Hank Smith: 00:01 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I’m your host. I’m here with John Bytheway. Hey, John, we’ve been studying first Corinthians and second Corinthians for a while now. What have you learned from Paul and these Corinthians Saints?

John Bytheway: 00:18 Well, I actually got to go to Corinth once, and it was so fun to hear the backstory of what that place on the isthmus that had so much commerce and travel and everything, and you get a sense of, “This was a real gathering place for a lot of people and for travelers and a lot of worldliness there.” So, when you read what Paul’s addressing, you’re like, “Yep. Yep, yep,” when you see that. So, I’m excited to see how he finishes in this second letter.

Hank Smith: 00:45 I’ve noticed that Paul has a lot of interaction with these Corinthian Saints. He spent 18 months with them as we learned in the book of Acts, and then the back and forth with these letters. There’s a letter that we’re told is there, but we don’t have. There’s also what Paul calls a painful visit. This back and forth seems to me like a friendship almost. It has ups and downs. It’s, “I love you. What are you doing? I love you. We’ve got to address some problems.” John, we have a Bible expert here with us today. He wouldn’t call himself a Bible expert, but I think he is. His name is Dr. Joseph Spencer. I like to call him Joe. Joe, what are we looking forward to today with the last lesson here in Corinthians?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 01:31 There’s a lot here. We’ll be looking at really two blocks of text, a couple of chapters in which Paul is talking about a collection that’s being gathered for the saints in Jerusalem. There are some interesting things to dig into there, but then especially the last four chapters here, Paul’s parting words to the Corinthian Saints at least by way of letter, and some really beautiful teachings about weakness and grace. So, lots we can play around with today.

Hank Smith: 01:57 Good. This sounds fantastic. Sounds like we’re going to learn a lot. Hey, John, Joe is new to our podcast. He’s not new to me. We’ve been friends for many years, but he’s new to our podcast. Why don’t you tell everybody about him?

John Bytheway: 02:09 We’re excited to have Dr. Joseph M. Spencer. He’s a philosopher, associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He has degrees from Brigham Young University, San Jose State, and the University of New Mexico where he got his PhD in philosophy. He’s the author of seven books, co-editor of four collections of essays. He serves as the editor of the Journal of Book Mormon Studies, and is the associate director of Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar, a co-editor for the introductions to Mormon thought, and he and his wife Karen live in Provo with their five children. His latest book is called A Word in Season, and the subtitle is Isaiah’s Reception in the Book of Mormon.

John Bytheway: 02:53 That will be published in November. I’m excited to see that. It’s like, “Why is Isaiah in there,” and how is it perceived among early readers of the Book of Mormon?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 03:04 I mean, the question I’m trying to sort out in the book is just how unique is the Book of Mormon’s handling of Isaiah, if you put it in conversation with the larger history of Christians and Jews, and reading Isaiah and making sense of it.

John Bytheway: 03:16 Well, we may have to have you back next year when we take on the Book of Mormon, right, Hank?

Hank Smith: 03:22 Absolutely. Joe is an expert there as well. So, Joe, I want to jump right in here, but can we do a little bit of review? I mentioned earlier that Paul spent 18 months, a year and a half, with these Corinthian Saints, basically raised up this branch, leaves, and first Corinthians is his response to all the problems he’s heard about since being away. What has happened since then. Why do we get a second letter?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 03:48 More than just a second letter, right? There are letters that he wrote that we know of… well, at least one that we know of that we don’t have. Of course, he may have had other correspondence. He’s one of the first missionaries there it seems, and helps to found this branch, as you put it, though he baptizes only one person, I think, there, right? He leaves to others that work. He does a lot of preaching it seems, but then he keeps a close eye on the Corinthian saints. So, he has a further visit at some later point, what he calls his painful visit, his tearful visit. That seems to have been very, very difficult. It’s not clear exactly what happened.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 04:22 But from First Corinthians, it’s clear that things are rocky in Corinth with the saints. There’s a lot of factional spirit about it, a tribalism, which isn’t at all relevant in the 21st century.

Hank Smith: 04:35 Not at all.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 04:35 I’m sure, and a great deal of trying to figure out novel ways to think about the Christian revelation and in ways that then lead to all these kinds of problems as well as just some straightforward sinfulness that Paul has to address.

Hank Smith: 04:52 I remember going up to some of those Greek temples where they have the prostitution, and saying, “Well, we’re free in Christ, so we can do what we want.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 05:00 Exactly.

Hank Smith: 05:01 Then didn’t he talk quite a bit about food, if I remember right.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 05:04 Yeah. There’s all this battle about, “Well, if we have what he calls Christian license, we have the freedom in Christ to do basically anything, then we can eat whatever we want.” He’s like, “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.” Got to figure out how to get along together, and sometimes your freedom is leading other people into trouble.

Hank Smith: 05:24 Then with Dr. Nelson, last week, we looked at Paul reconciling. It seems to be the beginning of second Corinthians is this, “I was pretty harsh. Let’s reconcile. I’m actually happy I was pretty harsh, because it helped you quite a bit, but let’s reconcile. I still love you.” Does that sound right for the beginning?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 05:45 Yeah, and ties it to a doctrine of reconciliation with us and God, so he can take his own experience, and make it a reflection of the gospel itself.

