All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

This Tuesday was designated by the world as “Giving Tuesday,” an attempt for non-profit organizations and charities to compel people to join in the team effort by giving their money on a special day. It should remind us that in spite of all people say about being generous and altruistic, they need a special holiday to motivate them to provide for charities, and for charities to get the money they want. In contrast, believers in Jesus Christ are always giving, even if not financially. There’s no need for believers to set aside one day per year to remind them of their responsibility to provide for others’ needs.

There are several important reasons for this, ultimately stemming from the character of our God and Father. We who are children of God through faith in Jesus should be daily reminded of the privilege and honor we have of giving to those in need, because we have already been given all that we need. Let me show you several of the characteristics of the giving character of Christians, including its Models, manner, and motivations.

Our Models for Giving

Christians are givers because they reflect the holy character of their heavenly Father. And the Father is the ultimate Giver. This is manifest from the truth that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn. 3:16). John explains this verse in his first epistle by declaring that,

“In this is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 Jn. 4:10)

So in what way did God “give” His one unique and eternal Son? By sending Him on a mission to be the “propitiation”, or literally “satisfaction” for our sins. In doing so, He had to send Him to suffer and die for our sins by experiencing the withdrawal of His favor and goodness. This is why Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” And in order to forsake Jesus, God had to give up His Son to the status of an enemy for an endlessly short time.

Not only did God give up His beloved Son to the misery and torments of the cross, but He has also given Him to those He chose to be saved in eternity past. For all those who are saved receive the very life and goodness of the Lord Jesus, so that they become part of Him. Integral to all the Father’s giving of His Son is the Son’s decision to give Himself to God as a “sacrifice and sweet-smelling aroma” (Eph. 5). And in so doing, He of course gave Himself to all who would ever believe in Him.

Besides essentially giving Himself to give His beloved people Jesus, God has also given believers Himself by manifesting His presence and glory in their hearts. Paul literally says this when he writes that Christians have “one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6). Here he’s saying that the Father is within believers, and this through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

In addition to these glorious truths, the Scriptures also teach that “every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights . . .” (Jas. 1:17) That is, everything that believers have in their lives is from God, since He is the Ruler of the universe. More generally, John the Baptizer remarks to his disciples in John’s Gospel that “’A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven’” (Jn. 3:27). So, it’s not just the apparently good things, but absolutely everything that comes from the hand of the almighty God.

Based on these demonstrations of God’s giving disposition toward His creatures, it logically follows that believers ought to be givers as well.

The Manner of Christian Giving

So why and how are Christians supposed to continually give to others? As already noted, the ultimate reason is that they share the likeness of the Father, who is the Giver of all gifts. But how does this work? Where do Christians’ gifts come from?

The answer is obviously that everything we have is originally from God, and everything we’re motivated to give is supplied by Him. Thus, the Christian life is a life of constantly receiving and giving. The apostle John sums this up by saying,

“. . . from His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” – Jn. 1:16

This is only a true statement for believers, since he means that we receive the fullness of Jesus’s divinity as God’s grace, or favor, is constantly showered on us. This is what Paul expresses when he boasts that God has “lavished on us” “the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7-8). In other words, every single thing we have as God’s children is a good gift from Him that He gives because He loves us with undeserved love.

From this blessed condition, it follows that all we have ultimately belongs to God. We are simply temporary caretakers of all our possessions, or stewards. And those possessions include our own selves, since God not only owns us as our Creator, but also as our Redeemer. That’s why Paul remarks, “. . . you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20).

Because all we are and have belongs to God as well as us, we have great freedom when it comes to meeting people’s needs. As Jesus taught, we have no need to be afraid of lacking what we need for happiness and service of God, since He provides for all our needs as we seek to obey Him (Mt. 6). And since all our possessions ultimately came from Him, we can gladly give them up for the good of others. The logic of 1 John which says, “we love because He first loved us” can be aptly turned into “we give because He first gave to us” (1 Jn. 4:19).

Some Main Motivations for Giving

Turning now to what reasons motivate believers to give for others’ needs, we can simply look back to what we considered about God’s giving. The reason He gave His most precious gift in His Son was that He loved the world. Hence, we see from this the ultimate motive for Christian giving, along with every holy habit.

We ought to give things to people because we care about their ultimate and eternal well-being. And sometimes helping them to see who Jesus is (which is one definition of being eternally happy) requires that we meet their physical needs. Of course, Jesus defined love of others in the famous Golden Rule of “treat others the same way you want them to treat you” (Mt. 7:12). If I was in the same situation as this person, what would I want me to do to help? Sometimes, we would want some physical item or money given to us. However, the person’s spiritual needs must always determine how we meet their physical needs.

And so I need to emphasize that the greatest gift that we can give anyone is the promise of God for their spiritual salvation and worship of Him. The ultimate promise from God is summed up in the gospel of Jesus Christ, declaring what God has done in giving up His Son, so He can give us His forgiveness and peace. If we remember that God did this for sinners of every kind, then this ought to motivate us to give this announcement to everyone we rightly can.

Although the most important gift that comes from believers is the gospel, this doesn’t nullify the fact that we are characteristically generous in all good gifts, especially of our time. “Wait, did you just say ‘time’”? Yes, time! Next to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the most precious thing we can give to a person is our time, since it is a measurement of our very life on this earth. And giving someone our time requires not that we merely do something for them, but that we actually care about them. Put differently, truly meeting a person’s needs will require that you give up your time to do so.

But the Scriptures are filled with examples of believers giving others more than time, but possessions. For example, in Acts 5, we see that the first Christians in Jerusalem were giving up their property so they could give money to their needy brethren in Christ. Likewise, Acts 9:36 describes a woman named Dorcas who was engaged in “acts of kindness and charity which she continually did,” as she would knit clothes for those in need. Further, throughout the New Testament, including Acts and 2 Corinthians, believers are repeatedly described as giving money to the poor. This practice of financial generosity seems to have also been extended to missionaries like Paul who were engaged in exhausting work, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians and Philippians. Also, such financial or material support was sometimes provided for church leaders who were engaged in so much teaching and preaching that they didn’t have time to earn money (1 Tim. 5). Finally, Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11 shows us that it was the responsibility of wealthy believers to provide most of the food for their weekly fellowship suppers, which he calls “the Lord’s Supper”.

So, it’s clear that the Scriptures are filled with encouragements to abound in giving to others. Besides the examples of the Father and our Lord, these ought to also encourage us that we can be extraordinarily generous givers. Most of us have far more resources than they did, and far less plausible excuses for refusing to give them to others. We know that all we have is from God, and that He gives it not for our own selfish pleasures, but to bring Him praise and honor through our use of it.

But there’s still one more motivation for giving that we should have in the back of our minds. This motivation is that the Lord will eventually reward us for the gracious giving that we’ve exercised for the good of others. Paul beautifully conveys this hope when he writes,

“With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord . . .” – Eph. 6:7-8

And so we ought to present all we are and have to God for His use in making His glory known through our love of others. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15)