The Gifts Of God # 1

 The Gifts Of God # 1

A GIVING GOD! What a concept! To our regret, our familiarity with it often dulls our sense of wonderment at it. There is nothing that resembles such a concept in the religions of heathendom. Very much to the contrary; their deities are portrayed as monsters of cruelty and greed, always exacting painful sacrifices from deluded devotes. But the God of Scripture is portrayed as the Father of mercies, "who gives us richly all things to enjoy" (1 Timothy 6:17). It is true that He has His own rights - the rights of His holiness and proprietorship. Nor does He rescind them, but rather enforces them. But what we would contemplate here is something which transcends reason and had never entered our minds to conceive. The Divine Claimer is at once the Divine Meeter. He required satisfaction of His broken Law, and Himself supplied it. His just claims are met by His own grace. He who asks for sacrifices from us - made the supreme sacrifice for us! God is both the Demander and the Donor, the Requirer and the Provider.

1. The gift of His Son. Of old the language of prophecy announced: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given" (Isaiah 9:6). Accordingly, the angels announced to the shepherds at the time of His advent: "Unto you is born this day... a Saviour" (Luke 2:11). That gift was the supreme exemplification of the divine benignity. "God showed how much He loved us by sending His only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him. This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).

That was the guaranty of all other blessings. As the apostle argued from the great to the less, assuring us that Christ is at once the pledge and channel of every other mercy: "He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). God did not withhold His choicest treasure, the darling of His bosom, but freely yielded Him up; and the love which did not spare Him, will not begrudge anything that is for the good of His people.

2. The gift of the SPIRIT. The Son is God's all-inclusive gift. As Manton said, "Christ comes not to us empty handed. His person and His benefits are not divided. He came to purchase all manner of blessings for us." The greatest of these is the Holy Spirit, who applies and communicates what the Lord Jesus obtained for His people. God pardoned and justified His elect in Old Testament times on the ground of the atonement, which His Son would make at the appointed time.  On the same basis He communicated to them the Spirit (Numbers 9:25); Nehemiah 9:20, otherwise none would have been regenerated, fitted for communion with God, or enabled to bring forth spiritual fruit.

But He then wrought more secretly, rather than "in demonstration and in power"; came as the dew, rather than was poured out copiously; was restricted to Israel, rather than communicated to Gentiles also. The Spirit in His fullness was God's ascension gift to Christ (Acts 2:33) and Christ's coronation gift to His church (John 16:7). The gift of the Spirit was purchased for His people by Christ (Galatians 3:13-14 and note carefully the second "that" in verse 14.) Every blessing we receive is through the merits and mediation of Christ.

3. The gift of ETERNAL LIFE. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23). There is a double antithesis between those two things.

First, the justice of God will render unto the wicked what is due them for their sins; but His mercy bestows upon His people what they do not deserve.

Second, eternal death follows as a natural and inevitable consequence from what is in and done by its objects.

Not so eternal life, for it is bestowed without any consideration of something in or from its subjects. It is communicated and sustained gratuitously. Eternal life is a free bounty, not only unmerited but also unsolicited by us, for in every instance God has reason to say, "I am found by those who sought Me not" (Isaiah 65:1). The recipient is wholly passive in regeneration. He does not act, but is acted upon when he is brought from death to life. Eternal life - a spiritual life now, a life of glory hereafter - is sovereignly and freely bestowed by God. yet it is a blessing communicated by Him unto His elect because the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price of redemption. Yes, it is actually dispensed by Christ. "I give unto them (not merely offer) eternal life" (John 10:28).

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 2)