Hank Smith: 05:55 One of my favorite parts of reading was Where is your letters of recommendation and Paul’s responses? I started this branch. You are my letters of recommendation, this, “Are you kidding me?” So, with that background, Joe, lead us into chapter eight. Where do you want to go? How do you want to start this?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 06:15 So, chapters eight and nine form a unit. In fact, many scholars have played with the possibility that chapters eight and nine were from an independent letter, and got sandwiched in here or something like that. There’s an abrupt shift at the beginning of chapter eight, and an abrupt shift again at the beginning of chapter 10. So, what we have going on here, Paul is talking to the Corinthian saints about something that shows up in bits and pieces across his letters. So, scholars have had to reconstruct the situation here, but with some reconstruction, it’s really, really helpful to know. Paul, after he began his ministry generally going around missionizing, preaching in all these places, he clearly saw what he was doing and what was happening.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 06:57 That is his mission to the Gentiles as a fulfillment of very specific prophecies in the Old Testament. Here, especially, you might think of Isaiah 60 and 61. You get these prophecies not only of Gentiles coming and recognizing that Israel’s God is God, but there’s talk of the Gentiles laying their gold and their silver at the feet of Israel. Paul believed he was living through the fulfillment of the gospel coming to the Gentiles. I mean, he was, right? So, when he read these passages, he thought this is the reconstruction. He seems to have thought one thing that might help other Jews who have not yet seen in Jesus Christ the Messiah, who haven’t recognized that Jesus is the Messiah. If they can see that those prophecies are being fulfilled, this might provoke them to go, “Oh, something’s happening here.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 07:44 Romans 9 to 11 talks a lot about that theme. One thing Paul then does is as he goes around to the various Gentile congregations, he asks them to gather up whatever extra monies they have, and then he will have them all delivered to the Jewish saints in Jerusalem, and this will be this glorious fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. So, you get traces of that at the end of Romans, at the end of First Corinthians, as referred to very directly in Galatians, and then of course in Acts 24, when Paul goes to Jerusalem, it’s reported that he brings with him all this wealth.

Hank Smith: 08:18 Joe, do we know what’s going on in Jerusalem? What’s happening that the saints there need so much assistance?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 08:25 I don’t know that we have a ton of detail except that the Jewish saints are very poor, that they just seem to be very impoverished. Gathering all of this up, at the very least, would just be a question of alleviating poverty. But on top of that, it seems Paul wants to make this symbolic gesture to signal a fulfillment of prophecy. So here in chapters eight and nine, this is what Paul is talking to the Corinthian saints about. He had… Apparently, a year before, they’d made a bunch of pledges about how much they were going to contribute, and then he’s gone up to Macedonia, the saints up north. This is places like Thessalonica and Philippi, and said, “Hey, guess what those guys down in Corinth are doing? They’re really leading the way on this.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 09:02 The saints in Macedonia have given a ton, and then he finds out that the Corinthian saints are backing out, so these two chapters. They’re not making good on their pledge, and so he writes this strongly-worded recommendation that they get back on their program.

Hank Smith: 09:19 The other saints, the saints in Galatia, the Macedonians, they’re really giving, “What are you guys doing?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 09:27 Exactly. He even says… I mean, this is really early in the text, but he says that the saints in Macedonia have given more than they have. They’re actually relatively impoverished, and yet they’ve just given and given and given. You, Corinthians, who have all this wealth are sitting on it. This may be a side point, but I think it might help make some of this matter for latter-day saints, because it feels like, “Okay, there was this historical thing Paul was working on,” but this issue of the collection is actually directly talked about in the Doctrine and Covenants. So, in section 42, when the Lord introduces the law of consecration to the saints, the Lord opens it by saying… This is section 42 verse 29 and 30, “If thou lovest me, thou shalt serve me and keep all my commandments, and behold thou wilt remember the poor, and consecrate thy properties, et cetera, et cetera.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 10:14 That phrase “remember the poor” shows up in exactly two places in all of scripture, and it’s right there in that verse in Doctrine & Covenants 42, and it’s in Galatians 2:10 when Paul explains the commandment to gather this collection to take to Jerusalem. Then after the law of consecration gets described in Doctrine & Covenants 42, then this is how the Lord explains its purpose. So, this is verse 39, “For it shall come to pass that which I speak by the mouths of my prophets shall be fulfilled for I will consecrate of the riches of those who embrace my gospel among the Gentiles, unto the poor of my people who are of the house of Israel.” That’s exactly what Paul was doing.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 10:51 So, sometimes it may feel like these details weird, old historical things don’t necessarily matter much now, but this is the Lord himself draws all of this back to our attention, what Paul was doing and says, “This is what the law of consecration looks like.”

Hank Smith: 11:05 I’m going to read a section from the manual here, the opening section from the manual. It seems to go right aligned with what you’re talking about. It says, “What would you do if you heard that a congregation of saints in another area was struggling in poverty?” This was the situation that Paul described to the Corinthian Saints in 2 Corinthians. He hoped to persuade the Corinthian Saints to donate some of their abundance to saints in need, but beyond a request for donations, Paul’s words also contain profound truths about giving every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God loveth a cheerful giver. In our day, there are still saints throughout the world who are in need of help.

