God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity by Kelly M. Kapic with Justin Borger, Zondervan.
We might expect a book about giving to be a guilt-trip and focused on our wallet. This book is neither of these.
It begins “Let me tell you a story...the story about God.”
That tells you a lot about this book. It is not a long book, although its 200 pages are closely typed and it is tightly written. Nevertheless, it a big book in other ways. The book sweeps from creation, through the fall to redemption with God himself as the centre of the story. As the main actor in this drama God is thoughtfully and beautifully shown to be God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the story’s major theme is God giving himself in the Son and the Spirit to a people who never deserved such grace.
With this as the big picture the application becomes refreshingly different to many exhortations to generosity you may have heard.
- It is saturated in grace – we are reminded to give because we have first received.
- It is God-centred – you are inspired to grow in generosity, but wonder and thankfulness for the Triune God is the dominant melody.
- It is inviting rather than pushy - as the subtitle suggests, we are invited into God’s story and into the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity.
But this God of grace takes you to quite dizzying heights, and things look a bit different from his perspective. Just as God invites you in to join him, he invites you to join him going out in self-giving. Kapic and Berger show that it is the grace of the Triune God which will make generosity so much more radical than it would be otherwise. E.g.
- God didn’t just give things, but his person - so how can we respond by just giving a percentage rather than our whole person?
- We are rich because we have received so much - so how can we not give lavishly?
Personally the most memorable theme was that of belonging. We belong to God because he created us. This was perfect freedom but we rejected belonging to God and chose bondage to sin. God reclaimed us by giving (!) so we can experience the gift of being his slaves.
This book is so rich that I could spend a long time trying to describe its content but I would struggle to do it justice.
If you are wondering about the form: It is theological but I was pleasantly surprised how expositional it was. It would probably be enjoyed by any regular reader of Christian books but may be too demanding for an occasional reader. Finally, it is distinctly Reformed Evangelical in its theology but (in-keeping with the theme) Kapic is generous in drawing on a wide range of thinkers.
God So Loved He Gave is one of the very best books I’ve read in several years. It engaged me on every level (mind, heart and will) and there are not very many books you can say that about. I highly recommend this beautiful book.
[A detailed overview of the contents/headings/sub-headings and more on Kelly Kapic.]
Does he discuss how we decide to what we give? I think it is difficult to avoid self-giving (perhaps because of the kind of creatures we are), but it is tricky to decide what things we should best give our time, money and selves to.
ReplyDeleteA pedantic point: as stories necessarily take place in time, surely it is impossible to tell 'the story about God'.
An important question which shamefully I had to reopen the book to get the answer to. He doesn't address it in detail. I'll post a quote which sums up his approach.
ReplyDeleteIn part I agree, although the historic church told a story of "eternally begotten" which is effectively a story for a person outside of time. But I think the main "story about God" is the "story about God for us" or at least the "story about God in relation to his creation". So its the story of the Bible really.