in vain to give themselves to the Gospel service of the Church.
The word is ours as much as it was the disciples. It is addressed to us also. It was this text which freed Francis of Assisi, and sent him forth on his mission of giving. Only we are more fortunate than the disciples. For them the distinction was temporal. After receiving from Jesus they had to leave him in order to give. But now he is with us, both in our receiving and our giving. Nor need I say much to associate these words with a harvest festival. “Freely ye have received.” I know that farming and gardening need capital. I know that they demand a good deal of labor. But none of that can detract from the freedom of God’s giving. Without his gift, our money and our toil would bring no fruit. This harvest is his gift, and the most valuable of gifts.
And again, freely give. It is always a comfortable illusion to think that the words of the Bible are always to be taken in a spiritual sense. More often than not they are very literal. They are what a Christian saint once said he was—grossly materialistic. They are grossly materialistic precisely as Charles Kingsley was. He was a saint and a mystic but he was interested in servers.10 And the Bible talks pointedly about cups of water, clothes, visiting prisons, and curing the sick. “Therefore freely give.” Not just a dole of vegetables once a year. Give your time and strength and money in serving the sick and the needy, in reorganizing our social life. But let us come back to the real exposition of the text. It suggests three things.
FREELY
If I wanted to choose one word to describe the Christian good news it might be the one word freely. The Gospel is God’s free gift to humankind. It is simply the fullness of his treasury flung open to us. There is enough for all our needs, and we can have what we want. There is no need here for that tragic cry of human despair—not enough. Not through God’s beggarliness but through our sinfulness and silliness there are many things in the world of which there are not enough. Not enough money, not enough clothes, not enough food. Men and women and children are rotting to death because we cannot or will not pass on God’s abundance to them. You can see it in a score of pictures. The empty cupboard, the empty pocket, the ship lost at sea, and there is not enough room in the lifeboats. Not enough tombs and graves. Now with God there is enough. There is enough for the physical needs of human beings. It is only our folly and sin that wastes our surpluses. And there is more than that. Many are the outcasts, the despised, the forsaken in this world; but in God there is enough for them. There is love enough, not only for good people but for folk like me. There is room enough, room enough at his feast not only for the people you would expect, but also for the sick, the maimed, the halt, the blind. There is grace enough to deal with all our sin.
“Grace there is my every debt to pay,
Blood to wash my every sin away
Power to keep me spotless day by day” (H. H.Booth)
Or better:
“Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin” (Charles Wesley)
I looked up the word freely in the concordance, to see what the Bible makes of it. Here are some examples:
Hos 14.4—“I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely.”
Take it in the context of Hosea’s message. Israel has acted like a faithless wife, has gone off with her lovers, only to come back miserable and wretched. And here is the grace of God; in spite of it all, “I will love them freely.” Freely as the Father’s love of the prodigal son.
Rom 3.24—.” . . all have sinned. . . . Having been justified freely, by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
Here is the fruit of God’s free love—justification. He restores us to free discourse with himself.
Rev 22.17—“The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life freely.”
From the first page of the Bible to the last, God cannot speak without inviting—“come buy wine and milk, without money and without price.” The living water that cleanses and refreshes is ours for the taking.
God gives freely, he gives to people who have nothing and deserve less. There is nothing to bring in our hands. We don’t have to be clever, we don’t have to be strong, we don’t have to be good. God gives to us simply for love of giving.
YE RECEIVED
But did we? We are often too proud to take things for nothing. It is possible to sit under the sound of the Gospel for years, and never receive. There is no doubt of God’s willingness to give, but often there is grave doubt of our willingness to take. The hard heart of the Pharisee who thinks God has nothing to give him is the most dangerous thing in the world. Let us look at some of the things Christ offers and ask if we have received them.
There is little doubt of our readiness to receive God’s gifts of food—his harvests. It is when he tells us that humans don’t live by bread alone, that we begin to be suspicious. You can eat without committing yourself; you cannot enter into a personal relationship with God without committing yourself deeply.
John 14.27—“Peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you.” It’s a useful thing to have in these days. The peace that sits quiet and serene in the midst of turmoil and confusion; the peace that is calm and unafraid whatever happens. The peace that says “therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed.” There is no doubt that Jesus left this peace to his disciples. Look at them. Peter sleeping in prison the night before his execution. Paul, the only man unafraid in the great storm scene in Acts. Augustine looking out at the break up of world empire and writing the City of God. Luther standing at Worms, and writing and singing at Eisenach. Christ gave this peace. That is not the question. The question is whether we have received it.
John 6.35—“I am the bread of life” (and the water of life). Jesus came to supply and sustain life. Communion with him means life that is life indeed. Who can deny that he did give life? Who cannot see but that at his touch the wilderness comes to life and the desert blooms as the rose? Men and women found new courage and hope, fresh resources and power. A whole Church leapt into being at his call. “Everything shall live wherever the river comes.”
“For Thou hast made the blind to see,The deaf to hear, the dumb to speak,The dead to live; and, lo, I break The chains of my captivity” (W.T. Matson)
There is no question about that. History no less than faith attests it. The question is whether we have received it.
John 17.3—“And these things I say in the world, in order that they may have my joy, fulfilled in themselves.” Jesus gave joy. I have spoken of one prison scene. Here is another. Paul and Silas at Philippi wrongfully scourged and clapped into jail. There they lie in the inner prison, their backs dripping blood, their feet in stocks, and at midnight they are—singing hymns, praising God. In spite of what many people think, joy is one of the characteristics of Christianity. The early church came upon the ancient world with a burst of gaiety that revived all people’s notion of life. Again there is no question that Christ freely gives it. The question is whether we have received it.
And we haven’t, at least we haven’t received all that he has to give. Maybe some of us have received precious little, or nothing at all. But if we have turned down his offers before, why should we now? Why should we keep up our pride? Why not acknowledge our empty hands and simply cling to the cross?
“I will accept his offer now,from every sin depart perform my oft
