The Self-Drawn Portrait of the Apostle Paul. (6)
Posted by Marvin Pagkanlungan on Friday, May 30, 2014
by Charles H. Welch
#6. Separate Features. Generosity.
“Here we see . . . . . that generosity which looked for no other reward than ‘to preach the glad tidings of Christ’ without charge, and made him feel that he would rather die ‘than that any man should make this glorying void’.” (Conybeare and Howson).
The word “generous” comes from genus, stock or race, and its first meaning is, “Of noble lineage; high born” and it is so used by Shakespeare, “Most generous Sir”, where we would say “High born” or “Noble”. The meaning “liberal in giving” is secondary but in modern usage has come to the fore.
In Hamlet Shakespeare makes play upon this connection between genus and generosity. When the king, who has murdered his own brother and married his brother’s widow, addresses Hamlet, the murdered king’s son, with the words: “But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son”, Shakespeare, playing upon the double meaning of the word “kind”, makes Hamlet interject, as an aside, “A little more than kin, and less than kind”.
Generosity serves out of love; it is disinterested; it is chivalrous; it scorns the hireling’s motive. This quality is well-marked in the portrait of the Apostle. He might have been burdensome as an apostle, yet, he acted rather as a nursing mother (I Thess. ii. 6, 7), a figure which earth’s store of language cannot surpass as a type of self-forgetting, free-giving, love. Writing to the Corinthians the Apostle said:--
“Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service . . . . . . . Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth” (II Cor. xi. 7-11).
Generosity is not manifested only, or even chiefly, in the sphere of finance. Nothing could be more generous than the Apostle’s attitude to the churches, whose divisions, whose failings, and whose cares, were such a burden upon his heart. It is characteristic of the opening of his epistles that he gives thanks for some spiritual quality evident among those addressed, even though he finds it necessary to follow with severe censure, as in I Cor. i. The complete absence of such commendation in Gal. i. is therefore the more striking. The white heat of his concern for the Galatians and his indignation at the inroads of the Judaizers, brooked no delay, not even for courtesy or for generosity. Yet, if generosity is associated with one’s genus or kind, surely the kindest thing that Paul could do was, without truce or parley, to smite to the ground, that which threatened the free men of God with the chains and fetters of bondage.
Paul’s generosity is again manifested in his word to the Philippians:--
“If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, reckon these things” (Phil. iv. 8).
It is the first of that blessed series of statements made about Christian love in I Cor. xiii.: “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” Generosity springs out of the very salvation we have received.
“Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. iv. 32).
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. vi. 2).
Chrestotes, “kindness”, “gentleness”, “goodness”, as it is translated, is found only in the writings of Paul. Haplotes, translated “liberality” and “bountifulness”, is also found only in Paul’s epistles.
The world has a proverb, however, that it will be well to remember: “A man must be just before he is generous.” There is a so-called generosity that plays havoc with truth. To this the Apostle was a stranger. He would willingly surrender his own rights. He would gladly abstain from eating this, or drinking that; he would become a Jew that he might win the Jew; he would be as one without law to win the Gentile; he could be made all things to all men, that by all means he might save some (I Cor. ix. 22). But, any who misinterpreted this generous latitude for slackness in stewardship were profoundly surprised when they discovered that, contrary to the opinion they had formed, the pliant flexibility of the Apostle’s character was like that of the finest steel, for while he was willing to concede all the non-essentials to a degree that called down on his devoted head the judgment of partisan and pedant, not one atom of the sacred trust that had been committed to him would he yield, no, not for all the “somebodies” and “somewhats” at Jerusalem.
This is true generosity, all else is marred by the presence of indifference, of low ideas of stewardship, or of cowardice. The Apostle’s own interpretation of generosity, is “first give yourselves” (II Cor. viii. 5), and this he did, saying, so truly:
“I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (II Cor. xii. 15).
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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 32, page 176).
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#6. Separate Features. Generosity.
“Here we see . . . . . that generosity which looked for no other reward than ‘to preach the glad tidings of Christ’ without charge, and made him feel that he would rather die ‘than that any man should make this glorying void’.” (Conybeare and Howson).
The word “generous” comes from genus, stock or race, and its first meaning is, “Of noble lineage; high born” and it is so used by Shakespeare, “Most generous Sir”, where we would say “High born” or “Noble”. The meaning “liberal in giving” is secondary but in modern usage has come to the fore.
In Hamlet Shakespeare makes play upon this connection between genus and generosity. When the king, who has murdered his own brother and married his brother’s widow, addresses Hamlet, the murdered king’s son, with the words: “But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son”, Shakespeare, playing upon the double meaning of the word “kind”, makes Hamlet interject, as an aside, “A little more than kin, and less than kind”.
Generosity serves out of love; it is disinterested; it is chivalrous; it scorns the hireling’s motive. This quality is well-marked in the portrait of the Apostle. He might have been burdensome as an apostle, yet, he acted rather as a nursing mother (I Thess. ii. 6, 7), a figure which earth’s store of language cannot surpass as a type of self-forgetting, free-giving, love. Writing to the Corinthians the Apostle said:--
“Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service . . . . . . . Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth” (II Cor. xi. 7-11).
Generosity is not manifested only, or even chiefly, in the sphere of finance. Nothing could be more generous than the Apostle’s attitude to the churches, whose divisions, whose failings, and whose cares, were such a burden upon his heart. It is characteristic of the opening of his epistles that he gives thanks for some spiritual quality evident among those addressed, even though he finds it necessary to follow with severe censure, as in I Cor. i. The complete absence of such commendation in Gal. i. is therefore the more striking. The white heat of his concern for the Galatians and his indignation at the inroads of the Judaizers, brooked no delay, not even for courtesy or for generosity. Yet, if generosity is associated with one’s genus or kind, surely the kindest thing that Paul could do was, without truce or parley, to smite to the ground, that which threatened the free men of God with the chains and fetters of bondage.
Paul’s generosity is again manifested in his word to the Philippians:--
“If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, reckon these things” (Phil. iv. 8).
It is the first of that blessed series of statements made about Christian love in I Cor. xiii.: “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” Generosity springs out of the very salvation we have received.
“Be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. iv. 32).
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. vi. 2).
Chrestotes, “kindness”, “gentleness”, “goodness”, as it is translated, is found only in the writings of Paul. Haplotes, translated “liberality” and “bountifulness”, is also found only in Paul’s epistles.
The world has a proverb, however, that it will be well to remember: “A man must be just before he is generous.” There is a so-called generosity that plays havoc with truth. To this the Apostle was a stranger. He would willingly surrender his own rights. He would gladly abstain from eating this, or drinking that; he would become a Jew that he might win the Jew; he would be as one without law to win the Gentile; he could be made all things to all men, that by all means he might save some (I Cor. ix. 22). But, any who misinterpreted this generous latitude for slackness in stewardship were profoundly surprised when they discovered that, contrary to the opinion they had formed, the pliant flexibility of the Apostle’s character was like that of the finest steel, for while he was willing to concede all the non-essentials to a degree that called down on his devoted head the judgment of partisan and pedant, not one atom of the sacred trust that had been committed to him would he yield, no, not for all the “somebodies” and “somewhats” at Jerusalem.
This is true generosity, all else is marred by the presence of indifference, of low ideas of stewardship, or of cowardice. The Apostle’s own interpretation of generosity, is “first give yourselves” (II Cor. viii. 5), and this he did, saying, so truly:
“I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (II Cor. xii. 15).
-----------------
(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 32, page 176).
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