The Perfect Gift

It’s Christmas day and for the past day, people all across the world have gathered around trees adorned with ornaments and gifts covering their trunks. It is this time of year, every year, when people universally pause to do something unique—they pause their lives and open gifts.

So, what exactly is a gift? This seems like a simple question, but it is one that has been on my mind a great deal as of late.

A gift, I’ve concluded, is something that does not have to be given. A gift is given out of love. Rather than a need, which can be met out of love and/or compulsion, a gift can only be the product of love.

A gift is also something that causes the giver to sacrifice something. This can be money, time, resources, or creativity, but a gift must cost something.

So these are the two qualifications for a gift:

1) It must be given out of love.

2) It must cause some form of sacrifice for the giver.

With these two qualifications, is it possible to say there is one gift that stands above the rest? Is it possible for there to be a perfect gift, one given out of perfect love and bought with a perfect sacrifice?

It may be cliché to say, but Jesus is THE perfect gift. God did not have to save humanity and reconcile us to Himself, but He chose to do so because of His great love for us.

Romans 3:23-24 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a GIFT, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Paul continues this theme of God’s grace being a gift in chapter six. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the FREE GIFT of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It’s not a stretch to say that Jesus is the perfect gift—THE BIBLE SAYS SO!

Jesus is the gift that we should never deserve, yet God gave Him to us regardless.

God loved the world, as John 3:16 tells us, that He SACRIFICED His son so that we could be reconciled to Him.

Crazy.

Beautiful.

Love.

Sacrifice.

Jesus is the perfect gift and God the Father is the perfect gift giver.

Merry Christmas.

My Personal Creed on the Doctrine of Christ.

I believe:

Jesus Christ is fully and completely divine (John 10:30). He is also fully and completely human (Gal 4:4). His divinity and humanity are distinct natures (John 1:1) that are fully united in His person (Gal 4:4-5).

Jesus Christ is fully and completely divine:

He is eternally divine (John 1:1, 8:58), lacking no divine attribute and possessing every such attribute fully. Jesus spoke about God’s law authoritatively because He is God and it is about Him (Matt 5:18, 7:28-29). Jesus is God and therefore deserves to receive worship (John 9:38; Matt 28:17). Jesus is the Son of God (Matt 3:17), a person of the triune Godhead who was present during creation and had an active role in it (John 1:1). Jesus himself was not created (John 1:1) and is therefore equal in essence to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. His deity affirms that people can have real knowledge of God (John 1:18, 14:9). He needed to be divine because salvation is from God alone (Jonah 2:9).

Jesus Christ is fully and completely human:

He is God Incarnate (John 1:14). He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35) and born from Mary who was a virgin (Luke 2:7). Just as any other person, He lived (Luke 2:52), breathed (Luke 23:46), grew (Luke 2:40), thirsted (John 19:28), hungered (Matt 4:2), walked (Luke 5:27), talked (Luke 8:9-15), learned (Luke 2:52), grew tired (John 4:6), and slept (Luke 8:23). Jesus was tempted (Luke 4:1-2; Heb 4:15), but He never sinned (1 Peter 2:22; 1 John 3:5). Because of His humanity, he was fully capable of sinning (Eph 2:1), but because of His divinity He was fully able to resist sin (Heb 4:15). He was persecuted and died a criminal’s death (John 19). When He died, God poured our His wrath on His Son (2 Cor 5:21). Jesus, who did not sin, took on the sin and punishment of all people for all time, past, present, and future. He had a human body, which was broken for the sins of His human brethren (Luke 22:19-21). When He rose from the dead, His body was perfected, assuring the elect that their bodies will also be perfected (John 20:1-23). He ascended to heaven in His human body where He remains in human form today and forevermore (Acts 1:1-6). Christ’s humanity reaffirms God’s creation of man being good (Gen 1:31; 1 Tim 6:17).

Jesus is the true and perfect prophet (Deut 18:14-22; Matt 21:11), speaking God’s truth because He is God’s truth. Because of this, His followers are to represent Him in prophetically in the world (2 Cor 5:20). Jesus is the true and perfect high priest (Heb 4:15). As the high priest, He atoned for the sins of the world (1 John 2:2). Not only did He offer the perfect sacrifice for sin, but He himself was that perfect sacrifice (2 Cor 5:21). As high priest, He also intercedes on the behalf of believers, praying for His people based on the work He accomplished through the atonement (Heb 7:25). Jesus is the true and perfect king (Phil 2:10), ruling over His creation. He will judge all people from all time (1 Cor 15:24).

In Christ’s work consists of phases of humiliation and exaltation. Since the beginning of time, He was in heaven in His pre-incarnate glory (John 1:1). Next came the incarnation (John 1:14) and His earthly life (John 13:1-17). He was then crucified (Acts 3:15), resurrected (Rom 6:5), and then ascended (1 Tim 3:16) to be at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33) where He will be until His second coming (Rom 8:34). When He comes again, He will slay evil and Satan forever and reign as the true king (Rev 18-20). He will be glorified forever (Rev 5:9-10, 12).