God gives--gives only--gives always--and He in giving has joy,
blessedness. He would not be 'the ever-blessed God' unless He were 'the
giving God.' Creation we are perhaps scarcely warranted in affirming to
be a necessity to the divine nature, and we run on perilous heights of
speculation when we speak of it as contributing to His blessedness; but
this at least we may say, that He, in the deep words of the Psalmist,
'delights in mercy.' Before creation was realised in time, the divine
Idea of it was eternal, inseparable from His being, and therefore from
everlasting He 'rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, and His
delights were with the sons of men.'
The light and glory thus thrown on His relation to us.
He gives. He does not exact until He has given. He gives what He
requires. The requirement is made in love and is itself a 'grace
given,' for it permits to God's creatures, in their relation to Him,
some feeble portion and shadow of the blessedness which He possesses,
by permitting them to bring offerings to His throne, and so to have the
joy of giving to Him what He has given to them. 'All things come of
Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.' Then how this thought puts
an end to all manner of slavish notions about God's commands and
demands, and about worship, and about merits, or winning heaven by our
own works.
Notice that the same emotions which we have found to make the
blessedness of giving are those which come into play in the act of
receiving spiritual blessings. We receive the Gospel by faith, which
assuredly has in it love and self-sacrifice.
Having thus the great Example of all giving in heaven, and the shadow
and reflex of that example in our relations to Him on earth, we are
thereby fitted for the exemplification of it in our relation to men. To
give, not to get, is to be our work, to love, to sacrifice ourselves.
This axiom should regulate Christians' relation to the world, and to
each other, in every way. It should shape the Christian use of money.
It should shape our use of all which we have.