Giving - 2 Corinthians 9:1-5

9:1-4 - After praising Titus and his efforts with the Corinthian saints, Paul comes back to the topic of generosity and how it works within the gospel. He's asking the Corinthians to donate money and goods so that Paul can take them to the Christian saints in Judea. There's some interesting psychology employed by Paul here, which is where he says that he "boasts" about the generosity of the Corinthians to the Macedonians to encourage them to give generously. This back and forth that he does between both groups is meant to encourage them to donate more and more as part of the welfare program, "lest our boasting of you should be in vain." The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com says, "By way of review, Macedonia and Achaia are provinces of the Greek peninsula-Macedonia to the north and Achaia to the south. Paul is writing from Macedonia to the Corinthians in Achaia. Interestingly, he boats to the Achaians about the welfare contributions of the Macedonians and he boasts to the Macedonians about the Achaians." If Paul did this so that he could enrich himself with their donations, then this would be an egregious abuse of power, but he's doing it so to benefit the poor saints in Jerusalem, so it's ok. It's not necessarily the tactic we use today, but he probably just did what worked for him at the time. It's also important to note that we should look at the intentions of people who try to encourage this type of spending frenzy, because usually their motivations aren't as pure as Paul's are here. 9:5 - It seems like Paul is asking the Corinthian saints to have the donations ready to go when he gets there, and I wondered why it would matter because surely he wasn't just going to be there for a day. He'd probably be there for several weeks before moving on, so it seems like there would be time to gather the donations at that point. But the more I thought about it, I thought that it might be awkward if Paul spent the whole time he was there asking the people for money. If it were me, I would probably not want to spend much of our time together lobbying the people for donations. Especially considering that Paul has spent many months communicating and rebuking and encouraging saints in Corinth to repent and trust his leadership, etc. If this guy that is supposed to be in charge of you, that you don't really like or trust, shows up after promising for months and spends the whole time just asking everybody for money, that might rub people the wrong way. So like tithing set up electronically or through an envelope system that you just hand off, then the money gets given, but there is no focus on the amount of money or no guilt trip to give more, etc. This allows Paul to get the donations, but also spend all of their time together focused on the ministry of the gospel.