Why do we say "It is more blessed to give than to receive"?

Meaning:

The spiritual benefits of unselfishness outweigh material possessions

Background:

Although the concept is clearly at the heart of much of Jesus's teaching, he is not recorded as having used this expression in any of the four gospels in the New Testament (nor, to the best of our knowledge, in any of the other surviving contemporaneous gospels that were not accepted into the biblical canon.) In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lists a number of people who are considered unfortunate and names them blessed (the meek, the merciful and the peacemakers, to name three) but he does not address those who give.

The earliest known reference is in The Acts of the Apostles, when Paul ends his address to the Ephesian elders saying, "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" (Acts 20:35 NIV).

It is generally agreed that the Acts of the Apostles, which records the movements of the apostles in the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus up until the death of Paul, is primarily written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke (one clue being that both books contain a preface that is addressed to "Theophilus".) Traditionally, Luke is believed to be a companion of Paul, possibly a physician, who wrote both books around 60 AD.

Although referred to as the Acts of the Apostles, almost half of Acts is devoted to one man, Paul, who has an outsize presence across the entire New Testament given that 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament are generally believed to be written by him, although the authorship of a few is disputed.

(When drawing the winner of this Wordplay we also accepted variations on "It is much better to give than to receive.")

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