Tobit 12:8
7 It is good to conceal the secret of a king, but to acknowledge and reveal the works of God, and with fitting honor to acknowledge him. Do good and evil will not overtake you. 8 Prayer with fasting is good, but better than both is almsgiving with righteousness. A little with righteousness is better than wealth with wrongdoing. It is better to give alms than to lay up gold. 9 For almsgiving saves from death and purges away every sin. Those who give alms will enjoy a full life, 10 but those who commit sin and do wrong are their own worst enemies.
Acts 20:35
32 And now I entrust you to God and to the message of his grace. This message is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have desired no one’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine provided for my needs and the needs of those who were with me. 35 By all these things, I have shown you that by working in this way we must help the weak, and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” 36 When he had said these things, he knelt down with them all and prayed. 37 They all began to weep loudly, and hugged Paul and kissed him, 38 especially saddened by what he had said, that they were not going to see him again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Notes and References
"... Clement of Alexandria questioned how the church could actually feed the hungry and give clothes to the homeless if every believer divested everything to the point of becoming indigent ... On the other end of the spectrum, Irenaeus despaired that since Christians would always be buying and selling, some degree of avarice would always be found among Christians. His remedy was to recommend that such unavoidable evils could be offset by almsgiving. Nor was he alone in this understanding, as Second Temple literature explicitly understood almsgiving as a means of atoning for sin ... For example, “Almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from going into the Darkness” (Tobit 4:7-16) or “It is better to give alms than to lay up gold. For almsgiving saves from death and purges away every sin. Those who give alms will enjoy a full life” (Tobit 12:8-9) ..."
Kotter, David Scott Working for the Glory of God: The Distinction Between Greed and Self-Interest in the Life and Letters of the Apostle Paul (p. 8) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015