Generosity Grows

James tells us that if we sin at just one point of the law, we are guilty of offending against all of it. This is because the law is simply a description of what the triune personal God is like, and so an offense against Him at this point or at that point is still, at the end of the day, an offense against Him. If a man were to strike another man, whether the blow falls on his right cheek or his left, the blow has still fallen on the man.

Now the point of our sanctification is to become like God. That is where we are going. If we forget this, as professing Christians, what happens is that we find ourselves keeping a bunch of detached rules, and forgetting what the person behind all the rules is actually like. What He is like is love, kindness, overflow, and everlasting generosity. The detached rules may be fine in themselves, but when we do this they are radically out of context. By keeping just some of the rules we got from God, we do it in such a way as to sin against God.

When we seek to accumulate enough money to build the sanctuary we are pursuing, we need to accumulate it through generosity, not through hoarding. A church is a conduit for ministry, and it is—in line with the character of God—a replicating ministry. This means that we must be constantly putting seed in the ground. “Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God” (2 Cor. 9:10–11). That is what we are after.

Now there is a counterfeit generosity that just throws resources this way and that. When the prodigal son was buying drinks for the house, he was not imitating the character of God. But when his father had the stalled calf killed for the welcome home party, and hired a hot little jazz band for that party, he was providing us with an image of the character of God. But upon returning home, did the returning prodigal really need to go to another party? Well, apparently Jesus thought so.

So a building campaign is not a time for us to put ministry, generosity, open-handedness, and so forth, on hold. It is not a time for us to temporarily become tightwads, so that we may be better prepared to overflow in true open-handedness a number of years from now. That’s not how it works, and that is not what happens.

So let the stones cry out.