God's Gift to Us

by Greg Laurie

When you’re a child, Christmas is all about receiving gifts.  In December, your head is swimming with nothing but images of your favorite toys.  If you were a sneaky child like me, you always peeled away the paper and tried to figure out what your parents were giving you.  But the true message of Christmas is not the presents we give to one another.  The true meaning is the gift that God gave to us, His Son Jesus Christ.  This Christmas, I want to point out to you three things about the gift God gave to us in that tiny manger in Bethlehem.

The first thing we want to realize about God’s gift to us is that it came in simple wrapping.  Some people will go to great lengths to wrap presents beautifully.  But God’s gift came to us not in beautiful, ornate wrapping, but in a dirty manger found in a cold cave in a little-known town called Bethlehem.  That’s the beauty of the Christmas event.  It is beautiful to realize that Jesus took His place in a manger so that we might have a home in heaven.  The Savior was not wrapped in satin sheets, but in common rags.  Our Lord was not laid in a bed of gold befitting a king, but in a feeding troth for animals.  The Healer of the nations was not waited on by doctors and nurses, but by common barnyard animals.  There in a manger rested the greatest gift in the plainest of wrapping.

The second thing I want to point out about God’s gift to us is that we don’t deserve it.  We typically give presents to people whom we care about.  But we rarely buy gifts for our enemies.  But consider this: God gave us the ultimate gift of His Son Jesus Christ while we were still sinning against Him (see Romans 5:8).  We did nothing whatsoever to merit or deserve this gift.  For all practical purposes, we deserve God’s judgment, because we have sinned against Him.  That is the amazing truth of Christmas.  Despite who we are, God sent His Son so “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV).

Third, and lastly, God’s most precious gift explains His purpose.  The gift of Christ was no afterthought.  Long before there was a stable in Bethlehem, before Adam and Eve ever set eyes on each other, and even before there existed a garden called Eden, God decided to send His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins.  From the beginning, God knew humankind would fall short of His glory.  That is why the Scriptures proclaim that Jesus Christ was slain from the foundation of the world (see Revelation 13:8).  God made a decision from the very beginning that Christ would come to this earth to live and die and rise again from the dead.  God’s gift to us proves His purpose to redeem us.

The gift of Jesus Christ is what Christmas is all about.  Jesus came near to us so we could come near to Him.  Christmas is not about tinsel or shopping or gifts under a tree.  Christmas is about the gift God gave on the tree where Christ died for our sins, giving us the gift of eternal life.  That is what He has accomplished.  This is the gift He extends.  And if you receive it, you will experience the merriest Christmas of all.