The father of my father-in-law is a total stranger to me. I have never met him. I know nothing about him except one things: he told my father-in-law to be generous to ministers, or something to that effect.

I don’t know all the ways my heaven-resident father-in-law used to carry out his father’s advice, but one thing I know is he tried to honor ministers around the dinner table at nice restaurants. He would include his pastors and other Christian workers at important gatherings. He would take visiting preachers from out of town to his favorite gourmet places. He treated ministers like his best customers except without any ulterior motives.

This distinction between a gift and a bribe is perhaps ulterior motives. A giver of gifts expects nothing in return whereas a dispenser of bribes anticipates a definite return. A giver is motivated by altruistic reasons whereas a briber by selfish reasons. A giver cares for others but a briber focuses on himself. A giver may forget his act of giving, but a briber certainly will not.

Maybe that is why our Lord teaches us. “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” If the left hand does not even know what the right hand is doing, how can it remember anything? You cannot remember what you do not know. That is exactly what our Lord wants us to do: don’t even bother to know.

In the same passage in Matthew 6, our Lord teaches us, “When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men.” Christ does not want us to focus on ourselves when we give. One reason He does not want us to focus on ourselves may be that when we focus on ourselves, we may not be giving at all but bribing instead. If our purpose of giving is to draw honor to ourselves, we are no longer giving but bribing.

During this season of remembering the gift of God in the person of Jesus Christ and thinking of our goals for the coming year, it may be helpful to ask ourselves, is my life basically one of focusing on myself or on others? Is it one of giving or bribing?