Hank Smith: 11:50 Sometimes the most we can do for them is to fast and donate fast offerings. In other cases, our giving can be more direct and personal. Whatever forms our sacrifices take, it’s worth examining our motivations for giving. Are our sacrifices expressions of love? After all, it’s love that makes a cheerful giver. I think we’re right in line now to learn about giving to those in need. Maybe there’s some listeners who are about to turn it off going, “I don’t want to give anything.” Don’t turn off the podcast. Stay with us here. I think we’re really going to dive into what this really means as a Christian.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 12:30 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 12:31 I’m old enough to remember when President Spencer W. Kimball used to emphasize, he called it the threefold mission of the church, proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints, and redeem the dead. I believe it was during President Thomas S. Monson’s time that he added forth was to care for the poor and needy. The most recent way it’s been articulated in the handbook, I just love it. It’s four verbs, live, care, invite, unite, live the gospel of Jesus Christ, care for those in need. Hank, what you just read from the manual, it didn’t say the poor and needy. I like how it says care for those in need, because any of us might be in need.

John Bytheway: 13:13 There might be a temporary setback or something, or maybe it is more chronic, I don’t know, but live the gospel of Jesus Christ, care for those in need, invite all to receive the gospel, and unite families for eternity. I love that President Monson introduced that, and that now it’s part of what we are all about and what we’re talking about here. What you mentioned in section 42 and in Galatians, exactly, that should be constantly on the minds of a Christian community is how do we care for each other?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 13:44 Part of the difficulty with reading 2 Corinthians eight and nine is that the King James version can feel really hard to read here. Paul in general can feel hard in the King James version, right?

John Bytheway: 13:55 We’ve experienced that.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 13:57 Yes. These letters are actually quite forceful in the Greek. So, I was wondering if we might actually just read a couple of these passages in a modern translation.

Hank Smith: 14:06 Sure.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 14:07 Kind of get the feel of it. So, I’ll read. This is the first seven verses of chapter eight. This is from NT Wright’s translation of the New Testament. NT Wright is an Anglican scholar and clergyman and just an amazing person.

Hank Smith: 14:20 He’s been quoted on our podcast before.

John Bytheway: 14:23 He wrote a biography of Paul that we’ve had lots of people quote from. I think it’s just called Paul, A Biography. So if readers want to go deeper, that’s a great source.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 14:35 This is how he translates the first seven verses of chapter eight, and you can feel the force of Paul’s here. “Let me tell you my dear family about the grace which God has given to the Macedonian churches. They have been sorely tested by suffering, but the abundance of grace, which was given to them and the depths of poverty they have endured, have overflowed in a wealth of sincere generosity on their part. I bear them witness that of their own accord up to their ability and even beyond their ability, they begged us eagerly to let them have the privilege of sharing and the work of service for God’s people. They didn’t just do what we had hoped. They gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us as God willed it. This put us in a position where we could encourage Titus that he should complete this work of grace that had begun among you.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 15:18 “You have plenty of everything after all, plenty of faith and speech and knowledge and all kinds of eagerness, and plenty of love coming from us to you. So, why not have plenty of this grace too?” It’s nice to just feel the flow like Paul is writing with force and conviction and very practical concerns as he is talking. But what might be maybe most useful to reflect on together here would be a verse that comes just a little bit later than that, just a verse or two on where Paul, trying to get the saints in Corinth to be a bit more generous, compares their task to Christ’s atonement. This is verse nine. Now, I’m reading from the King James, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor. That ye through his poverty might be rich.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 16:06 That’s a beautiful description, and a really nice way of connecting our task of consecration and of taking care of the poor to the very act of Christ’s atonement. He is God. He has all these resources spiritually, and yet he becomes poor so that we become rich. If that isn’t a good motivation to take seriously our task.

John Bytheway: 16:28 Thank you for bringing in verse nine. I love that Paul would do this. It’s like, “Listen, the heart of the whole gospel is generosity maybe of Christ.” As he introduced, we must be generous with each other. Look what the Savior did for us, and I’m thinking of Isaiah. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement that brought us peace was upon him, and with his stripes, we are healed, and he descended below all things. I mean, the heart of that is such generosity and selflessness. Then Paul’s asking the saints to do the same for each other. I like that connection you made.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 17:09 I mean, it reminds me of King Benjamin a bit too, right? Benjamin says, “Look, you are begging, and then here’s the beggar. You were begging, and God gave you something you completely did not deserve. He’s redeemed you, and poured out his spirit and so on. He could have looked on you and said, “You brought this on yourself,” but he didn’t. Now, you’re going to look at the beggar, and say… Similar kind of gesture, he weaves together Christ’s over abundant grace toward us, and then says, “Now, can’t you get right your relationship to those who need a bit of help?”

Hank Smith: 17:41 I think, Paul, if I had to sum it up, you think to be a Christian is to become generosity. It’s not even enough to be generous. This becomes an integral part of your nature, because you’re trying to be like the Savior. Sometimes you might think of, “Let’s give of our substance. Let’s pry it out of your grip. Come on, just let go and give it away,” where I think Paul wants a change of heart, not just giving money. He wants them to become like Christ who is just so openly generous. I just can’t see the Savior going, “I don’t want to give. I don’t want to bless, but they’ll pry it out of my hands. I guess I have to give it to them.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 18:29 I mean, that’s King Benjamin. Again, in Mosiah 4, after Benjamin’s people have had this experience of Christ, they’ve fallen to the ground, and they cried out for mercy, and they’ve received it. This is where Paul starts talking about the beggar, but one of the things he says, he says, “So if you can get this kind of attitude right, if you can get this every day, then he says, you will take care of the beggar.” He doesn’t say, “You had better.” It becomes a natural outreach. In fact, that famous verse where he says, “Now, you might say to yourself, “I’m not going to reach out. I’m not going to help.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 18:59 It’s interesting that he says there, “You might tell yourself, “I will stay my hand,” which means my hand is already reaching out. Automatically, I’m reaching out at this point. You might try to talk yourself out of it, but if Christ has really worked on you, you can’t but reach out and help.

