Better to Receive

Published in the Omaha World Herald’s “From the Pulpit”

December 8, 2024
Reverend Eric L. Jay

“Better to Receive”

It will be said many times this time of year, “It is better to give than to receive.” Is it? If, by nature, we found more pleasure in giving than receiving, why would this colloquialism have to be repeated at all? We do need to be reminded that it is better to give than to receive. We want to receive more than we want to give. Yet, we know deep down that isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. 

It is better to give than to receive. However, you cannot give anything you have not first received. You’re alive only because life was given to you freely, graciously, and without merit.  Not by your parents, but by the God who created all things out of the eternal riches of His grace. The knowledge you have, any knowledge you have, isn’t something you came up with all on your own. All knowledge is first received before it is given. The only reason there is knowledge that can be known, the only reason there is anything, is because the God and Creator of all things has given it freely.

Generosity and selfless giving are hard-wired into us. We were created in the image of God who is the literal definition of self-sacrificial love and unmerited generosity. God is completely self-sufficient and has no need for anything or anyone outside of Himself. While completely righteous and sufficient in Himself, 1 John 4 reveals that God is also love (but it must be remembered that love is not God, lest we are deceived into worshiping ourselves and our love rather than the God who gives life and love). True love cannot help but express itself. Thus, God created. He created the heavens and the earth as a gift to the man and woman He made in His image, made with personhood and the capacity to know, create, and love. Even after Adam and Eve (and you and I) took God’s generosity for granted and sinned and rebelled against God, our loving Creator did not pull back His amazing love and generosity. Instead, after the fall of mankind, God promised He would give even more. He would give His One and Only Son Jesus, who would be born to be the single atoning self-sacrificial and completely unmerited gift to sinful mankind, shedding His sinless blood on the cross to pay for the sins of the world. This is the eternally gracious God who made us, the generous God and Lord Jesus who has saved us through His birth, life, death, and resurrection. 

You cannot give anything you have not first received. Our generous Lord has called us to live and give generously of ourselves and all that we have because we have already been given eternity and all the riches of heaven itself in Christ Jesus our Lord. As Jesus commanded His disciples in Matthew 10:8, “Freely you have received; freely give.” That’s not only true for the disciples back then but for you and me and all people. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” – John 3:16.