And this from N.T. Wright - I know it's long but I was very edified by it:
2 CORINTHIANS 9:6–15
God Loves a Cheerful Giver
6 This is what I mean: someone who sows sparingly will reap sparingly as well. Someone who sows generously will reap generously. 7 Everyone should do as they have determined in their heart, not in a gloomy spirit or simply because they have to, since ‘God loves a cheerful giver’. 8 And God is well able to lavish all his grace upon you, so that in every matter and in every way you will have enough of everything, and may be lavish in all your own good works, 9 just as the Bible says:
They scattered their seed, they gave to the poor,
Their righteousness endures for ever.
10 The one who supplies ‘seed to be sown and bread to eat’ will supply and increase your seed, and multiply the yield of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way in all single-hearted goodness, which is working through us to produce thanksgiving to God. 12 The service of this ministry will not only supply what God’s people so badly need, but it will also overflow with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through meeting the test of this service you will glorify God in two ways: first, because your confession of faith in the Messiah’s gospel has brought you into proper order, and second, because you have entered into genuine and sincere partnership with them and with everyone. 14 What’s more, they will then pray for you and long for you because of the surpassing grace God has given to you. 15 Thanks be to God for his gift, the gift we can never fully describe!
Imagine trying to pack an umbrella into a cardboard tube. If you try putting the handle in first it will be difficult. Even if the handle is straight, you will find that the metal tips of the umbrella’s struts get caught on the edge of the tube as you struggle to push it in. You may eventually succeed, but you may tear the umbrella, or perhaps the cardboard, in the attempt. The answer, of course, is to turn the umbrella round so that the pointed end goes in first. Then, even if the umbrella isn’t folded up properly, you will find that it goes in easily enough.
Something similar happens when people try to persuade others into a course of action which they may find difficult or challenging. Going on telling people to do something they don’t particularly want to do is like pushing an umbrella into a tube the wrong way round. You may succeed; if you’re a forceful enough character, people may eventually do what you want; but they won’t enjoy it, and you may damage some relationships on the way. The trick is so to turn people’s minds and imaginations around so that what had seemed forced, awkward and unnatural now seems the most natural thing of all.
Paul rounds off his careful and cautious appeal about the collection by standing back from the details of travel plans and other arrangements and outlining the world-view within which generous giving of the sort he has in mind no longer seems awkward or peculiar. It would be easy to read this passage as simply a list of wise maxims, shrewd and pithy sayings about human generosity and God’s abundant goodness; but, although the passage does have that flavour, there is more to it than that. It may be just a sketch, but it’s a sketch of nothing less than the whole picture of what it means to be God’s people. Give people a few slogans, and you may end up simply trying to force them to do things they don’t want to. Turn their minds around so that they see everything—God, the world, the church, themselves—in a different light, and the behaviour may come naturally.
As always, Paul’s vision of God’s people is firmly rooted in the Bible. And whenever Paul quotes a passage of the Bible, even four or five words, it’s worth looking at the original passage, often the entire chapter or paragraph from which the quotation is taken, and seeing what its overall sense is. Here we have three passages, each one of which contributes more than meets the eye to what he is saying, and which together help him to construct a larger picture of who God’s people are, what their goal in life should be, and how generosity in giving plays a vital part in it all.
The first passage he quotes is from a verse in Proverbs which occurs in the Greek translation of Proverbs 22:9: ‘God blesses a cheerful giver.’ Paul and his churches would have normally read the Bible in Greek, and the passage he quotes would have been part of that Bible, even though (for reasons that are now difficult to fathom) it isn’t in the Hebrew texts, and in consequence isn’t in the English and other translations we know today. But what’s more important is that much of Proverbs chapter 22 as a whole is about riches and poverty, which has of course been Paul’s subject now for two chapters of this letter. ‘A good name’, the chapter begins, ‘is to be chosen instead of great riches, and grace is better than silver and gold.’ Paul has been talking about ‘grace’ a good deal in these chapters, and the ‘grace’ in question often consists precisely in living for the good name of being God’s people rather than hanging on to silver and gold for dear life. Several subsequent verses give instruction about riches, and verse 8 speaks of people who ‘sow’ wickedness and ‘reap’ evil, while verse 9 speaks of those who take pity on the poor being themselves supplied with food. Paul is, once more, calling to mind an entire passage, not just a single saying, since he starts this passage by talking about people ‘sowing’ in a meagre way or a generous way; and the word he uses for ‘generously’ is the same word that Proverbs uses (‘blesses’) for what God will do to a cheerful giver. Proverbs gives a reasonably complete portrait of a wise and God-fearing person who knows how to be generous with money. Paul wants the Corinthians to see this as a portrait of themselves.
The second passage he quotes from is Psalm 112:9, speaking again of the person who scatters blessing to the poor. Such a person, says the Psalm, has a ‘righteousness’ which lasts for ever. This word ‘righteousness’ is a puzzle to many today, since it makes people think of that unpleasant quality, ‘self-righteousness’. But it’s hard to know what other word to use. In the Psalms and elsewhere in the Old Testament, it regularly refers on the one hand to God’s own faithfulness to the promises he made to his people, and on the other to the behaviour by which God’s people demonstrate their gratitude to God for this faithfulness. In the case of the present Psalm, the whole poem is a celebration of those who fear and trust the Lord, and in particular of their generosity and merciful behaviour towards their neighbours, particularly the poor. Once again, Paul is inviting the Corinthians to step inside the biblical portrait and discover a whole new identity, not simply to do something strange because he tells them to.
But the real climax comes in the third passage. God, says Paul, provides ‘seed for the sower and bread to eat’, quoting Isaiah 55:10. Isaiah 55 is the glorious invitation to all and sundry to come and feast on God’s rich bounty, because God is making a new creation in which everything will be renewed. This new creation, achieved through the death and resurrection of the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53, is based on the covenant renewal celebrated in Isaiah 54, and will come about because God will ‘sow’ his word in the same way that he sends rain and snow to provide seed-corn and bread. This picture is exactly the same as the large-scale picture Paul has been drawing throughout the letter: God’s new creation (5:17), based on God’s new covenant (chapter 3), accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, and now at work in the world through the preaching of the gospel.
What Paul is urging them to do is to think of themselves, as it were, this way round, and to discover that, if they realize they are characters in the great drama which is going forwards, then the generosity he is urging will come naturally. In the normal and healthy Christian life, everything proceeds from God’s generosity, and everything returns to God in thanksgiving (verse 12; compare 1:11 and 4:15). Grace, generosity and gratitude: these are not optional extras of Christian living, but are the very heart of it all.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 99–103.