Hank Smith: 19:17 Joe, as we’re going along, I’d love for our listeners to have practical ways of practicing this along the way if you think of things.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 19:28 I mean, asking a philosopher to be practical, that could be difficult, but it is worth saying. I mean, right from the outset here, there’s this amazing talk years ago by Elder Holland called Are we Not All Beggars from general conference. Toward the end of that talk, he says, “Now, the problem is enormous. What do we do?” He literally says, “I don’t know.” Then he says, “But that’s why you’ve got to get on your knees that there’s no general program here. You’ve got to take this up with God. What can you do?” I think that’s important that this is the kind of thing we can’t program. It’s the kind of thing we have to always feel a little uncomfortable with. We can’t be at ease in Zion.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 20:07 I like a line from CS Lewis about this when he says, “I often get asked, how much should you give?” He says, “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not giving enough,” a little uncomfortable, right? Am I giving enough? Am I reaching out enough? If I feel like, “Yeah, I’m doing great” the question’s-

John Bytheway: 20:26 You’re probably not doing great.

Hank Smith: 20:29 That’s interesting, because I often hear from general authorities a generous fast. That’s never given an amount, right? It’s never given, “Here’s what a generous fast is. It’s a generous fast.”

John Bytheway: 20:42 I’m fascinated when the widow threw in her mite that Jesus didn’t say, “Oh, give it back to her.” He let her do that, which is amazing. That was all she had.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 20:56 It’s, I mean, maybe important to emphasize that Paul is writing to a community. I mean, he’s asking them to gather up what they can to send outside of their community, which of course we have that responsibility. Often, that’s what fast offerings end up doing. They help locally, but then the extras head off and can help elsewhere. I mean, last time I read statistics, a billion people go to bed hungry every night in the world. We have serious responsibilities on that score, but he’s also writing to a community. In so many ways, this is the practical reality of what it looks like to take care of one another is the kind of simple everyday work that can only happen in a community. So-and-so is struggling, and it’s their neighbor that actually reaches out and recognizes that something’s going on.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 21:40 I’m lucky and that I live in a ward in Provo where our whole ward is seven blocks big, but the result is the neighborhood is the ward. The ward is the neighborhood in a lot of ways. It allows you to see way more clearly the kind of work a ward community can do for each other than sometimes when you’re spread out as more geographically. You can just see completely intertwined lives, and when someone’s in any kind of difficulty, what the saints are willing to do for each other. I think that’s very much a manifestation of the same kind of thing.

Hank Smith: 22:13 Joe, let’s keep going on this. I don’t think this is all Paul has to say on this, right?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 22:17 He has a lot to say, and I mean, a lot of it can feel very practical and focused on what’s happening there in Corinth. But one thing that I think is interesting here, there’s a strategy Paul uses that we might pick out of a couple of verses that might feel a little weird in some ways, but I think is actually really intriguing. This is actually jumping back a verse to chapter eight verse eight, and then we’ll actually jump ahead to a verse in chapter nine. Chapter eight verse eight, he says, “I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 22:49 Then jumping to chapter nine verse two, he says this, “For I know the forwardness of your mind for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia, which is where Corinth is, that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many.” Those two verses show that part of Paul’s strategy in trying to gather this collection is to create a contest to try to get the saints in Macedonia to be like, “Nah, we’re going to beat the Saints in Achaia, and the saints in Achaia-

John Bytheway: 23:16 It’s like a telethon.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 23:18 Right. It really does feel that way a little, and that feels a little strange. We’re like, “Is that really the way you want to-

Hank Smith: 23:23 Go about this?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 23:25 Yeah. Do we want this to be competition? But I don’t think it’s quite that Paul is trying to create competition, but he does want to use each other’s successes to build up the other, the one successes to build up the successes of the other, and to say, “Look, it’s possible. There’s more that you can do, because look over here, that’s going on.” That may be a helpful thing and a healthy thing to think about. Sometimes we can hear success stories in the church, and just be like, “Oh, then that means I’m terrible. Here we go, right?” Someone else did something, “Oh, that Relief Society President did all those things, which shows me that I am not doing anything like I was supposed to do.”

Hank Smith: 24:00 I’m a worthless non-giver.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 24:03 Right, but there’s also the version of it where if we have the right spirit about it, hearing the successes of others can make us go, “Oh, hang on, there’s work that can be done here. There is more that we can do. I need to get over myself a bit here.” So, the fact that Paul is playing these two regions off of each other, interesting and suggestive in certain ways, I think.

John Bytheway: 24:27 I believe it was the woman of Bethany that anointed Jesus’s feet. Jesus just has this wonderful phrase, “She hath done what she could.” I love that phrase, because I can’t do as much as that person did. I can’t do as much, but rather, that comforting phrase, she did what she could, and we can have peace in that. I did what I could.

Hank Smith: 24:50 The woman who anoints Jesus’ feet, that’s the same story that Elder Holland brought up in the talk we mentioned previously, “Are we not all beggars?” He talks about that phrase. She has done what she could, and then he says this, “What a succinct formula. A journalist once questioned Mother Teresa of Calcutta about her hopeless task of rescuing the destitute in that city. He said that statistically speaking, she was accomplishing absolutely nothing. This remarkable little woman shot back that her work was about love, not statistics. Notwithstanding the staggering number beyond her reach, she said she could keep the commandment to love God and her neighbor by serving those within her reach with whatever resources she had.

