Generous

How generous are you? On a scale of one to ten, how well do you do? I imagine that all of us would put ourselves somewhere above 5. In fact, studies have shown that most people consider themselves in the top ten percent of generous, kind, and caring people. Think about that for a second, because I’m not a math wizard but those numbers don’t add up.

None of us would ever call ourselves selfish. Well, maybe you would. In a moment of clarity, you may realize that your current choice is self-centered and confess. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about naming ourselves as selfish most of the time.

“I’m a selfish person.” Usually, we don’t hear someone say that. Rarely. If ever.

At the same time, though, I think that most of us live in an area in between selfish and generous. None of us are totally selfish…but none of us are totally generous either. It’s all circumstantial.

We’ve been looking at Proverbs lately. And that word really helps describe these riddles of the wise – circumstantial. Depending on the circumstances, here’s how you should live. And depending on any given set of variables we will either be kind and generous or selfish and miserly.

But this week’s Proverb doesn’t really teach us to consider our circumstances and either withhold or give. No, instead it teaches us about a state of mind we should have at all times. We need to honor God with what we’ve got.

Proverbs 3:9

Honor the Lord with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops;

If we live in a sort of back-and-forth between those two poles, though, how do we fulfill this scripture? How do we live lives that honor the Lord? It can be tough.

Paul talked about the back-and-forth life a lot. In Romans 7 he gives an example of someone who wants to do the right thing but just can’t. In Ephesians 4 he encourages us to throw off the old self and put on a new self. And in Galatians 5 he gets to the heart of the matter.

Galatians 5:17

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want.

There is this struggle inside of me. It’s between my true self and my false self, the me I want to be and the other “me.” In the letter to the Corinthian church, Paul lays it on the line – “That old self is dead, it’s gone for good!” And you read that and you think, “Wait a minute…I know what’s going on inside of me. And that doesn’t match up.”

What is happening inside is a struggle. It’s a battle. It’s a war! The flesh on the one side (selfish) and the Spirit on the other (generous, life-giving). And we live in that tension.

It is a tension that causes me to be outrageously generous at times and outrageously selfish at others. It means that sometimes I just want to be left alone with the TV remote in my hand and not answer the phone. It also means I sit down and listen – really listen – to how my wife’s day went. It means that I really want to spend that money on me. It also means that I follow my thankful and broken heart and give a little bit more to that need.

It’s a tension. And we don’t resolve it, we live in it. And we lean into the Spirit. Notice it’s a capital “S.” In the original Greek, there were no cases. At least in the documents that we have of these letters and books. So the English translators have made a call that what Paul is talking about isn’t some inner working of our own human selves. It’s not the interior counterpart of our exterior flesh. It’s capital “S” Spirit.

That means when we lean into the Spirit, we aren’t leaning on some other part of ourselves. We’re leaning on God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune, three-in-one. The living God living in us.

When we lean on ourselves, whether our flesh, our minds, our self-will, we will invariably end up losing out in the tension. But when we lean on God, we can live generous lives. That means I give more, I save more, and I enjoy what I have left. I can’t do that on my own, though. It can only come from God.