“God Loveth a Cheerful Giver”
Paul evidently had considerable anxiety about the collection at Corinth for the starving saints at Jerusalem. He had started the idea, not merely because of his affection toward his own people, but in order to promote and foster the unity of the Church of Christ. There could be no greater evidence of the transforming power of the gospel than that it should obliterate the strongly-marked differences between East and West, between Jew and Gentile, and make it clear that Christ is all in all Paul does not, therefore, urge and entreat the Corinthians so much as he reminds them of his confidence in their response. No motive is so potent as the sense that a worthy response is expected of us by one whom we revere and love.
He likens money-giving to seed-sowing. What was placed in the collection box would assuredly return to the giver with large increase. Christians, therefore, should not give grudgingly, or of necessity, but freely, spontaneously, generously, as the farmer, who does not hesitate to dip his hand deeply into his granaries, expecting, as he does, that every additional atom of grain scattered will come back to him augmented certainly to thirty-fold and perhaps to a hundred-fold. You will meet again somewhere and sometime every coin that you have given with a pure heart.