'Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as
there was a readiness to will so there may be a
performance also.'--2 COR. viii. 11.
The Revised Version reads: 'But now complete the doing also; that as
there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also out
of your ability.' A collection of money for the almost pauper church at
Jerusalem bulked very largely in the Apostle's mind at the date of the
writing of the two letters to the Corinthian church. We learn that that
church had been the first to agree to the project, and then had very
distinctly hung back from implementing its promises and fulfilling its
good intentions. So the Apostle, in the chapter from which my text is
taken, with wonderful delicacy, dignity, and profundity, sets forth the
true principle, not only of Christian giving, but of Christian asking.
The text advises that the gushing sentiments of brotherly sympathy and
liberality which had inspired the Corinthians a year ago should now bear
some fruit in action. So Paul is going to send Titus, his right-hand man
at the time, to hurry up and finish off the collection and have done
with it. The text is in effect the message which Titus was to carry; but
it has a far wider application than that. It is a needful advice for us
all about a great many other things: 'As there was a readiness to will,
so let there be a performance also.'
Resolutions, noble and good and Christlike, have a strange knack of
cheating the people who make them. So we all need the exhortation not to
be befooled by fancying that we have done, when we have only willed. Of
course we shall not do unless we will. But there is a wide gap, as our
experience witnesses, between the two things. We all know what place it
is to which, according to the old proverb, the road is paved with good
intentions; and the only way to pull up that paving is to take Paul's
advice here and always, and immediately to put into action the resolves
of our hearts. Now I desire to say two or three very plain and simple
things about this matter.