Hank Smith: 25:35 ‘What we do is nothing but a drop in the ocean,’ she would say on another occasion, but if we didn’t do it, the ocean would be one drop less than it is. Soberly, the journalist concluded that Christianity is obviously not a statistical endeavor. He reasoned that if there would be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 who need no repentance, then apparently, God is not overly preoccupied with percentages. So as much as we’d love to eradicate all poverty, that’s probably not within one person’s reach.” So, we can’t say, “Well, because I can’t get rid of all of it, I’m not going to do anything.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 26:14 It’s so easy to feel like we aren’t doing what we can, and we alternate between extremes. We tend to either think that we’re not doing anything like what we should do when we’re actually doing all right, or we tend to think we’re doing everything great when we’re not doing anything at all. I was speaking at a fireside recently up in the Salt Lake area, and a woman asked a question during the fireside about, “I just feel like I don’t do enough and so on.” We talked about it a bit, but she came up to me afterward to talk and said, “So, here’s my situation. I’m from Zimbabwe. I’m just here visiting.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 26:47 She said, “Back home, I’m in the stake relief society presidency. I’m in the ward primary presidency, and I run all the music for the ward. I just don’t think I do enough.” You’re doing… My heavens, my heavens, my heavens, you’re good, right?

Hank Smith: 27:02 You’re doing a lot.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 27:04 But then at the other extreme, we can feel like, “Oh my heavens, you can’t really ask that of me, right? So yeah, we tend to alternate between extremes, but if we can see the kind of work that others are doing, not as competition, but as encouragement and a collective spirit, then there’s something I think good that could come out of this kind of thing.

Hank Smith: 27:23 So, maybe Paul’s not wanting them to compete as much as he wants them to be inspired by these other congregations. In chapter 9:7, Paul says this, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 27:44 I’ll go ahead and read from N.T. Wright’s translation again, so we get the flow and feel of the larger passage. Starting in verse five, “So I thought it necessary to exhort the brothers that they should go on to you in advance, and get everything about your gracious gift in order ahead of time. You’ve already promised that after all. Then it really will appear as a gift of grace, not something that has had to be extorted from you. This is what I mean. Someone who sows sparingly will reap sparingly as well. Someone who sows generously will reap generously. Everyone should do as they have determined in their heart, not in the gloomy spirit or simply because they have to since God loves a cheerful giver, and God is well able to lavish all his grace upon you so that in every matter and in every way, you will have enough of everything, and maybe lavish in all your own good works. Just as the Bible says, they spread their favors wide. They gave to the poor. Their righteousness endures forever.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 28:39 He’s quoting from the Psalms at the end of that. So yeah, the context I think makes quite clear what’s going on there. He’s worried about these saints in Corinth getting a bit stingy and not quite coming through on what they had pledged, but he says, “Look, I could have just shown up and told you all off, or something like that, but I thought I’d write you before I get there, and see if I could encourage you to set something straight so that when we come and when these brothers show up to get the collection, it’ll have been done out of the goodness of your heart, and not regretfully and not resentfully.” So that the way, again, it’s translated here, everyone should do as they have determined in their heart not in a gloomy spirit or simply because they have to since God loves a cheerful giver.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 29:22 This ought to come right out of the abundance of your heart. I don’t want this to be extortion. I don’t want this to be the kind of thing you do, because you white-knuckle your way through giving, right? I want this to be something where you have been genuinely transformed by Christ. You get this clear in your mind, and then you give, and God can celebrate that in every way.

Hank Smith: 29:43 Thanks, Joe. That was fantastic. John, what do you have for us?

John Bytheway: 29:47 I’m back with King Benjamin still, how he said, “Okay, what if you see the beggar, and you don’t have anything?” He talked… King Benjamin says, “I would that you would say in your heart, “If I had, I would give.” So, he’s talking about where your heart is in all of this. That ultimately is the doing what you could thing. I appreciate that King Benjamin is talking about not just the amount, but where’s your heart. I think it probably pains some people like King Benjamin said that they can’t give more. That makes me think of the person you mentioned, Joe, from Zimbabwe that was doing all this stuff, and still didn’t think they were doing enough.

John Bytheway: 30:31 I’m reminded of something that really blessed me from President Henry B. Eyring. I’ll have to paraphrase, but in this talk he mentioned someone who might have a calling that feels overwhelming. I’m shifting gears a little bit here, and maybe like that person in Zimbabwe that’s got three callings, and he said, “You might even feel resentful, even might want to complain, but the Lord has given you not demands on your time, but opportunities for service.” Then he said this, and I just thought, “Oh, thank you for saying that.” So, when you approach the Lord, just you can’t do it all. Just ask, “What should I do next?”

John Bytheway: 31:07 I thought, “Oh, that’s perfect. I can’t…” What’s the game? Whack-a-mole or something, you can’t get it all. So, ask the question, “Lord, what should I do next?” That blessed me a lot when I was a little bit overwhelmed. What’s the next best thing I can do? Then I can try to be at peace with that.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 31:29 That’s really nice.

Hank Smith: 31:31 I’d like to put myself in the mind of our listeners, and saying, “Okay, I want to help. I think my heart’s in the right place. What do I do?” Well, one thing that’s very simple to do is to give a generous fast offering. We’ve already mentioned this before, but I’ll tell you a little story. I was a financial clerk. It was a long time ago. It was probably 20 years ago now. This is back when people used checks. I don’t know if either of you remember this time but-

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 32:00 Phase of our history.

