“Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:37-38).
Health and wealth heretics and prosperity preachers love to point their unwitting flocks to this verse, and others like it. They are skilled at using them out of context to manipulate their flocks into sending them money. “Give,” Jesus says, “and it will be given to you!” If you are generous, God will be generous to you. If you give, God will give to you. So, if you want to experience increase, whether in your bank account, your health, or your love life, give. More specifically, give money to me, the TV preacher. Sow your seed offering. Be like the widow who gave all she had. Give until it hurts so God knows you are serious. And if, after you sow your seed and step out in faith, you don’t receive your “increase”, it isn’t because I am a liar; You simply must not have given enough. You didn’t have enough faith. Never fear! The TV preacher will allow you to send him as much money as it takes to obtain your blessing. This is what has been called the Prosperity Gospel. False teachers have been using it to bilk people of their money for many years. It works especially well in America, where we do not experience the hopeless, soul-crushing poverty prevalent in many other areas of the world.
But, looking at Christ’s words, isn’t that what the plain reading of the text says? Give and it will be given to you. Isn’t Jesus literally telling His disciples that he will bless them if they give generously? No. These two verses come from the middle of a sermon that spans 29 verses in Luke’s Gospel. Understood in their context we learn what Jesus is actually discussing: Jesus is talking about forgiveness. He wants us to forgive others. He has granted us a generous portion of forgiveness, we are to do likewise, if we really believe what Jesus says is true. That good treasure He has put into our hearts by the working of His Holy Spirit through the Means of Grace should overflow out of us. Is this any surprise? This is the same Jesus who teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”[1] This is the Jesus who told Peter the parable of the unforgiving servant, and that he should forgive his neighbor, not seven times, but seventy times seven times.[2]
We, who have been freely forgiven by Christ for our sin, should treat our neighbors likewise. If we don’t, we must reexamine whether we really believe that God has forgiven us by his grace, in Christ, apart from our works. We run the risk of being that unforgiving servant. If we removed verse 38 from the discourse here recorded by Luke, is there any doubt that Christ is talking about mercy and forgiveness? Does it make sense that His focus should shift from forgiveness and mercy, to a magic formula for having your best life now, for the space one sentence? Of course not. We daily sin much and deserve nothing but punishment. Since God has given us forgiveness through His Son freely, we will also heartily forgive, and also readily do good, even to those who sin against us.[3]
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