Blogging in Christ — Issue 11

Freely Give

Every writer who gathers others around his work soon faces a question. The work has cost him time. Readers have come. Shall the table now charge admission? The question sounds practical, as though it concerned only upkeep. In truth it concerns the gift itself. A price does not merely support the work. It redefines it, turning herald into merchant, hearer into customer, and fellowship into a room whose door opens only to those who pay.

The sending of the heralds settles the question before any room is built. "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Freely you received, so freely give." (Matt 10:8) The second half follows from the first: the disciples did not earn the authority they carried. "He called to himself his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every sickness." (Matt 10:1) Authority was given, healing was given, the word was given. Therefore the giving must match the receiving. A man who received freely and then sells what he received has changed the gift's direction: it came as grace and leaves as merchandise.

Therefore the same sending forbids the apparatus of charging. "Don’t take any gold, silver, or brass in your money belts." (Matt 10:9) "Take no bag for your journey, neither two coats, nor sandals, nor staff: for the laborer is worthy of his food." (Matt 10:10) Provision is promised as food given, not as a fee extracted. The Lord who sends the laborer will see to it through others' hands, not by letting the laborer set his price and bar the door to those who cannot meet it. The difference is between a gift received and a toll collected: one keeps the herald dependent, the other makes him a gatekeeper.

Simon of Samaria shows the gift mistaken for a commodity. "Now when Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that whomever I lay my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.”" (Acts 8:18-19) Simon asked not for teaching but for power, and offered the only currency he knew. Peter's answer does not negotiate the price; it condemns the premise. "But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!”" (Acts 8:20) "You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart isn’t right before God." (Acts 8:21) The gift of God cannot be obtained with money, not because the price is too low, but because the category is wrong. Money buys what men own. The gift is not owned by the man who carries it. He is its steward, not its seller.

Elisha draws the opposite line, and Gehazi breaches it in the same chapter. Naaman, healed, offered a gift, and Elisha refused it. "But he said, “As Yahweh lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.” He urged him to take it; but he refused." (2 Kgs 5:16) The refusal protected the gift's character. Had Elisha taken payment, the healing could afterward be told as a transaction. Refused, it remains the Lord's healing, freely given. Gehazi then ran after the payment Elisha had refused, and Elisha's question exposed the appetite beneath the errand. "Didn’t my heart go with you when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and olive groves and vineyards, and sheep and cattle, and male servants and female servants?" (2 Kgs 5:26) There is a time to receive what is freely offered, and there is no time to turn the work of God into an occasion for gain.

That warning names the paid room for what it is. A community that charges admission divides the fellowship by ability to pay, and calls the division a benefit. Those inside receive sharpening, counsel, and company; those outside receive the announcement that such things exist, at a price. Yet the fellowship in Acts had the opposite shape. "They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer." (Acts 2:42) "All who believed were together, and had all things in common." (Acts 2:44) "They sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need." (Acts 2:45) The movement runs outward, from those who have toward those who need, not inward toward a door that opens for a fee. The early believers sold what they owned to meet need. The paid room sells access and calls the sale fellowship. The direction of the money tells the truth about the room.

Moreover, a price changes the writer's own posture toward his work. "For we are not as so many, peddling the word of God. But as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ." (2 Cor 2:17) Peddling is a trade: the word carried like wares, shaped by what sells. The peddler studies his buyer and trims the word to fit the want, because the sale depends on it. The herald speaks in the sight of God, and the sight of God is not a market. A writer who must keep paying members satisfied will sooner or later soften what offends them and repeat what pleases them, because displeased members leave. The price thus becomes an editor, working quietly through the writer's knowledge that his standing depends on keeping the room full.

Paul's own practice answers the objection that free preaching is impractical. "Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached to you God’s Good News free of charge?" (2 Cor 11:7) To preach free of charge was a humbling of himself for the exaltation of his hearers. "What then is my reward? That when I preach the Good News, I may present the Good News of Christ without charge, so as not to abuse my authority in the Good News." (1 Cor 9:18) Paul names a reward, but the reward is the freedom itself: to present the Good News without charge, so that no one could say his authority was a lever for gain. Authority turned into a price becomes abuse, because the hearer can no longer tell whether he is being taught or being sold.

This is why the invitation of Scripture is framed as a purchase without money. "Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isa 55:1) The buyer here has no money, and that is the point. He is told to come, and the coming itself is the purchase, because the price has already been borne elsewhere. "The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” He who hears, let him say, “Come!” He who is thirsty, let him come. He who desires, let him take the water of life freely." (Rev 22:17) The chain runs from the Spirit to the bride to the hearer to the thirsty, and every link says the same word: come. No link adds a fee. To insert a price anywhere in that chain is to break it, because the thirsty man who cannot pay will stop at the toll.

Therefore the fellowship of writers costs nothing, and its freeness is not an accident of low overhead. It is the doctrine itself, applied to the table. Writers gather to sharpen and correct one another and to send one another out again, because they received freely, and they do it in the open, where any reader may sit and listen. The writer who charges for the room must maintain, recruit for, and defend it, and the room soon becomes the work, displacing the writing it was meant to serve.

Let the practice be plain. Write the piece. Send it out. Answer the letter that comes back, whether it praises or corrects, and share the counsel you received with the writer who asks, without counting whether he has paid for the right to ask. "In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’" (Acts 20:35) The blessedness lies on the giving side, and the giving side has no cash register. The herald who gives freely testifies, by that freeness, to the freeness of the gift he announces. The gift was not bought, the herald was not paid to carry it, and the hearer need not pay to receive it. Freely he received. Freely, then, let him give.