Jesus Christ: God’s Gift to the World

John 3:16-18
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, December 22, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Gregory Broderick

Christmas is a season of giving and receiving gifts.  This is a very old tradition, and is, of course, firmly rooted in our materialist culture.  According to one study, a conservative estimate says that Americans will spend more than $720 billion dollars this holiday season.  Other studies put the figure over a trillion dollars. But whatever the real figure, a staggering amount of money will be spent on gifts, celebrations, and the like, in the next couple of weeks.

There is nothing wrong with gifts, of course, but in this frenzy of giving and receiving so many video games, earrings, and even a robot vacuum or two, we must not lose sight that we are celebrating the greatest gift ever given to the world:  Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.

Jesus Christ was very God from before the beginning of the world, and yet he became a man. He was born of the virgin Mary. He lived a holy and sinless life in perfect obedience to God, and then he died on the cross, suffering the full wrath of God in our place. Even though he was sinless, he took all of our sin on himself and put all of his perfect righteousness onto us. As a result, we are saved and qualified to worship God in his glorious presence in eternal heaven forever.

Jesus Christ, and the salvation he achieved for his people, is a great gift. It is a free gift given by God the Father.  All we must do is receive it by faith. That is our command, our plea, and our hope for every person here this morning, that you would receive this gift by faith.

Jesus Christ, God’s Great Gift to the World

Let us then look at Jesus Christ, God’s gift to the world.  Verse 16 of our text spells it out explicitly: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.” God gave him as a gift to the world.

This is an amazing gift.  The word “amazing” is badly overused in our culture these days. It is more or less thrown around as a synonym for “pretty good.”  But that is not what the word “amazing” means. It means “astonishing; causing great surprise or wonder.” And as we stop and consider the great gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ and his great sacrifice on the cross for sinners like us, we will be amazed. We will be astonished.  We will be surprised.  We will have great wonder. Let us examine this great gift of God this morning.

1. It is amazing that eternal God gave the world any gift at all.

First, we must understand that God does not need us or anything else.  He is completely self-sufficient and in need of nothing (Acts 17:25).  He always has been, and he always will be.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit existed in perfect happiness before anything and without anything else.  Genesis 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning, God.”  That is exactly right. That is what was there, and it was perfectly good.

We surely are not worthy of receiving any gift from this great God.  He is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. He is mighty, he is powerful, and he is worthy of all praise. We, by contrast, are nothing.  We are lowly, we are insignificant, and we are transitory—here today and gone tomorrow.  We are insignificant, except as God bestows significance upon us.

God created everything, he gave life and breath to everything, and he sustains everything, even now. We live and breathe by the very will and sustaining power of God (Heb. 1:3).  He certainly owes us no gift, nor can he benefit from giving anything to us.

On top of that, we are unworthy because we have done serious damage to his creation. He made the world, including mankind, and he made it all very good. But man, by the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, plunged God’s good world into sin and darkness.  We do deserve no gift for marring his good creation with ubiquitous sin.

On top of that, we continue to violate his commands, heaping up sin to its limit. Every person is born a sinner and goes on to sin every day. We may sin thousands and millions and maybe even billions of times during our lifetimes.

Now, of course, we know this to be true. We know that we are sinners who sin. We know this to be true by our own consciences, even though we may not like this ugly reality.  We know that we have each done evil, we have each thought evil, and we have each attempted evil many times in our lives.  We know—every person, believer and unbeliever—that we are guilty sinners deserving of God’s judgment and wrath. We do not deserve a gift; we deserve wrath.

Not only do we think evil, and sometimes do evil, but everything we do is tainted by sin, which infects every molecule in this world.  Even the “good” things that we do are corrupted by sin.

Nietzsche said in the nineteenth century that there is no altruism, no selfless good, no true good, but that in everything we do or everything we think, we are really just looking out for number one, we are really looking out for ourselves. And if we think we are capable of good in the abstract, we are simply deceiving ourselves.

The prophet Isaiah said it more succinctly twenty-five hundred years before Nietzsche:  He said, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that “all our righteous acts are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).  Or as Genesis 6:5 tells us, every inclination of our hearts is only evil all the time.

