The Prefect Gift is Me
Could you imagine covering yourself up in wrapping paper and giving yourself to someone as a gift?
“Here’s your present—it’s me! I’ve searched the shops for the perfect gift—and I’ve concluded the perfect gift is me!”
This is exactly what God did: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…” (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus Christ didn’t just come at Christmas. Jesus Christ was given to the world: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son...” (John 3:16). God gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, because he was the only one that could solve our need (Titus 3:3-7):
Jesus came as the gift that would live the life that we could never live.
Jesus came as the gift that would die the death that we should have died.
Jesus came as the gift that would conquer sin and death so that we could have life.
This thought should overwhelm us, as it did the Apostle Paul. He bursts into praise and says, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15). It’s beyond description. It’s beyond comprehension.
If there’s a God, if he sent Jesus Christ into the world to die for us, if he was born as a baby and he died for us, and he rose triumphant over the grave, and he is Lord of the heavens, and now he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, and he’s ruling all things until he puts everything under his feet, and someday we’re going to rule and reign with him … If this is true, then it’s an inexpressible gift.
If it’s not true, then Christians are to be laughed at and pitied. If Christianity is true—if God really did send His Only Son—then
we are justified by faith alone,
we are saved by grace alone,
we are redeemed from our sin and inadequacy by Jesus Christ alone.
In every other religion the founder is a human being sent by God to show us what to do to be saved. But Jesus is God come himself. If we could save ourselves by our performance, God would have only needed to inform us what to do for salvation, and he could have sent a prophet. His personal coming, however, means he did not just tell us what we had to do to be saved, he also did for us all that we could not do ourselves. Only God’s gift of his only Son transforms us into the adopted sons and daughters.
“If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest” — Corrie Ten Boom
My prayer is that you would know true rest during the festive season, and that everything you do would be enveloped with a fresh sense of Immanuel—God with us.
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