2 Corinthians — Chapter 9

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul is still writing from Macedonia, about AD 55–56, and still on the collection for the poor believers in Jerusalem. Chapter 8 dealt with the why of giving and sent Titus and two trusted brothers to Corinth. Chapter 9 turns to the how: be ready, give freely, give gladly, and trust God to supply. Some scholars think the chapter began as a separate note, perhaps to the churches of Achaia around Corinth, because Paul seems to start the subject afresh in v1. Most read it as the natural continuation of chapter 8, with Paul shifting from the Macedonians' example to the Corinthians' own heart.

The Cheerful Giver (vv1–15)

• "It is superfluous for me to write to you" (v1). A gentle, slightly playful opening. Paul has just spent a chapter on the subject and is about to spend another, while saying he hardly needs to. It is a tactful way of saying "I know you want to do this." "The ministry for the saints" is diakonia, the same word for this collection in 8:4. "The saints" are the believers in Jerusalem.
• "Achaia has been ready since last year" (v2). Achaia was the Roman province of southern Greece, with Corinth as its capital. Macedonia lay to the north. Paul has been using each church to encourage the other. He told the Macedonians how eager Corinth was, and "your zeal has stirred up most of them." Now he tells Corinth how generous the Macedonians turned out to be (8:1–5). The Corinthians started well a year earlier (8:10), but starting is not finishing.
• "So that our boasting about you may not prove empty" (v3). "The brothers" are Titus and the two unnamed delegates of 8:16–24. They go ahead so the gift can be gathered calmly, before Paul arrives.
• "If some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready" (v4). Travel companions often went with Paul, and Acts 20:4 names Macedonians among the men who carried the gift to Jerusalem: Sopater of Berea, and Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica. Paul imagines poor Macedonians who gave beyond their means arriving in rich Corinth to find nothing collected. He would be embarrassed, he says, and adds with a wink, "to say nothing of you."
• "A willing gift, not as an exaction" (v5). "Willing gift" is eulogia, literally "a blessing," the word behind "eulogy." "Exaction" is pleonexia, which elsewhere in the New Testament means greed or covetousness (Luke 12:15; Col 3:5). So the contrast cuts two ways. A gift squeezed out at the last minute would feel like something extorted from them, and a gift held back would reveal a grasping heart. Paul wants a gift that blesses both the giver and the receiver.
• "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly" (v6). Paul turns to farming, as Proverbs often does (Prov 11:24–25; 22:9). A farmer who scatters seed thinly to save it gets a thin harvest. "Bountifully" is again eulogia, "with blessings": sow with blessings, reap with blessings. Paul is not promising that giving is a way to get rich. Galatians 6:7–9 uses the same picture for the whole of life. What is sown in faith is not lost, and God sees that it bears fruit.
• "As he has decided in his heart" (v7). Giving is personal and planned. Paul does not set a figure. Each believer settles it before God, ahead of time, which echoes the weekly setting aside of 1 Corinthians 16:2. The opposite of a settled gift is one given "reluctantly," literally "out of grief," or "under compulsion," because of pressure from others. Israel's tabernacle was built from gifts given by "every man whose heart moves him" (Exod 25:2), and David rejoiced that his people "offered freely" for the temple (1 Chr 29:17).
• "God loves a cheerful giver" (v7). "Cheerful" is hilaros, found only here in the New Testament. It is the root of the English "hilarious," though the Greek means glad or joyful, not funny. Paul is echoing a line the Greek Old Testament adds to Proverbs 22:8: "God blesses a cheerful and giving man." The Hebrew text does not have that line, but Paul's readers knew their Greek Bible, and he adjusts "blesses" to "loves." The point is not that God loves only cheerful givers. He loves the gladness itself, because it reflects his own generous heart.
• "God is able to make all grace abound to you" (v8). The verse piles up the word "all": all grace, all sufficiency, all things, all times, every good work. "Grace" (charis) is the key word of chapters 8–9, and here it includes God's material provision. "Sufficiency" is autarkeia, a word Greek philosophers, especially the Stoics, used for the wise man's self-sufficiency. Paul redirects it. The believer's sufficiency comes from God, not from himself, and the same word means "contentment" in 1 Timothy 6:6. The goal is not surplus for its own sake but enough to "abound in every good work."
• "He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor" (v9). Paul quotes Psalm 112:9. Psalm 112 describes the person who fears the LORD: gracious, generous, lending freely, unafraid of bad news. "Distributed freely" is literally "scattered," the sower's motion again. "The poor" here is penēs, the working poor who live day to day, not the destitute beggar (ptōchos). "His righteousness endures forever" means his upright, generous life has lasting worth before God. In Psalm 111, just before, the same words are said of God himself (111:3). The generous person reflects the character of the God he fears.
• "He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food" (v10). This echoes Isaiah 55:10, where rain and snow give "seed to the sower and bread to the eater." "Supplies" is chorēgeō. In classical Athens a wealthy citizen called the chorēgos paid for the chorus at a public festival, and the verb came to mean "supply lavishly." God is pictured as the generous patron who funds the whole performance. "The harvest of your righteousness" borrows Hosea 10:12. God gives the seed, multiplies it, and produces a harvest of right living.
