The Gift of Love
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John 3:16
By this time in the season, my guess is that you’ve pretty much finished up with everyone on your Christmas list. If you haven’t, let me remind you that the time is running out. You’ve only got a couple of days left, and you’d better get on the ball this afternoon or tomorrow.
If you haven’t finished with everyone on your list, then your uncompleted list is as much a statement about those remaining names as it is about you. By now, we’ve managed to cross out the most important persons on the list and the only ones left are what we might call the “under $25 crowd.” They’re the people that we don’t need to overlook, but at the same time not the people that we want to drop a lot of money on. They may for you even be the “under $10 crowd,” which makes an even bigger statement.
The point is that we spare no expense on those persons we care the most about, while the people we care not as much about tend to get the leftovers. It’s not just a matter of economics; it’s also a matter of affection.This principle holds true not just for those who are on the giving end. It holds true just as much for those on the receiving end. Sometimes that gifting philosophy of “It’s the thought that counts” really doesn’t count for that much.
Perhaps that’s why John 3:16 is perhaps the most beloved verse of Scripture in all the Bible. Though there’s so much in the verse for us to unwrap, the part most of us focus on is the part about love. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
We don’t normally consider John 3:16 to be a Christmas text, but when you stop and think about it, perhaps we should. While certainly the giving about which the verse speaks culminates in what Jesus did in going to the cross for our salvation, the giving actually begins in Bethlehem, where God chose to send Jesus into this world to point us away from our concentration with self to a concentration on God.
The background of the passage is, as with every text, most critical. Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews who has come to Jesus by night out of fear of what his fellow Jews might say about his coming to a Galilean rabbi. Nicodemus has come to Jesus to ask about eternal life, which Jesus goes into great detail to explain. Essentially, Jesus tells Nicodemus that eternal life is a heavenly matter, which the Son of Man has come down to make possible for every person who would believe in him. In other words, eternal life is not anything anyone can earn. It’s not something that a person might purchase for himself or herself. It’s a gift. It’s a gift grounded in God’s unconditional, unmerited, unqualified love the entire world. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son….” And of course, like any other gift, it must be received, it must be embraced in order for the gift to fully serve its purpose.
I saw something the other day that surprised me. It was a statistic that indicated that there are more gifts exchanged the day after Christmas than the day of Christmas. Granted, it’s a different kind of exchange, but the statistic still holds true. On Christmas I may receive something that doesn’t fit or doesn’t work or I don’t want, so on the day after Christmas I go to the store to exchange that unwanted gift for something I really desire. We’ve all been in those long lines on December 26.
But the promise of John 3:16 is that God’s gift of love is not like so many of those other gifts we get stuck with because someone wasn’t concerned enough about us to get it right – either our size or our need or our desire. When we are down and discouraged, God’s gift of Jesus lifts us up. When we are weak, God’s gift of Jesus makes us strong. When we are afraid, God’s gift of Jesus gives us courage. When we are in doubt, God’s gift of Jesus makes plain the way. And everything about Jesus reflects the heart of God for His fallen world, which God does not desire to condemn. It reflects God’s heart to seek and to save. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son….”
Many of you are familiar with the Irish rock band, U2, whose lead singer Bono is a Christian. In fact, most of the groups songs have a spiritual theme, such as the U2 classic,“In the Name of Love.” As the story has it, after returning home to Dublin from a long tour, Bono attended a Christmas Eve service, where at some point in the service he grasped the truth at the heart of the Christmas story – how in Jesus, God had taken on human flesh in a desire to draw us into relationship with Him. As he describes the experience, with tears streaming down his face, he realized for the first time that if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, it would seek to explain itself and amazingly enough to do so in the simplest of ways: a child born in poverty…and straw. He concluded, “I saw the genius of God picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this. I saw the genius of love needing to find a form and intimacy needing to be whispered. I saw love has to become an action; it has to become concrete. And for that to happen there must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh” (Michka Assayas, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas,” pp. 119-125).
Indeed it was on that night long ago in Bethlehem. Love came down in the most undeserving of fashion and in ways that everyone can understand. How refreshing that fact is, especially in a day when so much in life seems open to interpretation, where meanings of words and experiences seem to change from one day to the next, and trends have a way of coming in and going on like the sea tide. It’s good to know that there is one constant upon which we can order our lives, and that is God’s love in Jesus Christ, which when we receive it, permeates every aspect of life – our relationships, our finances, our labor, and our leisure – and if we reject it, cuts us off from the very source of life itself and consigns us to a lifetime (and an eternity) of ultimate futility.
So, which will it be for you? Will you accept God’s gift of love in Jesus Christ, or will you reject it, not so much because you don’t think it’s good enough, but because you don’t think you’re good enough? That’s where this world that God loves gets it all wrong, especially in this season of the year. Santa cares if you’ve been naughty or nice before he brings you Christmas gifts, but God could not care less. He loves you not because of who you are. He loves you in spite of who you are, and He loves you because of who He is. Jesus, the Bethlehem baby, is proof of that. “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son.”
Every December, schools across the nation make preparations to celebrate “Winter Festival,” pale attempts to celebrate the Christmas season without any mention of God or Jesus. I understand. In a country where all religions receive equal treatment, you cannot open the door to one without opening to all the others. But sometimes God intrudes. Sometimes God finds a way, which when you think about it is the real meaning of Christmas.
One year in an elementary school, the children were going to perform the obligatory songs about snow and Santa and candy canes. Their first song was one titled, “Christmas Love,” which is an innocuous enough title. As they sang, each of the kindergartners was to hold up a letter to spell out the title of the song. But a little girl in the middle of the front row got confused and held her letter upside down. It was an “M,” which turned upside down is a “W.” Everybody got a good laugh, until the last letter was displayed, so that the song suddenly became not “Christmas Love,” but “Christ Was Love” (Candy Chand, Christmas Love: A True Story of a Holiday Miracle, 2008).
Indeed he was, and for that matter he still is. So, know these two days left until Christmas that you are of supreme importance in God’s sight and that He hasn’t forgotten about you. In fact, you are at the top of His list…along with the rest of the world. So, don’t be afraid to open the immeasurable possibilities that are before you through your faith in him, and experience life in all of its fullness, life now and life forevermore.