Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.” 2 Corinthians 9:13-15 (cf. Exodus 16:18)
“Money will become the bond of union that binds the Christians of Jerusalem and of Corinth into one. They are one as much as Israel was one people. As in their ingathering of the manna the feeble and the strong were to bring all into one store that all might share alike, so in the body of Christ. God allows riches and poverty. God bestows His gifts with apparently unequal hand that our love may have the high privilege of restoring the equality. The want of some calls us to the love and the help and the blessedness of giving to others. And at another time, or in different spheres, the very ones who needed help may, in their turn, out of abundance bless their helpers. Everything has been so ordered that love shall have room to work, and that there shall be opportunity to cultivate and to prove the Christlike spirit.”
Andrew Murray (1828-1917) in Christ’s Perspective on the Use and Abuse of Money (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1978) 45.