Right now I feel like I am the recipient of a great gift. And so, like a five-year-old I want to run around and tell everybody about this gift, show it off, and proclaim to all how much I appreciate this gift. But while an attitude of appreciation is good, if all of my delight were to be focused on the gift itself, I'd be missing a very large part of the picture...
Everything good we have in life, including life itself, is so completely undeserved and yet our Heavenly Father is good and delights to give good gifts to His children. He is a Good Gift-Giver.
But how often do we, like a short-sighted five-year-old, run around showing off and taking delight in the gift itself while completely disregarding the gift-giver who chose to be lavish in the first place? Or how often do we get angry when we feel like the good gifts have stopped, as though the gifts weren't actually gifts but rather something we're entitled to?
The reality is that because of sin the only thing we deserve or are entitled to is death. God did not mince words or leave any wiggle room when He told Adam that when he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die. And God would have been completely justified to have stuck down Adam and Eve on the spot, found some new dirt to make more humans, and started round 2.
But He didn't do that. Instead, one of the first things He does after they come clean about their sin is actually show them grace and give them clothes to cover their nakedness. Yes, there was sin and there was still consequences, but there was also grace, and we have been living under that grace ever since (literally!).
Most notably is the way that He extends grace to ultimately counter that first sin that Adam and Eve committed. In sending His Sone to die on a cross, thus providing propitiation for the sins that separate us from Him, He gave us the greatest gift ever given, because the true end gift of it all is that fellowship could be restored, we could be indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and ultimately we could have "God with us" once again. How great the gift! How great the Gift-Giver!
But how often do we, like a short-sighted five-year-old, run around showing off and taking delight in the gift itself while completely disregarding the gift-giver who chose to be lavish in the first place? Or how often do we get angry when we feel like the good gifts have stopped, as though the gifts weren't actually gifts but rather something we're entitled to?
The reality is that because of sin the only thing we deserve or are entitled to is death. God did not mince words or leave any wiggle room when He told Adam that when he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would surely die. And God would have been completely justified to have stuck down Adam and Eve on the spot, found some new dirt to make more humans, and started round 2.
But He didn't do that. Instead, one of the first things He does after they come clean about their sin is actually show them grace and give them clothes to cover their nakedness. Yes, there was sin and there was still consequences, but there was also grace, and we have been living under that grace ever since (literally!).
Most notably is the way that He extends grace to ultimately counter that first sin that Adam and Eve committed. In sending His Sone to die on a cross, thus providing propitiation for the sins that separate us from Him, He gave us the greatest gift ever given, because the true end gift of it all is that fellowship could be restored, we could be indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and ultimately we could have "God with us" once again. How great the gift! How great the Gift-Giver!
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