What Does the Bible Say About Giving to Others?

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Some questions get asked of a search engine, and some get asked of a lifetime of Sundays. Yours is the second kind: what does the Bible say about giving to others? Not giving in the abstract — giving aimed at a person. The neighbor in front of you. The brother or sister whose need you can actually see. It is a good question, and Scripture answers it directly, in verse after verse, without much decoration. So that is what this page does: it gathers the verses, grouped by the shape of the giving they describe, and lets them say what they say. Every verse below is quoted exactly as it stands in the King James Version.

Seeing the Need — and Not Closing Your Heart to It

The Bible's teaching on giving to others starts before the hand ever opens. It starts with the eyes, and with what happens in the heart once the eyes have seen.

“But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” — 1 John 3:17

In plain words: if you have the goods of this world, and you see your brother in need, and you close your heart against him — the verse asks how the love of God can live in a heart that shuts. The old phrase “bowels of compassion” is simply the Bible's way of naming the deepest seat of mercy in a person. John's point is gentle but firm: seeing the need is itself a summons.

“Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.” — Proverbs 3:27

Proverbs makes it a matter of timing as much as kindness. If the good is owed, and it is in your power to do it now, then now is when it belongs. Giving to others, in Scripture, is rarely a someday thing.

Carrying Each Other

The next shape is heavier — literally. Some of what others carry is too heavy for one pair of shoulders, and the Bible treats stepping under part of that weight as the ordinary work of believers.

“Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” — Galatians 6:2

Paul doesn't present burden-bearing as extra credit. He calls it fulfilling the law of Christ — the summary of everything Jesus taught about how people are to treat one another. And it begins with a kind of attention:

“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” — Philippians 2:4

Looking at “the things of others” — their circumstances, their pressures, their empty cupboards — is where giving starts. Most needs never get announced. They get noticed, by somebody who was looking. And what the noticing leads to, Paul describes in one short, practical line:

“Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.” — Romans 12:13

In plain words: share what you have with God's people who are in need, and keep an open door. Sharing toward a necessity — not toward a surplus, not toward show — and a table and a home that others are welcomed into. That is the Bible's picture of everyday giving, and it is aimed at people, by name, one need at a time.

When Words Alone Aren't Giving

James, the most plainspoken writer in the New Testament, draws the line that all of this has been walking toward. Good wishes, he says, are not the same as a gift.

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” — James 2:15–16

It is worth sitting with that a moment, because James is not scolding strangers. He is describing church people saying kind words to a hungry brother or sister — be warmed and filled — and sending them away still cold and still hungry. His verdict is a question: what does it profit? Warm words don't warm anyone. Giving to others, in the Bible's telling, costs something real: food from your table, clothing from your closet, money from your pocket, time from your day. If you're weighing what form your own giving should take, we worked through one honest question along these lines: What Does the Bible Say About Generosity? — because sometimes the thing needful to the body is exactly what money buys.

“The Least of These” — Who Are They?

That brings us to the verse many people are really searching for when they type this question. In Matthew 25, Jesus describes a king separating people the way a shepherd separates sheep from goats, and the difference between them turns out to be nothing grander — and nothing smaller — than food given, drink given, a stranger taken in, the sick and imprisoned visited.

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” — Matthew 25:40

In plain words: whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me. “The least of these” are not an abstraction in the passage. They are the hungry person, the thirsty person, the stranger, the one without enough clothing, the sick one, the one shut away and easily forgotten — the people whose need is standing right in front of you, given a face. And Jesus' teaching is that giving to them is counted as giving to him. It is the deepest answer the Bible gives to your question: giving to others is not a side activity of the faith. By the King's own accounting, it is where the faith shows itself.

A Word From Your Hosts

This page is published by a charity, so we'll say our small part plainly and then step back. Giving to others takes a hundred forms — a meal carried next door, a burden shared at church, a stranger welcomed in — and once a year the whole country practices it on the same day, which our article on Giving Tuesday: the day of giving back is all about. Among those many forms is one we happen to know up close: the neighbor whose illness isolates her — the woman whose kidneys or heart have narrowed her world to a treatment chair and a quiet house, who is seen less and less by everyone who used to see her. Reaching her, teaching her, and standing with her is the work this Foundation was built for. If, after reading these verses, you'd like your own giving to reach a neighbor like her, the pledge below is one quiet way to start — offered as an invitation, and only that.

At the Cardio Renal Foundation (Cardio Renal Foundation Inc, EIN 33-4359765), we publish education for people living with heart and kidney disease and the families who carry it with them — and, once in a while, we simply gather the verses somebody went looking for, and hand them over. Questions reach a person here, at donations@cardiorenalfoundation.org or (646) 770-3946.

This article is informational only and is not tax, legal, or financial advice. Charitable tax rules change and depend on your individual circumstances; consult a qualified tax advisor or attorney about your own situation. Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible, which is in the public domain; the explanations in plain words are our own.