The following is an expository lesson from Alexander MacLaren regarding 2
Corinthians 9:8.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
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All Grace Abounding
- an Exposition Of The Scriptures
by Alexander MacLaren
God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having
all.
sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work. - 2 Corinthians
9:8
In addition to all his other qualities the Apostle was an extremely good
man
of business; and he had a field for the exercise of that quality in the
collection for the poor saints of Judea, which takes up so much of this
letter, and occupied for so long a period so much of his thoughts and
efforts. It was for the sake of showing by actual demonstration that would
'touch the hearts' of the Jewish brethren, the absolute unity of the two
halves of the Church, the Gentile and the Jewish, that the Apostle took so
much trouble in this matter. The words which I have read for my text come
in
the midst of a very earnest appeal to the Corinthian Christians for their
pecuniary help. He is dwelling upon the same thought which is expressed in
the well-known words: 'What I gave I kept; what I kept I lost.'
But whilst the words of my text primarily applied to money matters, you
see
that they are studiously general, universal. The Apostle, after his
fa****on,
is lifting up a little ' secular' affair into a high spiritual region; and
he lays down in my text a broad general law, which goes to the very depths
of the Christian life.
Now, notice, we have here in three clauses three stages which we may
venture
to distinguish as the fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is able to
make
all grace abound toward you'; - there is the fountain. 'That ye always,
having all-sufficiency in all things'; - there is the basin that receives
the gush from the fountain. 'May abound in every good work'; - there is
the
stream that comes from the basin. The fountain pours into the basin, that
the flow from the basin may feed the stream.
Now this thought of Paul's goes to the heart of things. So let us look at
it.
I. The Fountain.
The Christian life in all its aspects and experiences is an outflow from '
the Fountain of Life,' the giving God. Observe how emphatically the
Apostle,
in the context, ac***ulates words that express universality: 'all grace..,
all-sufficiency for all things... every good work.' But even these
expressions do not satisfy Paul, and he has to repeat the word 'abound,'
in
order to give some faint idea of his conception of the full tide which
gushes from the fountain. It is 'all grace,' and it is abounding grace.
Now what does he mean by 'grace'? That word is a kind of shorthand for the
whole sum of the unmerited blessings which come to men through Jesus
Christ.
Primarily, it describes what we, for want of a better expression, have to
call a 'disposition' in the divine nature; and it means, then, if so
looked
at, the unconditioned, undeserved, spontaneous, eternal, stooping,
pardoning
love of God. That is grace, in the primary New Testament use of the
phrase.
But there are no idle 'dispositions' in God. They are always energising,
and
so the word glides from meaning the disposition, to meaning the
manifestation and activities of it, and the 'grace' of our Lord is that
love
in exercise. And then, since the divine energies are never fruitless, the
word p***** over, further, to mean all the blessed and beautiful things in
a
soul which are the consequences of the Promethean truth of God's loving
hand, the outcome in life of the inward bestowment which has its cause,
its
sole cause, in God's ceaseless, unexhausted love, unmerited and free.
That, very superficially and inadequately set forth, is at least a glimpse
into the fulness and greatness of meaning that lies in that profound New
Testament word, 'grace.' But the Apostle here puts emphasis on the variety
of forms which the one divine gift assumes. It is 'all grace' which God is
able to make abound toward you. So then, you see this one transcendant
gift
from the divine heart, when it comes into our human experience, is like a
meteor when it p***** into the atmosphere of earth, and catches fire and
blazes, showering out a multitude of radiant points of light. The grace is
many-sided - many-sided to us, but one in its source and in its character.
For at bottom, that which God in His grace gives to us as His grace is
what?
Himself; or if you like to put it in another form, which comes to the same
thing - new life through Jesus Christ. That is the encyclopaediacal gift,
which contains within itself all grace. And just as the physical life in
each of us, one in all its manifestations, produces many results, and
****nes
in the eye, and blushes in the cheek, anti gives strength to the arm, and
flexibility and deftness to the fingers and swiftness to the foot: so also
is that one grace which, being manifold in its manifestations, is one in
its
essence. There are many graces, there is one Grace.
But this grace is not only many-sided, but abounding. It is not congruous
with God's wealth, nor with His love, that He should give scantily, or, as
it were, should open but a finger of the hand that is full of His gifts,
and
let out a little at a time. There are no sluices on that great stream so
as
to regulate its flow, and to give sometimes a painful trickle and
sometimes
a full gush, but this fountain is always pouring itself out, and it
'abounds!'
But then we are pulled up short by another word in this first clause: 'God
is able to make.' Paul does not say, 'God will make.' He puts the whole
weight of responsibility for that ability becoming operative upon us.
There
are conditions; and although we may have access to that full fountain, it
will not pour on us 'all grace' and 'abundant grace,' unless we observe
these, and so turn God's ability to give into actual giving.
