Remembering God’s Christmas Gift
Christians treasure Christmas. We do so because of the gift God gave to us. This is the very core of Christmas. We celebrate Christmas because God gave us His Son.
This truth is nowhere more powerfully and wonderfully presented that in John 3:16 the best-loved of all Scripture verses.
You may be asking, “What makes the gift of Christ the most precious treasure of all?”
The Gift of Christ Jesus Is Precious Because of Mankind’s Incredible Need
Every Christmas we all receive gifts that we don’t really need, but we all need Christ. We need Him because without Him we “perish.”
Perishing is the exact opposite of ‘everlasting life.’ It signifies death or eternal destruction. To perish is to be forever separated from God, from everything that is good, and from everything that is lovely. To perish is to miss out on the glories of heaven. It is to experience the wrath of God. There could be nothing worse than to ‘perish.’
The Bible tells us that all of us came into this world facing this terrible danger of ‘perishing.’ The Bible says that we are all sinners by nature, and perishing is the consequence of our sins.
You need to know that God is holy and that this means that He cannot compromise with sin. He must judge it. For God to do anything less would be for Him to deny Himself, which He cannot do. God has to judge sin, and the word ‘perish’ captures and expresses the judgment of a Holy God upon sin.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest of all Christmas treasures because He and He alone can keep us from perishing. He came to this world for the express purpose of making a way for us to be forgiven of our sins.
The Gift of Christ Jesus Is Precious Because of The Loving Heart That Gave Him
There is no more staggering truth than this: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” John 3:16
The thought of God loving people who receive His many good gifts and yet refuse to acknowledge Him and refuse to live according to His laws is remarkable in itself, but we are told much more than that. John 3:16 tells us that God loves sinners so much that He even went so far as to give them His only begotten Son. God looked upon our sins and saw that we were marching towards eternal destruction. He was moved with pity and compassion for us; so much so that He sent His Son to this world to redeem us.
The Gift of Christ Jesus Is Precious Because It Is Available To All Who Believe
How very thankful we should be for the “whoever” of John 3:16. The gift of God’s Son is not set aside for the Rich, Famous, and Powerful. It is not for the Jews only. All of these are invited to come to Christ, but everyone else is invited also.
You are invited to come to Christ. His redeeming work can count for you also. You must, however, believe in Him as John 3:16 emphatically says: “ … whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
This does not mean merely acknowledging certain basic facts about Jesus. No, “Saving Belief” or “Saving Faith” always carries the element of commitment with it. One is saved when he comes to understand his guilt before a Holy God, renounces all other hopes for forgiveness, and rests with complete and final confidence on what Jesus Christ did for sinners. True saving faith is saying, from the heart, the words of the well-known hymn:
Nothing in my hands I bring
Simply to Thy Cross I cling.
www.freegracetracts.com