Gain All You Can, Save All You Can, Give All You Can: Wesley's Stewardship Revolution

John Wesley preached one of the most famous stewardship sermons in Christian history: "The Use of Money." In it, he laid out three rules that have shaped Methodist and Wesleyan giving for nearly three centuries: gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Gain all you can — not through exploitation, not through dishonesty, not at the expense of your health or your neighbor. Wesley encouraged industry, diligence, and the full use of God-given abilities. He was not suspicious of wealth. He was suspicious of wealth that did not flow outward. Save all you can — not to hoard, but to increase the capacity for generosity. Wesley railed against luxury, extravagance, and the desire for things that serve no practical purpose. He wore simple clothes, lived in modest rooms, and ate plain food — not because he was an ascetic, but because every penny saved on luxury was a penny available for giving. Give all you can — the climax of the triad. Wesley gave away the vast majority of his income. When his income was 30 pounds, he lived on 28 and gave away 2. When his income rose to 1,400 pounds, he still lived on 28 and gave away the rest. Wesley practiced what he preached: generosity is not about the percentage. It is about the trajectory. As God blesses you with more, give more — not proportionally, but progressively. Paul echoes the same principle: "Whoever sows generously will also reap generously." The Wesleyan understanding is that generosity itself is a means of grace — a channel through which God's transforming power enters your life. When you give, you are not just funding the church. You are opening your heart to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

Wesley identified specific practices through which God's transforming grace enters a believer's life: prayer, Scripture, fasting, worship, communion — and generosity. Giving is not a tax on the Christian life. It is a means of grace — one of the channels through which God sanctifies you. Why is generosity sanctifying? Because it breaks the grip of mammon. Every act of open-handed giving loosens the hold that material security has on your heart. Every dollar released from your grasp is a declaration: "My security is not in my bank account. My security is in God." And as that declaration becomes habitual — as generosity becomes a pattern, a rhythm, a way of life — the heart is gradually freed from the anxiety of accumulation and the idolatry of stuff. Paul writes: "God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." The promise is not abundance for hoarding. It is abundance for abounding — having enough to do every good work God has prepared for you. The generous person does not worry about whether there will be enough. The generous person trusts that the God who provides seed for the sower will provide bread for the eater and seed for the next sowing. Entire sanctification — the Wesleyan hope of a heart fully surrendered to God — includes the wallet. You cannot be fully sanctified and tightly fisted. The open hand is the posture of the sanctified life. Giving is not something the sanctified do. It is part of how they become sanctified.

Wesley did not give only to the church. He gave to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and the orphaned. His stewardship was not institutional — it was incarnational. He saw every person in need as a person for whom Christ died, and every act of generosity as a continuation of the Gospel. Paul's teaching in 2 Corinthians 9 is set within a larger context: he is collecting an offering for the impoverished believers in Jerusalem. The Corinthian church — a relatively prosperous Gentile congregation — is being asked to give to Jewish Christians they have never met, in a city they have never visited. This is cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, cross-geographic generosity. It breaks every barrier the world erects between "us" and "them." The Wesleyan understanding of "for all people" extends to stewardship. If God's grace is for all, then our generosity should reach all — not just the people who attend our church, not just the people who look like us, not just the people who live in our zip code. Generosity, like the Gospel, has no boundary. "God loves a cheerful giver." The cheerful giver is not the person who gives the most. It is the person who gives the most freely — without calculation, without strings, without the expectation of return. Cheerfulness is not about the amount. It is about the heart. And the heart that has been sanctified by grace gives with the freedom of someone who has been set free from the tyranny of "mine."