need of the poor believers. It would also draw out "many thanksgivings to God." Is this not an excellent reason for our generosity? Others would glorify God because of this precious proof of their subjection to the truth of the gospel of Christ, seen in the freehearted giving of their money for the Lord's sake. So there are not only blessings for the giver; there is also glory given to God.
Paul does not stop at the relief the money brings. He dwells on what it will still be producing long after the need is met:
This whole passage shines with the moral beauty of the gospel. Natural kindness is as shallow as its source, and looks no further than the person in front of it. True love is the chief fruit of the Spirit. It does its busy work in the light of God, and its power to build others up leads to His glory. Meeting the needs of others is where charity begins; it is not its proper goal. As the apostle looks ahead to this coming ministry of love, he dwells on the later and lasting fruit of their giving rather than on its immediate effect.
One writer counts the causes of thanksgiving in this work of giving:
This work of charity brings three causes of thanksgiving and glory to God. First, the subjection of the Corinthian believers to the gospel. Second, their open-handed generosity towards their brothers and sisters in the faith, whether Jew or Gentile. Third, the fervent and longing prayers of these believers far away on their behalf. The first has to do with their compliance. The giving seems to have started as a spontaneous impulse, but it came to them now as an apostolic instruction, and so it called for ready obedience from them.
The service does more than meet a need. It ends in praise to God:
It is an honourable service and a ministry of love. It meets their needs, but it flows over and rises into many thanksgivings to God. It draws out praise from those who receive it in this subjection to His name; for why else would anyone remember them so generously at all?
Jewish believers had doubted whether Gentile converts were genuine. The gift answered that doubt without a word of argument:
Jewish believers would no longer doubt whether the Gentiles' profession was real, once it proved itself to their hearts in such a practical way. And God would be glorified far more by this knitting together of souls who were strangers by nature, in the new shared bond that binds all together in perfection.
The verse ends by widening the reach: the gift is for the Jerusalem believers and for everyone else. The blessing then runs both ways:
Those who received it praised God that the givers 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 deep longing for the people who met their need in this way, because of the grace of God shown in them. So the bonds of eternal love were strengthened on both sides, and glory went up to God.
- Proof. The word behind "approval" means proof. The gift stands the test and shows itself genuine.
- Confession. What the test proves is not wealth but submission — a spoken gospel backed by obedient action.
- Overflow. Supplying need is where such love begins, not where it ends; it keeps producing after the need is met.
- Reach. The gift goes to them and to all others. It ties together people with no natural bond, and strengthens love on both sides.
- Glory. The praise lands on God, not the donors — the whole chain ends in thanksgiving to Him.