Acts 20:35 – And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.
I suppose in order to understand what Jesus was saying here we have to understand the word, blessed, that He used. In the CWSB dictionary, this word blessed (makarios) is described as meaning this – – ‘A prose form of the poetic mákar, blessed one. Blessed, possessing the favor of God, that state of being marked by fullness from God, Makários is the one who is in the world yet independent of the world. His satisfaction comes from God and not from favorable circumstances’. So Jesus is describing a supernatural blessing that affects every part of our lives. Here is how Matthew Henry describes this.
“It is more blessed to give to others than to receive from others, not only more blessed to be rich, and so be on the giving end, than to be poor, and so on the receiving end — everyone acknowledges this — but also more blessed to do good with what we have, whether it is much or little, than to increase it and make it more. The attitude of the children of this world is contrary to this; they are afraid of giving. They live in hope of getting. With them, making a clear gain is the most blessed thing possible, but Christ says, It is more blessed to give than to receive. It makes us more like God, who gives to everyone and receives from no one, and more like the LORD Jesus, who went about doing good. It is more blessed to make an effort than to receive pay for it. It is more pleasant to do good to the grateful, but it is more honorable to do good to the ungrateful, because then we have God as our paymaster.”
I love what Henry described here, he said that the natural man lives in a fear of giving and spends his life in hope of getting. All of this stems from not having a glimpse of the goodness of God. Living under His favor is closely connected to exactly what Paul and Jesus were referring to here; there is a higher quality of life that they called blessed that is connected to a lifestyle of giving. When we glimpse God’s love for us and His extreme generosity this is our response, it is more blessed to give than to receive.
