“It’s not that there should be relief for others and hardship for you,” Paul pled with the Corinthians. “This is a matter of equality. Right now, your surplus is available for their need, so that their surplus may in turn meet your need, in order that there may be equality. As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little’” (2 Corinthians 8:13–15).
This isn’t a text that’s discussed much in the church.
Maybe that’s simply because 2 Corinthians doesn’t get as much attention as its earlier epistolary sibling. Or perhaps it’s because a serious reckoning with this text is likely to cause some discomfort in the lives of those who have much.
Either way, it’s clear that—for Paul—the ideal for the people of God was equality. This equality extended beyond people’s status as siblings in Christ to include all sorts of blessings, material and spiritual.
When Paul wrote this letter, the Christians in Jerusalem were struggling financially. The church in Jerusalem had been the starting-point from which the gospel went out into the world. Now, because of the spiritual generosity of the Christians in Jerusalem, the Corinthians—who once lived in spiritual poverty—were now rich with spiritual blessings. And so, Paul’s call now was for the Corinthian church to sacrifice financially to move the Jerusalem church out of economic need.
We are all spiritually equal in Christ, and this equality is eternally secure in him. In Paul’s way of thinking, this spiritual equality has corporeal implications. And so, those who have much in the church should be generous to those who have less. Such movement toward temporal equality reveals the spiritual equality that is already settled and secure in Christ.
This is, as I’ve written elsewhere, a powerful apologetic for the reality of a divine presence among the people of God—but that’s not the point I want to make in this particular article. My purpose here is to explore the implications of Paul’s words for the ways that we live together as the people of God.
Many in the world long for economic equality, but they pursue this equality in all the wrong ways and mostly for the wrong reasons. The yearning itself is, however, grounded in a longing for what God has promised to bring about at the end of time. But here’s the part we sometimes forget: What will happen at the end of time ought to be rehearsed among the people of God here and now. Will we achieve absolute equality in every area of life in this life? Of course not—and neither will we achieve perfect holiness or perfect unity, but that doesn’t mean we should not do everything in our power to move in the direction of one, holy church.
The model that Paul presents by means of an Old Testament quotation is the manna in the desert. No matter how much manna each person gathered, the amount they needed was all they had once they returned to their tent. And, no matter how little someone was able to scrounge, it had multiplied into what they needed by the time they were ready to eat (Exodus 16:17–18). Manna came without shortage yet without surplus.
That’s what should happen in the church.
By means of the work of the Spirit through the people of the church, those that are scrounging to get by should find themselves blessed with what they need, and those who have a surplus of financial resources should move toward a generosity that leaves them without excessive surplus. Similarly, those who have richness of spiritual gifts should pour out those gifts for those who have fewer, and those whose gifts are lacking should not despair but receive. There should be, among the people of God, no surpluses and no shortages. And how much exactly is too much and too little? “I am afraid the only safe rule,” C.S. Lewis rightly noted, “is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, and so on, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.”
This doesn’t mean that we should never save money, but it does mean we should save in ways that make us more generous not less. When the money we save limits our luxuries, that’s saving, and it reveals wisdom. When the money we save limits our generosity, that’s hoarding, and it reveals idolatry.
It is, as Paul said, “a matter of equality” (2 Corinthians 8:13).