CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 16:1. The collection.—Very fully dealt with in 2 Corinthians 8,
9. Traceable thus; earlier, in Galatians 2:10, Paul’s original pledge that he would “remember the poor,” which he had already led the way in doing (Acts 15:29); Paul “gives order” to the Galatian Church, (here) and now to the Corinthian; he “boasts” of the beginning made at Corinth to the Thessalonians and Philippians and Berœans (2 Corinthians 9:2); to be completed at Corinth before his delayed visit (ib. 1 Corinthians 16:3-5; here, 1 Corinthians 16:2); the collection made, or in the making, in Macedonia and Corinth, is, when Romans is being written, nearly ready to be taken up to Jerusalem, and (perhaps) is mentioned, as an indirect, suggestive appeal to the Romans for assistance (Romans 15:26). It duly reached Jerusalem ([Acts 21:19], Acts 24:17). Evidently a thing already known of at Corinth. The saints.—From Romans 15:26, evidently at Jerusalem. The community of goods (Acts 2:44; Acts 4:32) had not caused, but had attempted for a time to palliate, a chronic poverty at Jerusalem; aggravated probably in the case of Christians by the loss of home and friends and livelihood for Christ’s sake, and by the famine of Acts 11:28-30. Gave order.— Acts 18:23. Notice “Churches,” not “Church in Galatia.”
1 Corinthians 16:2. Gatherings.—“Collectings,” as in 1 Corinthians 16:1. When I come.—To delay Paul, or divert their attention from more important things at his visit. Notice a suggestion here that “the first day of the week” is becoming a day in some way emphasised by Christians. Cf: John 20:26; Acts 20:7; perhaps Revelation 1:10 also; further it is urged, as, e.g., by Bishop Bramhail: “That the Day of Pentecost fell upon a Sunday is undeniable; because the “Resurrection of Christ was upon a Sunday, and Pentecost was the fiftieth day from the Resurrection.”
1 Corinthians 16:3.—Co-delegates of Paul, chosen by other Churches (2 Corinthians 8:19; 2 Corinthians 8:23). Letters.—Such as Paul did not need (2 Corinthians 8:4).
1 Corinthians 16:4. Meet.—If the collection raised was so large as to make it fitting, or desirable, that an apostle should escort it, or be its “convoy.”
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 1 Corinthians 16:1-4
“Concerning the collection.”
I. Note the place and the manner of the introduction of the topic.—This wonderful letter is drawing to a close. Might have believed chap. 13 an unsurpassable climax of interest and beauty but that chap. 15 has followed, surpassing it at least in the interest of its amazing disclosures of the future. “Chap. 15 is certainly the climax.” Yes; but this “Now concerning the collection” is not an anticlimax. Paul certainly did not feel it so; indeed, rhetorical form in his letters can, hardly more than in his preaching (1 Corinthians 2:1), have been any object of endeavour or of thought to him. Chap. 15 was no “climax” to him. The climactic effect and magnitude of the chapter is in the matter of the chapter. One can hardly conceive of him as, so to speak, taking breath after the long climb to the heights of chap. 15, and pausing to review complacently the long way up and to take in the height to which he and his readers have attained, before dropping to another, lower, commonplace level of money matters and route arrangements and personal talk. Can hardly suppose that he felt nothing of the different magnitude of the topic now to be dealt with; yet clearly he passes from the Resurrection to the Collection with no sense of any impropriety, or incongruity, or unworthiness of sequence. There is no incongruity, nothing unworthy; both are equally parts of Paul’s message to Corinth, or rather of the Spirit’s message by Paul,—equally, if not of equal importance. The passage from the one to the other is therefore made with no sense of shock; the thought and heart run upon the new lines with perfect smoothness, with the smoothness of entire naturalness, the naturalness of a man to whom any smallest topic connected with his Lord, and His people, and His work, is as really holy ground for thought and talk as any largest and most important topic. Nothing which affects or belongs to Christ or His Church is on a “low level.” The whole level is high, though not equally high. “Up” or “down,” “higher” or “lower,” in any rightful occupations of a Christian man’s time, or thought, or tongue, are not so much ascents to some mountain-top and descents to the plain at the base, as variations of level upon the surface of a broad tableland, where all, even the “lower,” are high together. Collection or Resurrection, women’s veils or the glory of Charity, all are topics of one and the same “higher life.” Nothing is finer than the conversation in the family circle of a Christian home, where every life is “in Christ,” where everything is judged as by those “in Christ,” where nothing is admitted—and it leaves a wide range of topics and pursuits—which cannot find a place within the holy circle traced by the words “in Christ”; the talk passes “from grave to gay,” from earnest to hearty fun, from politics to religion, from religion to anything, with the most perfect naturalness and simplicity. All is part of one whole life, whose centre and view-point is located by the side of Christ. The merriment is made holy, and guarded in its outbursts by the sure instinct of a holy heart; the transition from topic to topic is controlled by the supreme direction of all the thought and heart to the glory of Christ. The man in Christ is as really “marching through Immanuel’s ground” in this chap. 16, as when he was in chap. 13 or chap. 15.
