Chapter 9
Let the Offering Be Ready. 1 In regard to the ministry toward the saints, there really is no necessity for me to write to you. 2 For I am fully aware of your eagerness to help, which has been the subject of my boasting about you to the Macedonians, telling them that Achaia has been ready since last year. Your ardor has excited most of them.
3 Nevertheless, I am sending the brethren to ensure that our boasts about you may not seem to have been offered in vain. I want you to be as prepared as I said you would be. 4 For if I bring some Macedonians with me and they come to the realization that you are not prepared, it would be a source of shame to us—to say nothing of you—because of our confidence in you. 5 Therefore, I thought it necessary to encourage the brethren to go on to you ahead of us and arrange in advance for the gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a genuine gift and not as something that has been granted grudgingly.
God Loves a Cheerful Giver. 6 Remember this: if you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly, and if you sow generously, you will reap generously as well. 7 Each person should give as much as he has decided in his heart, not with reluctance or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to enrich you with an abundance of every grace, so that, with all of your needs provided for, you may be able to produce a surplus of good works. 9 As it is written,
“He scatters abroad his gifts to the poor;
his righteousness lasts forever.”
10 Generosity Will Prompt Thanksgiving. The one who provides seed for sowing and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 Enriched in every way, you will be able to practice all your acts of generosity, which, through our intervention, will result in thanksgiving to God.
12 The administering of this public service not only helps to satisfy the needs of the saints but also overflows in countless acts of thanksgiving to God. 13 Through the evidence of such service, you are giving glory to God for your obedient profession of the gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution to them and to all others as well. 14 At the same time, their hearts will go out to you in their prayers for you, because of the surpassing grace that God has bestowed upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.[a]
Footnotes
- 2 Corinthians 9:15 Indescribable gift: i.e., his own Son (Jn 3:16). It is God who has first given himself to us in the person of his Son; thus, all genuine Christian giving is our response for such a gift (see 2 Cor 8:9; 1 Jn 4:9-11).