2 Corinthians 9:10

THE SEED AND ITS LESSONS

‘He that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, shall supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness.’

2 Corinthians 9:10 (R. V.)

It is remarkable that the metaphor of sowing and reaping, so familiar to us in its widest moral and spiritual application in the gospels, is in the epistles employed almost exclusively in reference to contributions and alms. In the passage before us, the Apostle is immediately concerned with the Christian duty of cheerful liberality, and according to his wont, he is illustrating this duty from the laws which govern production in the world of nature. The same God Who presides over physical increase is pledged to bring about spiritual increase. As certainly as He supplies man with seed to sow, and therefore with power to multiply and perpetuate the gift of His daily bread, so certainly will He take care that the seed of charitable and merciful deeds shall not fail.

I. The fact set forth in the text.—‘God,’ says St. Paul, ‘supplieth seed to the sower, and bread for food.’ It has been thoughtfully said that if the annual growth of seed is not in itself a perpetual miracle, it is the perpetual evidence of a miracle that has been once wrought. It is a thing which tells clearly and unquestionably of a Divine provision for the life of man, and, indeed, it comes to him year after year as the direct gift of God; for it is incapable of imitation or reproduction by all the thought and ingenuity which men can bring to bear. The continuance of the race is actually staked upon that redundance of increase which leaves seed for the sower after supplying bread to the eater.

II. The capacity of germination and growth, which belongs to the seed, requires certain influences to bring it into action—influences external to it. The potential life inherent in it cannot become actual until it is in a medium which develops it. In the passage from Isaiah which St. Paul has in his eye, the rain and the snow from heaven stand for the sum of those developing forces without which, in Christ’s words, the seed abideth alone. They represent the fertilising influences of earth and air and light, as well as the moisture, the most obvious and powerful of all.

III. Having contemplated God’s part, let us look at man’s.—Man sows and eats. God has assigned to man just that amount and degree of co-operation with Himself which dignifies and yet humbles. Man must plant and then God gives the increase. His provision, bounteous and complete as it is, will not feed man unless man exerts himself. And this human foresight and labour, which God has made a sine qua non of our existence here, is no flaw or defect: it is the very perfection of His plan. ‘Seed for the sower and bread for food.’ Sowing and eating are closely related in the economy of our life.

IV. Observe what a counterpart this whole scheme of provision for our physical life finds in the spiritual sphere.—There also God’s gifts and man’s labour must combine. It is God Who gives the seed. God has ordained that if one generation does not sow, the next must suffer famine. No man may live to himself in the family of God. He has a duty to those who shall follow him. It is a distinct and solemn charge to every age of the Church and to every member of the Church, not only to use the seed for its or his own nourishment, but to plant it for those who shall come after.

V. Man must not only sow this Divine seed, but he must eat of it.—When the Word of God ceases to be used as a sustenance to the soul, it soon ceases to be sown for the good of others. Let us ask ourselves what we are doing with His unspeakable gift.

Rev. Canon Duckworth.

Illustration

‘We are told that within the dark recesses of Egyptian tombs, wrapped in the cerements of the dead, wheat has been found, the produce of harvests gathered in thousands of years ago, which, when committed to the soil, has sprouted and sprung up, and reproduced itself a thousand-fold. You and I, as English Christians, inherit a system which has had just such a history. The Word of God, which is our own priceless heritage, lay hidden for long ages where no light could penetrate and no fertilising virtue reach. Embalmed in a strange tongue and guarded with an ignorant devotion, its heavenly light was arrested and held in suspense, but it was neither destroyed nor impaired, and when the great upheaval of the Reformation rent its tomb, our fathers discovered it with the joy of one who findeth great spoils, and started it on a new career of blessing as seed for the sower and bread for the eater.’