II. Note the characteristics of the collection and its management.—
1. Personal gifts are its support. “Every one of you.” No slipping out from doing much or doing anything, because “the whole Church is doing so liberally.” No man has been left out of God’s blessings; no man may be left out of the Church’s giving. The “Unspeakable Gift” was given to him in his poverty; his best gift to the poverty of Jerusalem fellow-Christians is not too large an acknowledgment. Its value will largely be in that it is his own gift, with his own gratitude and thought put into it. The gift has no value except as it means the man. And so we have—
2. His personal thought. “In store.”—Then it is no mere spasm of benevolence; it has been provided for and arranged with purpose. As in Ephesians 4:28, to have something to give in charity and to God is a distinct motive and object in the Christian life. [A remarkable passage. Some Ephesian Christians had been thieves; of such material does Christ make “saints” and build up His Church. Now every Ephesian rogue must be an honest man, if he become a Christian. What motive shall be urged to induce him to take to regular ways, and “to labour, working with his hands the thing that is good”? The dignity of labour? The “better policy” of honesty? The peaceful conscience of the honest man? The misery of the thief? And so on. No. Paul urges this: “Let him work, that he may have something to give away to him that needeth.” So then ask, Why should a Christian work to-day? To keep up the home? Yes. To educate the children? Yes. To leave them enough to exempt them, not from the need of real work, but from the paralysing pinch of means so narrow as to leave no margin for contingencies? Yes, perhaps. To have the yearly holiday and an occasional day of recreation? Good objects all. To provide against sickness and old age? Yes. But this also is to be put in as an object co-ordinate in importance with the rest, to have “a store” from which there may always be something to give when “need” of any kind demands it.] The “store” meant steady, thoughtful, hearty preparation to give. As between man and man, a gift brought by the wealthy man who has impulsively walked into the first shop he came to, and has bought the first likely or unlikely thing which caught his eye, “no matter about the price,” is worth nothing in comparison with the far humbler gift which has meant a poor but grateful heart, which has considered what will be pleasing or suitable or useful to the receiver, and has secured or made it, with personal trouble and perhaps work or sacrifice. The planning how to have a “store” makes the gift one acceptable to God. The most mercenary gift, bestowed with a self-interested purpose, does the same material service to the collection, as Paul gathers and forwards it. But in the subscription lists kept by the Lord Himself, the gift is differently appraised according as it is the mere haphazard, impulsive gift of a hasty, accidentally stirred, good nature, or as it is the carefully treasured “store,” got ready for the claim of Christ and His work or His poor, after quiet, conscientious weighing of all other claims and their rightful adjustment to such other and to this. The smaller gift out of a prepared and devoted “store,” is better than a far larger one which is a mere chance “dip” into whatever one may happen to have within reach and available. The man and his personal thought are in it. The worth is in these. And the gift which means a deliberate “sacrifice,” a distinct deferring of something of one’s own, that the claim of God may be met, is the most precious of all. Moreover, it is stored for a special object. A good giver thinks about the destination of his gift, and is interested in the “Jerusalem saints.” Also it is—
3. A thank-offering.—Because “the Lord [or God] hath prospered him.” God has enabled him to get; God has enabled him to give; gratitude demands that he should give. And this by no means as a satisfaction in full of God’s dues, leaving him free to do as he pleases with all the rest. “Tithe” or “firstfruits,” whatever be the system or scale of giving, the part of time, or money, or energy first given to God, does not mean that, e.g., “Sunday is God’s; the rest of the week is now my own.” Rather the firstfruits, the “Corban,” means that we gratefully offer a “sample,” where all is God’s own; and that we purpose thankfully to employ what He arranges we shall keep and use, only as those who are dealing with what is His. The gift is a thank-offering, the first handful, the earliest sheaf, of the last week’s harvest He has privileged and aided us to gather in. And not only “because,” but “as,”—for
4. The “store” is accumulated on system; there is a principle governing the manner of accumulating. The God-given “prosperity” not only supplies the motive, but it also fixes the measure, of the gift. Two ways then present themselves of working this “sliding scale.” First: “The Lord is running me shorter; I must cut down my gifts”; and this is done with a promptitude not always shown when the tide of prosperity turns in our favour,—is so turned by God. Second: “The Lord has not seen fit to give me as much this week, or this year. But He has been very good. I must trust Him a little longer before revising my gifts downwards. I will give the old sum this time, once more; I may never have the power to do it again.” Such givers are not imagination, monsters of goodness created by parsons’ fancy; but are happily found in all the Churches; often quiet, unostentatious people, in whose quiet life such trustful, grateful excelling of the rigid proportion is the one piece of romantic and heroic. The storing is systematic, not spasmodic or emotion-born, a great “spurt” of unmeasured bounty, when some Paul “comes” and urges and persuades a big “gathering.”
5. At a regular date and after a regular interval. “On the first day of the week.”—Obviously all these details of injunction to Galatia and Corinth are not so much definite prescription to us to-day, as particular instances, historic examples, which carry a principle. The Sunday morning breakfast table, or the morning service on the first day of the week in the accustomed sanctuary, may be the best time and place for the giving. No day more suitable; not many so suitable. But, as under 4, no “tenth” or any other particular proportion is binding, whilst the proportion should increase faster than even the prosperity increases; so here no day, no particular interval, is matter of obligation. The regularity of the bounty is the important thing; and also that, whether literally joined to the “first day” and its worship, the giving should be made “worship” by its direct, grateful devotion to Christ, in Whom God’s good mercy and bounty have most clearly shone forth.
III. The prudent, business-like administration of this relief fund for Jerusalem.—(Very fully dealt with under 2 Corinthians 9) What is carefully, thoughtfully collected must be righteously devoted to its proper object; pains taken to secure that it reaches its destination; [not like some fine rivers which lose themselves in an absorbent desert-sand before they can reach their goal, the sea;] administered by trusty hands and wise hearts.