Hank Smith: 32:01 People wrote out checks, and it was my job as financial clerk to open those tithing envelopes, and count everything up. I remember one person specifically, a very wealthy man in our ward. He gave a… It was a very large tithing check, but then I always noticed that at times, his fast offering was more than his tithing, which shocked me. I remember pointing that out to my bishop, Bishop Wade Sperry. I remember I said, “Bishop Sperry, this is pretty incredible.” He nodded and said, “That’s who he is,” and yet maybe I can’t do that. Maybe I can’t give all of that. So, maybe on a smaller scale, this is from an article written by Mindy Raye Friedman back in 2014. It’s called Giving More Than Just Money.

Hank Smith: 32:56 Now, lest anybody think, “Oh, okay, I’m not going to give money. I’ll give other things.” Giving money is, I think, central to this message. It’s, “You have resources. Give them.” Are there other things we can give though? This is what she writes. She writes, “One young woman deciding after reading her patriarchal blessing that she wanted to do something grand to help the poor and needy, after unsuccessfully trying to give aid to some people she saw on the street, she thought she’d failed. Then she got home, and found her brother crying, because he’d been teased at school. After taking him out for some ice cream, and listening to his troubles, she learned a lesson. The poor are just as likely to be in your home as on the streets.”

Hank Smith: 33:41 She says, “There are all sorts of needy people in the world, those who need food and shelter of course, but also those who need love, counsel, and encouragement.” So, there’s two things we can do. One, we can give a generous fast offering, increase that fast offering. Then second, just look around you and your family, and then look in your neighborhood, like you said, Joe, those seven blocks of your ward. You’re bound to find someone who needs your help.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 34:10 The older I get, the more astonished I am at just how much hurt there is in the world in big ways, but also in small ways, and just how much of it is hidden behind the front walls of a house, or how much of it is hidden in the heart. The impoverished is a much bigger crowd when we take into account things beyond just what’s physically necessary though also my heavens, what’s physically necessary.

Hank Smith: 34:36 I frequently joke with my students that latter-day saints get together a couple times a week to lie to each other about how they’re doing. How are you? I’m doing great. How are you?

John Bytheway: 34:46 Fine.

Hank Smith: 34:48 Fine. Doing really well. Can’t complain, right? When everybody is struggling in some way.

John Bytheway: 34:54 Hank, I remember hearing a bishop say that he figured everybody was okay. Then when he became a bishop and started hearing what was going on, he’d sit on the stand and go, “That family’s going through this. That family over there is going through this. That family over there is going through this,” and then I got to sit there too. That’s exactly right. Everybody’s going through something, and it really softens you up to let you know everybody’s dealing with something, and you’re so glad that they’re there, and pray that they’ll feel that outpouring from being there, and taking the sacrament to feel the Savior’s love, because everybody’s going through something.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 35:37 Let’s hit one more verse in chapter nine, and then… All of this really leads well into what we’re going to find in chapters 10 through 13, but this is the way that Paul ends these two chapters about the collection. It’s just beautiful in the King James. “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” So, all this grace we’ve been talking about how much God is giving us and then what that means for us and so on, we want to talk about a cheerful giver, a grateful giver, right? Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift. Paul has spent two chapters speaking about gifts, but the gift that God gives us is the unspeakable one. So, I like the way that that juxtaposes again, Christ’s unmeasurable bounty and what he’s given us, and then the measurable but so hard for us, but the measurable gifts we’re meant to give.

Hank Smith: 36:21 The contemporary English version of the Bible says, “Thank God for His gift that is too wonderful for words.” I look at that word unspeakable like, “What does that mean?” The gift that is too wonderful for words.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 36:35 Probably a good place to settle here to start would be in chapter 12. Chapters 10, 11 set up some things, and I think we’ll want to circle back and look at that a bit, but Paul really gets going here. What he’s been doing for a little bit in chapter 11 is fake boasting. What’s going on in these chapters? He’s upset about some people that he actually calls super apostles, these people who are claiming to be they’re not just missionaries. They’re the best or something like that. He’s fed up with what’s going on in Corinth there, and really starts going after them. So, in the kind of parody of them, he boasts a bit. For example, in verse 21 of chapter 11, “I speak as concerning reproach as though we had been weak. Howbeit whereinsoever any is bold, I speak foolishly. I am bold also.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 37:22 “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more, in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I 40 stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep. In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 38:09 So, Paul does a little bit of parody boasting, parodic boasting here, kind of making fun of these supposed super apostles who are claiming that they have so much spiritual authority. But all of that sets up what he contrasts with that attitude, and that I think is what we really want to spend some time on. So, this is now chapter 12. He opens chapter 12 with a little further fake boasting, but he talks here about revelations.

Hank Smith: 38:37 Whenever I boast, I’m going to say that from now on, “This is just fake boasting.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 38:40 This is fake boasting.

John Bytheway: 38:43 Don’t take me serious.

