What Does 2 Corinthians 9:8 Mean?

(8) **God is able to make all grace abound toward you.**—The word “grace” must be taken with somewhat of the same latitude as in 2Corinthians 8:6-7; 2Corinthians 8:19, including *every form of bounty,* as well as “grace,” in its restricted theological sense: the means of giving, as well as cheerfulness in the act. He will bless the increase of those who give cheerfully, that they may have, not indeed the superfluity which ministers to selfish luxury, but the sufficiency with which all true disciples ought to be content. In the word “sufficiency,” which occurs only here and in 1Timothy 6:6 (“godliness with *contentment”*)*,* we have another instance of St. Paul’s accurate use of the terminology of Greek ethical writers. To be independent, *self-sufficing,* was with them the crown of the perfect life; and Aristotle vindicates that quality for happiness as he defines it, as consisting in the activity of the intellect, and thus distinguished from wealth and pleasure, and the other accidents of life which men constantly mistook for it (*Eth. Nicom.* x., c. 7). At the time when St. Paul wrote it was constantly on the lips of Stoics. (Comp. the *Meditations* of Marcus Aurelius, iii. c. 11.)