LOVING IS GIVING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 16, 1901

The word “love” is a common one. It is much used. Its meanings are many and various. Sometimes it implies nothing more than admiration. Often it indicates only greed. It may denote personal sentiment and individual affection between men and women. Frequently it is indicative of the most supreme type of selfishness. It often signifies gross immorality and base passion.

In brief, our ideas of love have become so narrow and so low that if the word be analyzed in relation to the emotions, passions, and actions, to which it is for the most part applied, it will be found to express two of the worst traits of human life—selfishness and lust.

Even at best, human love is often but little better than a form of selfishness. A man loves a woman—why?—Because of his desire to draw her to himself, to possess her,—to have her for his life companion,—to gain her to be exclusively his own.

But the love of God is the absolute opposite of all these things. “God so loved . . . that He GAVE. With God loving is giving. “God is love.” With the Eternal One to love is to give. “God is love.” His life is nothing but love. With Him to live is to love, and to love is to give—living is loving, and loving is giving.

Now, therefore, the supreme idea in the love of God is this—It is a love which gives. Any love which does not give is not the love of God at all. It is only human. It is earthly, sensual, devilish. Common affection is not true love. The test of all genuine love is that it has in it the element of giving—yea, that its very essence is self-sacrificial giving. In this, when a man loves a woman it is that he may give to her all human devotion.

God so Loved

THAT HE GAVE.

The word translated “love” signifies “benevolent.” The word “benevolent” comes from two Latin words—bene, which means “rightly” or “well,” and volens, meaning “wishing.” The word “benevolent” is therefore defined as follows: “Having a disposition to do good; possessing or manifesting love to mankind, and a desire to promote their prosperity and happiness; disposed to give to good objects.” Etymologically considered, benevolent implies wishing well to others, and beneficent, doing well. But by degrees the word “benevolent” has been widened to include not only feelings but actions.

From these definitions it is clear that the love of the Bible is a love that manifests itself in giving. More than this, right giving—the giving of the Bible—springs from right willing or wishing.

There are many in the world who make expensive presents or gifts to others. There are wealthy men who give millions of dollars to different enterprises. Yet much of this giving is pure selfishness. God frowns upon it, because it does not proceed from right wishes, from noble desires of the heart. A gift may be made with the idea of gaining the favor of some one else. Such gifts, whether made to Christ’s cause or to men, are displeasing to God. Many times lavish gifts are bestowed upon great enterprises because the giver desires to become well known and well thought of. This is naught but pharisaism. It is written: “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right doeth; that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”

The love of God therefore is a love which gives—gives because of love and loyalty to the cause and object upon which it is bestowed. This giving love, and it alone, is the love of God.

How many times has this and similar testimony been borne in a public social meeting: “I am very happy; I feel so much of the love of God in my heart; this faith grows more and more precious to me day by day.”

And yet many who utter such words have absolutely no idea of the responsibilities of the love of God—the responsibility to give. He who does not feel the burden upon him to give of his life, to give of his God-intrusted talents, and to give of his property, of his money, to the suffering cause of God, does not know the love of God, for—

God so Loved

THAT HE GAVE.

My brother, my sister, when you and I kneel down to pray that God will bless the Third Angel’s Message and hasten on its work with power in the earth, how can we have faith that the Lord will be pleased with that prayer when we are withholding the money so necessary to make the work go?

It is useless for men to pray to God to bless the work and to tell the Lord how much they love the work when they do not support it by their offerings. Such prayers are an abomination in the sight of heaven.

What good does it do to pray for the success of the Third Angel’s Message if we do not freely give the strength and money necessary to forward it in the earth? Any one who does this simply does not believe the Third Angel’s Message at all.

Statesmen and army officers have a saying that “money is the sinews of war.” The same is to a great extent true in the warfare now being waged on earth between Christ and His followers on the one side and Satan and his followers on the other side.

It is not well-worded testimonies that count. Long prayers may or may not reveal loyalty and devotion to the cause of God.

In the Bible it is written: “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” Loving in word and in tongue,—

merely talking about the love of God,—making a profession of love,—is a very different thing from possessing the real love of God. The real love of God is a thing of deed, not of word. It is a love which does; it is a love which gives.

And now, my dear brethren and sisters, one and all, is God calling upon us to love His cause? Oh, yes; we know He is, and we must hasten to manifest that love in the same way that God himself manifests it—by giving. He has said that financial ruin and disgrace are staring His schools in America and the institutions in Scandinavia in the face. He is calling for gifts, both large and small, to succor these instrumentalities and save them to His cause.

Here is an opportunity to manifest the love of God in “*deed and in truth,” and the Lord has confidence that His flock will heed His voice and manifest their love. If He did not have this confidence, He would not make the call.

Giving on this wise is in itself the gift of God. It is so written in the Scriptures:—

“Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit [we want you to understand] of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia. How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves; praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God. Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace [“gift,” margin] also. Therefore, as ye abound in everything [or gift] in [the gift of] faith, and [in the gift of] utterance, and [in the gift of] knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace [gift] also. I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.”

The desire to give manifesting itself in the act of giving is in itself a gift of God. He who rightly gives to the cause of God is exercising a spiritual gift bestowed on him by the Master. This gift God freely bestows upon all who open their hearts and hands liberally to perform it.

Giving is a gift. The exercise of this gift is just as surely the exercise of a gift of God as is the exercise of the gift of faith, or of utterance, or of knowledge, or of prophecy, or of teaching, or of tongues. It is a gift of ministry, and he who exercises it is a minister of the gospel.

The gift of giving is the gift which proves the sincerity of our love. To all men and women who wish to prove that they possess the love of God, the great apostle commends this gift. By the exercise of the gift of giving, the redeemed of God can prove to all the world and to themselves that they have the love of God abounding in their hearts in deed and in truth.

So therefore, in the language of Paul, I say: “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have. For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. . . . But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: FOR GOD LOVETH A CHEERFUL GIVER.”