Watch this. Three minutes. Then three questions below it.
Wilberforce fought for abolition for twenty years. He loses. He brings the bill again. He loses. He is sick. His friends abandon him. He brings it again.
Generosity is not primarily financial. Wilberforce gave his body, his political capital, his decades. The man who understands the Gospel cannot live a stingy life in any category.
Stinginess is always a theological problem before it is a character problem.
Amazing Grace is the film at the center of this study. The scene is chosen because it captures something true about the specific challenge this study addresses. The filmmakers may not have intended a theological reading, but the truth they captured is there regardless of intention.
2 Corinthians 9:7 sits inside a larger argument Paul or one of the other biblical authors is making about how the renewed life looks in practice. The verse is not a standalone principle. It is part of a sustained argument about what it looks like when a man actually believes what he says he believes on Sunday morning.
The connection between this film and this Scripture is the same one that runs through every study in this series: what a man sees in the mirror when he watches that clip is exactly the gap this Scripture addresses. The film names the problem. The Scripture names the source and the solution.