And how do we do that? By desire, by expectance, by petition, by faithful
steward****p. If we have these things, if we have tutored ourselves, and
experience has helped in the tuition, to make large our expectancy, God
will
smile down upon us and 'do exceeding abundantly above all 'that we 'think'
as well as above all that we 'ask.' Brethren, if our supplies are scant,
when the full fountain is gu****ng at our sides, we are 'not straitened in
God, we are straitened in ourselves.' Christian possibilities are
Christian
obligations, and what we might have and do not have, is our condemnation.
I turn, in the next place, to what I have, perhaps too fancifully, called
II. The Basin.
'God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having always
all-sufficiency in all things, may,'... etc.
The result of all this many-sided and exuberant outpouring of grace from
the
fountain is that the basin may be full Considering the infinite source and
the small receptacle, we might have expected something more than
'sufficiency' to have resulted.
Divine grace is sufficient. Is it not more than sufficient? Yes, no doubt.
But what Paul wishes us to feel is this - to put it into very plain
English - that the good gifts of the divine grace will always be
pro****tioned to our work, and to our sufferings too. We shall feel that we
have enough, if we are as we ought to be. Sufficiency is more than a man
gets anywhere else. 'Enough is as good as a feast.' And if we have
strength,
which we may have, to do the day's tasks, and strength to carry the day's
crosses, and strength to accept the day's sorrows, and strength to master
the day's temptations, that is as much as we need wish to have, even out
of
the fulness of God. And we shall get it, dear brethren, if we will only
fulfil the conditions. If we exercise expectance, and desire and petition
and faithful steward****p, we shall get what we need. 'Thy shoes shall be
iron and brass,' if the road is a steep, and rocky one that would wear out
leather. 'As thy days so shall thy strength be.' God does not hurl His
soldiers in a blundering attack on some impregnable mountain, where they
are
slain in heaps at the base; but when He lays a commandment on my
shoulders,
He infuses strength into me, and according to the good homely old saying
that has brought comfort to many a sad and weighted heart, makes the back
to
bear the burden. The heavy task or the cru****ng sorrow is often the key
that
opens the door of God's treasure-house. You have had very little
experience
either of life or of Christian life, if you have not learnt by this time
that the harder your work, and the darker your sorrows, the mightier have
Been God's sup****ts, and the more starry the lights that have shone upon
your path. 'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things,'
One more word: this sufficiency should be more uniform, is uniform in the
divine intention, and in so far as the flow of the fountain is concerned.
Always having had I may be sure that I always shall have. Of course I know
that, in so far as our physical nature conditions our spiritual
experience,
there will be ups and downs, moments of emancipation and moments of
slavery.
There will be times when the flower opens, and times when it shuts itself
up. But I am sure that the great mass of Christian people might have a far
more level temperature in their Christian experience than they have; that
we
could, if we would, have far more experimental knowledge of this 'always'
of
my text. God means that the basin should be always full right up to the
top
of the marble edge, and that the more is drawn off from it, the more
should
flow into it. But it is very often like the reservoirs in the hills for
some
great city in a drought, where great stretches of the bottom are exposed,
and again, when the drought breaks, are full to the top of the retaining
wall That should not be. Our Christian life should run on the high levels.
Why does it not? Possibilities are duties.
And now, lastly, we have here what, adhering to my metaphor, I call
III. The stream.
'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to every
good work.'
That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is a very im****tant
consideration. The end of God's dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful
creatures, is character and conduct. Of course you can state the end in a
great many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from the
way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the end of
God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call 'salvation,'
and
by which many of their hearers take them to mean neither more nor less
than
dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all its mysticism, even when it
soars highest, and speaks most about the perfection of humanity, and the
end
of God's dealings being that we may be 'filled with the fulness of God,'
never loses its wholesome, sane hold of the common moralities of daily
life,
and proclaims that we receive all, in order that we may be able to
'maintain
good works for necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart, and remember
that a correct creed, and a living faith, and precious, select, inward
emotions and experiences are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and
radiant with common moralities and 'good works' - not meaning thereby the
things which go by that name in popular phraseology, but' whatsoever
things
are lovely ... and of good re****t' - then we shall understand a little
better what we are here for and what Jesus Christ died for, and what His
Spirit is given and lives in us for. So 'good works' is the end, in one
very
im****tant aspect, of all that avalanche of grace which has been from
eternity ru****ng down upon us from the heights of God.
There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in our character and
conduct, we should copy the 'giving grace.' Look how eloquently and
significantly, in the first and last clauses of my text, the same words
recur. 'God is able to make all grace abound, that ye may abound in all
good
work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness and in the copiousness of the good
that flows out from your life and conduct, Because of your possession of
that divine grace. And remember, 'to him that hath shall be given.' We
pray
for more grace; we need to pray for that, no doubt. Do we use the grace
that
God has given us? If we do not, the remainder of that great word which I
have just quoted will be fulfilled in you. God forbid that any of us
should
receive the grace of God in vain, and therefore come under the stern and
inevitable sentence, 'From him that hath not shall be taken away, even
that
which he hath!'
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