Hank Smith: 38:44 Don’t take me serious, but but let me tell you how great I am.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 38:46 Right, because one thing… I mean, back in chapter 11, all the boasting is, “Look, I have all the same credentials as any of these people. On top of that, look at all I’ve gone through.” But at the beginning of chapter 12, he focuses on revelations, and he puts it in the third person. He’s like, “I know a guy. I know someone who…” Of course, he’s talking about himself, but what he does here I think is really interesting in a lot of ways. So, 12:1, “It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory to boast. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above 14 years ago, whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth. Such an one caught up to the third heaven, divine vision. And I knew such a man. Whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell. God knoweth. How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 39:42 “Of such an one will I glory, yet of myself I will not glory.” So, he’s playing this little game, right? “But I will glory in mine infirmities.” So, he’s built up this whole story, all these things he could boast of, could boast of, could boast of. Even to the point of, “Look, I had a vision, something like section 76 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I was carried up into the heavens. I saw all this.” He’s like, “Of all of that, who cares? None of that is worth boasting about.” Presumably, the people there are claiming they’ve had revelations and so on, but he’s like, “All of that, meh. This isn’t the thing. I want to talk about my infirmities.” That’s really quite a thing. He’s going to spell this out further.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 40:21 A thing to note before we go further, notice that he can’t say anything about that revelation that he had in heaven. He says that he heard unspeakable words. It’s not lawful for man to utter. He can’t pass that on, but he goes on to talk about another revelation, and he can utter it. So, this, I think, is very interesting. This is jumping to verse seven, “Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me, and he said unto me…” Here’s a revelation. “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Then Paul adds, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 41:13 So, this I find very interesting. The chapter opens with, “There’s a revelation I had. I can’t utter it. I can’t explain it, I can’t pass it on. All I can say is that it happened.” But he can go on immediately to talk about his weaknesses, and he says, “Here, God spoke to me and this I can share. This is the kind of thing to boast about. God spoke and he said, “Yeah, you’re pathetic, but my grace is enough.” This, I think, is a passage really worth dwelling on some here. Then verse nine, the language there should sound familiar to Latter-day Saints, not just from Paul but from the Book of Mormon. This is the same language we get in Ether 12. What we have happening in Ether 12 of course is it’s Moroni. He’s been telling this Jaredite history, and then pauses to talk about faith, and he gives a long series of examples of faith from Nephite history, and how witnesses come after our trial of that faith.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 42:04 But at the end of that long history, that long series of examples, he mentions the brother of Jared and his ability to write and so on, and loses his mind. Moroni just starts going, “Yeah, I can’t write. I’ve read the book of Jared. He’s a good writer. I’m terrible,” and eventually seems to just cry out to God, and say, “Fix my writing.” God’s response to him is very like this. So, this was Moroni’s thorn in the flesh. Paul’s, we don’t know exactly what it was, but whatever it was that kept him humble. The language is really remarkable here. So coming back to verse nine in chapter 12, what God says is my grace is sufficient for thee. You could translate that more humbly, I think.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 42:44 N.T. Wrights is very nice, I think. He just translates it as my grace is enough for you. So, how do we hear sufficiency or enoughness here? To say my grace is enough for you is just to say, “Why do you want more than that? Why are you trying to be something I haven’t made you to be? Why are you trying to reach beyond that when I have given you everything you could possibly need here? Why do you need to do this on your own? That’s a hard but also a really beautiful thing to hear. This is what Paul can reveal that he’s heard. Grace is enough. “Even if there are good things we can do, my heaven’s fine, whatever. Grace is enough. God is enough. Why do we want to somehow be beyond that, above that? better than that? What on earth are we thinking?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 43:34 He goes on to say… This is just to finish the words of the Lord there, and then we can dig into it further, I think. The Lord goes on to say, “For my strength is made perfect in weakness.” That might sound strange for God to say that His strength is made perfect in weakness, but there are a couple of obvious ways to hear that. One, of course, if this is Christ speaking to Paul, then that’s exactly how it happened. His strength, his divine strength was made perfect in that he came down in the flesh, and was nailed to a cross in utter passivity, utter weakness. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Why are you any better, Paul?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 44:11 But the other way it can be heard of course too is that God’s power, God’s strength is made perfect in humans embracing their weakness. If human beings are strong enough on their own, if they’re somehow good enough to do it all on their own, then where would God’s strength show up? We wouldn’t need it. We wouldn’t ask for it. Only inasmuch as we are weak and we stop running from the fact that we’re weak can God’s strength be made perfect, show up in the world.

John Bytheway: 44:39 Joe, I love that you brought up Moroni. I have… It sounds to me when I read Mormon chapter eight that his father’s death was a surprise, was not expected, and all of a sudden, the Book of Mormon, the whole Book of Mormon fell into Moroni’s lap. It’s like, “This is my father’s work. I have no ore. My father’s been killed in battle, all my kinsfolk. I don’t even know how long I’m going to live.” All of a sudden, he has to finish it. It’s an amazing moment when later in Mormon chapter eight, Moroni says, “I make an end of speaking concerning my interpretation to past. I am Moroni. I am a son of Mormon. I’m going to finish this record,” and has this amazing transition, but he still keeps confronting his own weakness.

John Bytheway: 45:37 I just feel like when Nephi said, “Oh, wretched man that I am,” that was one of his greatest moments, and maybe for all of us when we see our weakness. That’s the Ether 12:27, right? What would prevent you from seeing your weakness? Well, pride would, but that could have been one of Nephi’s greatest moments when he felt wretched, and Paul used the same language. So, this whole message, I think, sounds like when we can see our weakness, that’s when God can do something with us.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 46:09 That’s beautifully put. Thanks for bringing up Mormon eight. I think that’s exactly right, that Moroni is just crushed. By the way, this has played out a detail that’s way too easy to miss in that chapter in fact. When Moroni… When he actually puts a date in there for the first time, it’s maybe verse six or something of Mormon eight, it’s the year 400. The final war when his father died was 384. It takes Moroni 16 years to write six verses, which I think makes us feel the weight that he apparently felt like he just was crushed under this burden for years. But when he finally comes out of the fog by… It was verse 12 or so when he’s like, “Okay, I’m Moroni. Let’s do this thing.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 46:50 He’s still… Boy, there’s anxiety, right? He comes out of what seems to be a really serious bout with depression and probably PTSD, but he’s not unscathed. He comes out anxious and worried about whether he’s good enough, whether he’s strong enough, wrestles with that for the rest of his life as Ether 12 makes clear.