In short, we are utterly sinful people. We are unworthy of any gift from God, who is utterly perfect and in need of nothing.  And yet, despite our unworthiness, despite his greatness, this great God gives us this great gift.  And we should stand amazed.

2. This gift is also amazing in its effect, in what it achieves for us.

Even a small gift from a highly exalted person is considered a cherished prize.  But the greatest Being to ever exist—the true and living God—gives us the greatest gift.  He didn’t just give us a small token. He gave us the greatest gift, the gift we needed more than anything else.  He gave us the one thing needful:  Eternal life.

Jesus Christ is the gift of God, the eternal Son who became man. He is all those things. But God did not send him just so we could look at him or marvel at him or be amazed at him or admire him or see him as an example.  We should do all those things too. But he did not just come to be looked at. No, there is much more to the gift than that. As verses 15 and 16 tell us, God gave us this gift “so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.” Verse 17 says that God the Father gave his Son “to save the world through him,” through the Son. And verse 18 says, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned.” He did not just come as a gift to be received, a picture to be put up on a wall. No, he came with a mission:  to make a way for sinful man to be saved, to have eternal life.

This gift is better than anything else you can receive. It is better than a pony or a new car or a billion dollars. Those things, nice as they may seem, are temporary and will soon pass away. But eternal life is eternal.  It is lasting.  It is permanent. It cannot be taken away. As the Lord Jesus said, “I give them eternal life and they will never perish.  No one can snatch them from my hand” (John 10:28).

This eternal life that we receive is eternal life with God. We will be free from the power of sin. We will be free from the presence of sin. We will be free from the punishment due to us because of our sin. In heaven, we will be free to fulfill the purpose of our existence:  to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. We will be free to see God face to face. We will be free to worship him in Spirit and in truth. So this is indeed an amazing gift.

Revelation 21:3–4 tells us that God himself will be with us and will be our God.  He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. There will be no more mourning or crying or pain. It will be just God and his people. This existence will be joy unspeakable and full of glory for those who are there with God.  Yes, it is an amazing gift.

You see, we deserved death; we deserved judgment; we deserved eternal hell. You must know that hell is a real place, and people really go there, and it is really bad. Jesus says so, right here in verse 18.  He says, “Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”  Condemned means condemned to hell.  Jesus said in Matthew 13:42 that people will be cast “into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Jude 7, speaking of the wicked, says that they will “suffer the punishment of eternal fire.”

Yes, hell is a reality.  It is an awful reality.  But we do not have to go there because of God’s gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ.  And we should stand amazed.  We deserved the very worst, but he gave us the very best.  We deserved everlasting darkness, but he brought us into the kingdom of his marvelous light. We deserved eternal death, but he gave us eternal life. He sent Jesus Christ, himself eternal God, eternal Son, to take all our sin upon himself and to put all his perfect righteousness upon us.  What an amazing gift!

3. This gift is also amazing in its cost.

The gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ is the most costly gift ever given. God sent his one and only Son—Jesus Christ, who was himself eternal God and part of the holy Trinity—he sent this Jesus to become man, to live in perfect obedience, and to die a criminal’s death on the cross, suffering the full wrath of God in our place.

We must understand that for Jesus, even becoming man was itself an extreme sacrifice and humiliation.  Of course, he is not just man. He is not merely man.  But he was a man. He himself is, was, and always has been eternal God, and yet he lowered himself to become a human being. John 1 tells us that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” He is God. And Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” And Jesus himself said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”  This was a clear assertion that he is, was, and always has been God.

And yet this Jesus—perfect, in need of nothing, Creator and Sustainer of all things—this part of the Godhead lowered himself to become a mere man—a weak, sick, tired, hungry man, subject to ridicule and abuse, subject to temptation by the devil, and, finally, to be crucified like a common thief. The eternal King became the lowliest peasant.  The Prince of Peace became a pauper, without even a place to lay his head.  Omnipotent God became a helpless child, lying in a manger among animals.  This was a serious sacrifice, a serious cost.

