The Logic of Liberality: God's Open Hand Text: Proverbs 11:25
Introduction: Two Economies
We live in a world that is governed by a set of unquestioned assumptions, and one of the most foundational is the assumption of scarcity. The world operates on a zero-sum basis. If someone gets a bigger piece of the pie, that must mean my piece is smaller. If my neighbor's business thrives, he is a threat to mine. If I give away what I have, I will have less. This is the logic of the clenched fist, the logic of fear, the logic of Malthus, and the logic of fallen man. It is an entire economic and social order built on the presupposition that the universe is a closed system, and we are all fighting over a finite pile of stuff.
But the Bible operates on a completely different economy. It is the economy of the open hand, the logic of faith, the logic of the Creator. It is an economy built not on scarcity, but on the infinite, overflowing, generative abundance of God Himself. God is not a miser. He is a giver, and the world He made reflects His nature. He did not create a fixed pie; He created a world of seeds. And the central law of this seed-based economy is that the way to increase is through scattering, the way to wealth is through giving, and the way to life is through death.
This is not just a pious sentiment for a needlepoint pillow. It is a fundamental law of the cosmos, as fixed and certain as the law of gravity. It is spiritual physics. To deny it is not to be "practical" or "realistic," as the world defines it, but rather to be profoundly foolish. It is to insist on swimming against the current of reality itself. The book of Proverbs is intensely practical, giving us God's wisdom for how the world actually works, not how we might imagine it works. And in our text today, we find one of the clearest expressions of this divine economic principle.
This proverb is a direct assault on the fearful, grasping spirit of our age. It teaches us that our spiritual and material well-being is not found in hoarding, but in generosity. It is a call to live with an open hand, trusting not in the size of our barn, but in the faithfulness of the God who provides the rain.
The Text
The soul that blesses will be enriched,
And he who waters will himself be watered.
(Proverbs 11:25 LSB)
The Blessed Soul (v. 25a)
The first clause lays down the foundational principle.
"The soul that blesses will be enriched..." (Proverbs 11:25a)
The older translations render this as "the liberal soul shall be made fat." This is a good, earthy, agricultural metaphor. In a subsistence culture, to be "fat" was a sign of health, prosperity, and abundance. It meant you were not scraping by. It meant you had more than enough. The proverb is telling us that the pathway to this state of abundance, this spiritual and material "fatness," is through a particular kind of soul: a soul that blesses.
What is a soul that blesses? It is a soul characterized by generosity. The Hebrew word for bless, barak, has the sense of bestowing favor, of endowing someone with good things. This is not just about writing a check to the church, though it certainly includes that. It is a disposition of the heart that actively seeks the good of others and uses its resources to bring that good about. It is a soul that looks at the world not as a place to extract value, but as a place to add value. It is the opposite of the covetous soul, which is always calculating what it can get. The liberal soul is always calculating what it can give.
And the promise is direct and unavoidable: this soul "will be enriched." This is not a maybe. It is a divine law. God has hardwired the universe in such a way that generosity leads to prosperity. This is what Paul talks about in the New Testament when he says, "he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully" (2 Corinthians 9:6). Notice the connection. Giving is not "losing." It is "sowing." No farmer believes he is losing his seed when he casts it into the field. He is investing it, entrusting it to the soil and the rain, in the full expectation of a multiplied return. To withhold seed from the soil is the only way to guarantee you will have no harvest.
This enrichment is comprehensive. It is not just financial, though it often includes that. A generous man finds his own soul enlarged. He is freed from the prison of envy and the anxiety of greed. He has more friends, deeper relationships, and a richer life. The miser, on the other hand, shrivels up. His world gets smaller and smaller, until it is just him and his pile of stuff, which he can't take with him anyway. He gains the world and loses his soul, which is the worst business transaction in history.
The Divine Reciprocity (v. 25b)
The second clause of the verse gives us a beautiful, poetic image to explain how this law of enrichment works.
"And he who waters will himself be watered." (Proverbs 11:25b LSB)
This is the principle of divine reciprocity. Imagine a man with a bucket of water in a dry land. He sees his neighbor's plants withering, and he has a choice. The logic of scarcity says, "I must keep this water for myself. There isn't enough to go around." The logic of faith, the logic of this proverb, says, "I will water my neighbor's plants." And what happens? The proverb says that as he is pouring out his water, God is refilling his bucket from behind. He becomes a conduit of God's blessing, and the blessing flows through him, not just from him.
This is a picture of what it means to be a Christian. We are not the ultimate source of the water. The Lord is the fountain of living waters (Jer. 2:13). Our job is not to be a reservoir, a stagnant pond that just holds onto blessings. Our job is to be a channel, an aqueduct. God's grace flows to us so that it might flow through us to others. When we try to hoard it, the channel gets clogged. The water stops flowing, and what we have kept for ourselves grows stale and brackish.
This is why a stingy Christian is a walking contradiction. A Christian is someone who has been showered with the most extravagant generosity in the history of the universe. God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all (Romans 8:32). How can we, who have received such an infinite gift, turn around and clutch our own meager possessions with a white-knuckled grip? It is spiritual insanity.
The one who waters is the one who refreshes others. He is the man who offers an encouraging word, who provides for the needy, who gives his time and his energy to build up the church and the community. And as he does this, God ensures that he himself is refreshed. God will not be a debtor to any man. You cannot out-give God. Many Christians are spiritually dry and withered precisely because they are not watering anyone else. They are waiting for a blessing to fall on them from heaven, not realizing that the blessing is waiting to flow through them from heaven.
The Gospel Economy
Like every proverb, this points us ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate fulfillment of this principle. He is the soul of blessing. He possessed all the riches of heaven, yet for our sakes He became poor, so that we by His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). He poured Himself out completely. He held nothing back. He watered us with His own blood.
And what was the result? Was He impoverished? No. Because He emptied Himself, God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every name (Philippians 2:5-11). Because He was sown into the ground in death, He has brought forth a harvest of millions of redeemed souls. He is the supreme example that the way down is the way up, and that true wealth is found in giving everything away.
When we are united to Christ by faith, we are brought into this same economy of grace. We are no longer slaves to the world's zero-sum game. We are sons and daughters of the King, and our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. We can afford to be generous, because our supply is inexhaustible. Our generosity, then, is not an attempt to earn God's favor. It is the natural, joyful, spontaneous fruit of having already received God's favor in Christ.
This is why Paul tells the Corinthians that "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). God is not interested in gifts that are given grudgingly, or out of a sense of grim duty. That is the logic of paying taxes. The logic of the gospel is the logic of joyful gratitude. We give freely because we have been given everything freely. We bless because we are blessed. We water because we have been drenched in the living water of Christ, a well of water springing up to eternal life.
Conclusion: Scatter the Seed
So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means we must repent of our unbelief, which manifests itself as stinginess. We must stop believing the world's lie that our security lies in what we can accumulate. Our security is in our generous Father.
This applies to your finances, certainly. You should be giving faithfully, generously, and cheerfully to the work of your local church. You should be looking for opportunities to bless others, to meet needs, to support the cause of the gospel. But it applies to everything. Be generous with your time. Be generous with your hospitality; your home should be a place of watering and refreshing for the saints. Be generous with your words of encouragement. Be generous with forgiveness.
Do not be afraid. You are not losing; you are sowing. You are not emptying your bucket; you are ensuring that God will keep it full. The world says to grab and hold on. God says to open your hand and scatter. The soul that blesses will be made fat. The one who waters will himself be watered. This is the law of the kingdom. This is the logic of liberality. This is the way of our God. Let us walk in it.