On Friday, a student asked me a good question at our weekly disputatio, a question concerning the Trinity in the world of giving and generosity. Does the free market, where each person is watching out for number one, undercut the work of the Trinity in our lives, as He works to make us overflow in generosity to others?
And then yesterday we held a combined worship service for Christ Church and Trinity Reformed Church. (We have worked out a joint liturgy for such occasions, so that neither church is the host church. And of course, we have a grand old time.) I preached the first service, and Toby Sumpter, a new minister at TRC, preached the second. In his message, he addressed sabbath rest and the glorious privilege of extending the same kind of generosity that we have received, particularly to the widow and the fatherless. It was Reformation Sunday (the reason we were meeting together), and Toby pointed in particular to the explosion of mercy ministries in the aftermath of the Reformation. What causes this kind of thing? Why does it happen?
The gospel sets men free. And when men are set free from their sins, their institutions follow them. Free grace leads to freedom everywhere else. In a true reformation, the relief and exuberance that comes from God’s free acceptance of us in Christ is a relief and exuberance that overflows into everything else. If that is lost, then it is just a matter of time before the overflow is lost as well. If you turn off the spigot, then don’t be surprised when water stops coming out of the hose.
But when men have turned away from Christ, they frequently want the water to keep coming out of the hose. In fact, they insist upon it. So they start lecturing the hose about how much water it has, and how much water the parched garden doesn’t have. When that guilt trip fails, as it always does, they then resort to passing laws. In the name of generosity, for pity’s sake, they propose locking up people who don’t “contribute” their “fair share.” With pinched faces, dehydrated hearts, and sticky fingers, they promote their antigrace versions of generosity. Those parts of the evangelical church that are attracted to this kind of obama-giving are simply demonstrating in a very tangible way how far they have drifted from the spirit of the gospel. God is the very definition of true generosity, and He hates this kind of thing. How could the God of all giving not hate socialism, which is basically taking? And incidentally, lest this be taken as seeking a divine blessing on a partisan shot right before the election, God hates the Republican forms of socialism worse because of the extra layer of hypocrisy involved.
And this takes me back to the answer I gave to the student on Friday. The kind of self-interest that makes free markets work is not at all the same thing as selfishness. John Wesley said it well. “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.” A selfish man can go for two of these three, but only a free man in Christ can embrace them all.
A Christian man is invited by God to take care of his own family first. He is then privileged to participate in the overflow of goods within the Church. And, as the Church recovers her role in the world as life for the world, we all together overflow into that world. And because of the God we serve, if this is what we are really doing, we don’t have to worry about running out halfway through the process.
We can take a lesson on all this from the world of free market advertising. The grace of God overflows to the world, in spiritual ways, in material ways, in emotional ways, in intellectual ways, and in any ways left over. This is the grace of God. Beware of cheap imitations.
When Toby’s sermon is posted on the Christ Church website, make sure you give it a listen.