• "Enriched in every way to be generous in every way" (v11). This is the purpose clause of the chapter. God enriches his people so that they can be generous, not so that they can store it up. "Generous" is haplotēs again (8:2), the undivided, single-hearted giving that does not calculate. And the end result is not credit to the givers but "thanksgiving to God."
• "The ministry of this service" (v12). "Service" is leitourgia, the root of "liturgy." In Athens it meant a public service paid for out of one's own pocket, and in the Greek Old Testament it was used for priestly service in worship. Paul uses it of money given to the poor. An offering for hungry believers is an act of worship. It does two things: it meets real needs, and it overflows into "many thanksgivings."
• "Your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel" (v13). The Jerusalem believers would see the gift as a test passed. "Approval" is dokimē, "proof" or "test," the same word for the Macedonians' "test of affliction" in 8:2. Many Jewish Christians were unsure whether uncircumcised Gentile converts were truly part of God's people (Acts 21:20–21). A generous gift from Greek churches would prove it. Their faith was not just talk: it showed in "submission," obedient action flowing from their "confession," what they publicly professed. "Contribution" is koinōnia, "fellowship" or "sharing," the word Paul uses for this gift in Romans 15:26.
• "They long for you and pray for you" (v14). Money goes one way and prayer and affection come back the other. Believers who had never met would be bound together. This was Paul's larger hope for the collection: one church of Jew and Gentile, "one new man in place of the two" (Eph 2:15).
• "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!" (v15). Paul ends with a burst of praise. "Inexpressible" is anekdiēgētos, "beyond full description," found only here in the New Testament. The chapter has been about human gifts, but Paul's mind goes to the gift behind them all. Most readers take it to mean Christ himself, the Son "rich" who "became poor" (8:9), and with him every blessing of salvation (Rom 8:32). Some take it as God's grace at work in the churches, joining Jew and Gentile, but that grace flows from the same gift.
• Did the Corinthians follow through? Apparently yes. Paul went on to spend three months in Greece (Acts 20:2–3), and from Corinth he wrote that "Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem" (Rom 15:26). Achaia is named, so the gift was completed.
• Commentators: Guzik takes v1 as gentle irony and stresses that generosity is about the attitude of the heart more than the size of the gift. He holds that no one can out-give God, while granting that the return may be spiritual rather than material. He also notes that "sufficiency" can mean contentment, urges believers to be channels of blessing rather than reservoirs, and treats the Psalm 112 quotation as showing generosity to be the evidence of righteousness, not its cause. Matthew Henry praises Paul's tact: he speaks "very respectfully to the Corinthians, and with great skill," and gives them time rather than surprising them "with hasty demands." On v6 he observes that "men who expect a good return at harvest are not wont to pinch and spare in sowing their seed." JFB: "The reaping shall correspond to the proportions and spirit of the sowing." JFB also notes that the "poor" of v9 is the laboring poor rather than the beggar, which the lexicon supports. All three take the "inexpressible gift" as Christ. JFB calls it "the gift of His own Son, which includes all other inferior gifts," and Henry calls it "a gift we have all reason to be very thankful for." Guzik suggests Paul may have coined anekdiēgētos. The lexicon lists no earlier use, which fits the idea, though it cannot prove it. Guzik and the Tyndale notes both draw out what v13 shows: the gift would prove to Jewish believers that the Gentile converts were truly their brothers.

Pointing to Christ

Every line of this chapter on giving leans on the God who gives first. He supplies the seed, multiplies the harvest, and loves the cheerful giver because he is one. Paul's final word lifts the whole discussion above money to the gift no one can fully describe. The Father did not give "reluctantly or under compulsion." He gave his Son freely, and those who have received that gift give, not to earn God's favor, but because they already have it.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the sowing principle, the cheerful giver, God's sufficiency, and the unspeakable gift.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Sowing Sparingly or Bountifully (v.6) — Paul compares giving to sowing seed, where a bountiful harvest follows bountiful sowing. Are you currently sowing sparingly out of fear, or bountifully out of trust?
• The Heart of a Cheerful Giver (v.7) — Paul says giving should be planned in the heart and offered cheerfully, not out of guilt or pressure. Does your giving come from joy, or does it feel more like an obligation?
• Trusting God's Sufficiency to Give (v.8) — Paul promises that God can make grace abound so believers always have enough to overflow in every good work. Do you actually trust God to supply what you need if you give generously?
• Every Gift Points Back to His (v.15) — Paul closes by thanking God for His indescribable gift in Christ, the source behind all human generosity. How does Christ's gift to you shape the way you think about what you give to others?