John Bytheway: 47:07 Thank you. I think of how different the Book of Mormon would be if he were not there, if he didn’t come back in Moroni chapter one, and say, “I had not supposed to have written anymore, but I’m not dead yet. So, I’ll write a few more things.” Boy, imagine without Moroni 10, without his father’s letters. I mean, there are some great stuff in those last 10 chapters. Thank you Moroni for persisting in times when you felt weak. Anyway, I love… It’s going to be fun to talk Book of Mormon next year about that very thing.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 47:44 Well, and maybe we should dwell with Moroni a little further too on Ether 12.

John Bytheway: 47:48 Yeah, because it’s footnoted there. Footnote 9C, you’ve got your Ether 12:27 reference there. Made perfect in weakness, right?

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 47:56 Exactly. There’s actually a line in Ether 12 that I think we often read poorly if we don’t read it with Paul. Ether 12:27, there are actually a lot of things in this verse we read poorly, I think, in everyday ways. The Lord’s speaking to Moroni here, and we’re seeing very similar language to Paul. “If men come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble, and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me. For if they humble themselves before me and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” I think we have a tendency to read that last line as meaning something like I have things that are particular weaknesses to me, and yet I can replace those with strengths. But I wonder if that’s the right way to hear it when the wording is, “I will make weak things become strong.”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 48:50 That’s not necessarily replacement. It could be that once we recognize that weakness is in fact a gift, which is how the Lord talks about it there, then those weak things embraced as weak things are strong. At least that’s the way Paul talks in the very next verse back in 2 Corinthians 12 in verse 10. “Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distress for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” It’s not that the weakness has to be replaced with a strength. It’s when I finally stop resisting the fact that I am weak, oh, wretched man that I am, that’s the very moment that I’m strong. It may be then weak things becoming strong is not at all replacement. Weak things are strong in their weakness. I’m struck, Ether 12 just going on, verse 28, this is still the Lord speaking.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 49:43 He promises to show the Gentiles their weakness. That might feel like it’s unconnected from what he says next, but I think it’s actually directly connected. So he says, “I will show unto the Gentiles their weakness, and I will show unto them that faith, hope, and charity bringeth unto me the fountain of all righteousness.” So, what does showing the Gentiles their weakness have to do with showing them that faith, hope, and charity brings to Christ? I think the answer has to be that faith, hope, and charity are perfect examples of something that is profoundly weak and profoundly strong. If I have faith, it means I don’t know. I can’t prove. I can’t just knock everyone over with it. It’s weak. It’s a position of weakness, and yet, faith is what moves mountains. Faith is the strongest force we can have in Christ.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 50:27 Hope. The future could turn out different. I could be hoping for the wrong thing. My hope could be completely misplaced. The future is unknown. It’s always a position of weakness to be in a position of hope. As we all know, hope is the kind of thing that makes us strong enough to keep going through very difficult things. Charity or love, there’s no more vulnerable or weak position than being in love, whether that’s romantic or whether that’s just fraternal or whatever. Love opens you up to abuse and hurt and sorrow and sadness and so on, and yet nothing moves the world like love. So, I think these are perfect examples of we don’t need to take weak things out of us, and get strong things instead. It’s when we get weakness right, it is itself strength.

John Bytheway: 51:15 Well, I never thought of that before. That is great stuff. I knew where you were going with faith and hope, and then I thought, “Where is he going to go with charity?” But you’re right. I remember Truman Madsen, I think, saying, “When you truly love someone, you have doubled your capacity for pain.” Aww.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 51:33 Right. It’s so true. It’s so true.

John Bytheway: 51:36 Because you hurt for them or you worry about them, and that makes you vulnerable, because you love and care for them. But then when they go through hard times, you go through hard times too. That’s great stuff. Thank you.

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 51:50 Weakness is a gift. Weakness is a gift. I mean, to concretize that a little, my own experience as a missionary years ago went along these lines. I spent the first year of my mission trying to be everything as a missionary. I was going to do all the things missionaries do right and well. A couple of experiences about a year out just humbled me to the dust, where I just realized I had no idea what I was doing. But then as a result, somehow over the next year, I began to realize, “Well, there are some things I seem to have a gift for, and there are other things that I’m just really, really bad at as a missionary.” Instead of then trying to like, “Okay, my job is to take those things I’m bad at, and just work on those all the time,” I thought, “Well, what if I leave to others who have those strengths, that stuff, and I work on the thing God seems to have given me certain gifts for?”

Dr. Joseph Spencer: 52:42 I got over my weakness. I stopped trying to be good enough. I stopped trying to do all things. The transformation in my experience as a missionary was night and day, immensely more success, immensely more happy, and just completely different. But my heavens, if I continued trying to make sure I do all the things, this is not talking about obedience, right? I was still obedient, but I didn’t have to be the perfect tracter, and the perfect discussion giver, and the perfect leader, and the perfect companion, and the… I just had to find a couple of things where God could work through me really clearly, and give myself to that, weak and then strong.

John Bytheway: 53:25 Please join us for part two of this podcast.