God’s Bounced Check
One who is gracious to a poor man lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his good deed. Proverbs 19:17 NASB
Repay – When does God repay your generosity to the poor? You’ve been touched by the plight of homeless children. You’ve felt the heart pains of the world’s starving, the misery of the afflicted, the helplessness of the abused. So you respond. You send your money, say your prayers, speak your mind—knowing that the Bible promises “God will repay.” Ah, but when? When can you cash in that loan document? When do you finally get rewarded for the effort it took to give something to those in need?
Maybe you’re feeling a little like God wrote you a bad check. What’s the point of a reward you can only cash it in in heaven? I mean, after all, why would you need it there? In heaven everything is taken care of, right? So if your good deeds are going to be rewarded, then it better be here where reward actually means something. Unless you were under that false belief that what you do here will determine the size of your “mansion” over there. No, that’s not how it works. If salvation is a matter of grace, then grace isn’t a matter of degrees. Grace is a gift. It doesn’t come with a frequent giver program.
So maybe God did write you a bad check. I mean, it looks like it’s worth something, but there’s really no way to use it. It bounces. You’re left with less because you gave away what you earned to meet the need of someone who was in trouble and what you got back was a promise that can’t be fulfilled where it matters.
Unless, of course, that isn’t what this verse is about at all. The word translated “repay” is really šālēm. It could mean “reward,” but that’s not its primary idea. You’ll recognize it in the root šālôm. In general, it’s about “entering into a state of wholeness and unity, a restored relationship,”[1]not about getting paid back. Payment is part of its umbrella (like the payment of tribute or restitution or business transactions), but the better definition is: “completeness, wholeness, harmony, fulfillment . . . Implicit in šālôm is the idea of unimpaired relationships with others and fulfillment in one’s undertakings.”[2] So God’s “bad check” really does get cashed—here and now. It gets cashed because it has the immediate reward to giving you purpose, passion, and peace. When you do something for someone who cannot pay you back, God allows a certain kind of special emotion to well up inside. That emotion is the deep sense of goodness, of connection, of true fulfillment as a human being. You might even have a tear or two because you are in the midst of gratitude. You have experienced love without strings. Life is better because of what you did—for you and for the one who received your gift. You have personally discovered that giving is fulfilling. The check didn’t bounce after all.
Topical Index: repay, šālēm, compassion, gratitude, Proverbs 19:17
[1]Carr, G. L. (1999). 2401 שָׁלֵם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 930). Chicago: Moody Press.