Beyond the humiliation of being demoted to humanity, the gift of eternal life in Christ was costly because it required his shed blood, his precious blood, his unimaginable suffering. Suffering an excruciating Roman execution is very bad, but that was a small part, the least part of the suffering Christ experienced in our place. No, he suffered even more:  The full wrath of God that we deserved was poured out on him.

Colossians 1:20 says that he made peace (that is, between us and God) by his shed blood on the cross. Ephesians 1:7 says we have redemption through his blood. And 1 Peter 1:18–19 reminds us that we are not redeemed from hell and judgment by relatively worthless things like silver or gold, “but with the precious blood of Christ.”

So it is not coincidental that he came and died on the cross. It is not coincidental that he bore God’s wrath.  That is what he came to do. The agony of the full wrath of God is beyond our understanding. We are finite people and we cannot understand what it is to bear an infinite punishment, an infinite wrath.  But we get some picture of what that looks like from the cross itself—gruesome, painful agony, causing Jesus to cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

You see, God the Father and God the Son had existed in perfect harmony, unity, and happiness for all eternity past.  They had perfect love.  They had perfect fellowship.  They had perfect unity until that moment on the cross when God poured out onto Jesus his full wrath that we, not he, deserved.  He volunteered himself for the job.  He lived his whole life knowing it was coming at the end.  And he did it voluntarily. His work on the cross was the successful conclusion of the work that began with the angel’s annunciation to Mary and with Jesus’ birth in the manger.

So we ask, “My God, My God, why did you forsake him?”  The answer is, “For your sake, to save his people from their sin.”  God the Father did for us what he never demanded from us. He sacrificed his precious, eternal Son in our behalf.  Isaac, the son of Abraham was spared, but Jesus, the Son of God, was not, for our sake.  This is an amazing gift!

God’s gift of Jesus Christ, sent to atone for our sins, was extremely costly for God the Father and for God the Son.  But it was the only way mankind could be saved.  After all, we could not pay the debt of sin ourselves, nor could anyone else pay it in our behalf.  God had to pay it for us, or it could not be paid in full.

Maybe you are wondering why God could not merely forgive without imposing any kind of just punishment.  After all, you may have read that God is love.  Yes, God is love. But God is also perfectly just and perfectly holy. And he is perfectly just and perfectly holy in his unchangeable nature.  As Psalm 89:14 says, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.”  You see, if he were to forgive us without punishment, if he were to say, “It’s okay; don’t worry about it,” he would cease to be just.  He would have to violate his inviolable nature.

You see, God himself has decreed that the wages of sin is death—physical and eternal death (Rom. 6:23).  He said in Hebrews 9:22, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness [of sins].”  If he did not impose any punishment for sin but simply “let it slide,” he would violate his own eternal word.  He would make himself a liar, or at least he would make himself unreliable.

Of course, God can do no such thing.  He cannot be a liar.  God is truth.  Numbers 23:19 tells us that, unlike us, “God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should change his mind.  Does he speak and not act?  Does he promise, and then not fulfill?”  No, when God says that the wages of sin is death, then the wages of sin is death. When God says that there is no forgiveness without punishment for sin, then there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. That is how it is and that is how it will stay.

So God cannot simply wave off sin. He cannot simply forgive without a punishment. But why should God have to become man to pay for our sins?  Can’t we pay for ourselves?  The answer is no. Every sin requires an infinite payment.  Every sin is ultimately sin against infinite God.  Psalm 51:4 reminds us: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.”

You see, every time we sin, it is a serious and infinite matter. Every time we sin, we are saying, “God is not God.”  We are denying his existence. We are denying his nature. We are denying his power, his authority, and his word in every sin we commit.  Every time we sin, we are saying, “There is no God.  God cannot tell me what to do.  God does not know or see everything that I do.  God is not perfectly holy and will not really punish my sin.  God is not all powerful; he cannot do what he said he would do.”  Every sin we commit carries with it the unstated claim of the devil in the garden: “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4).

Our sin against God is extremely wicked and requires an extreme punishment. Consider God’s infinite goodness.  He is, of course good and perfect by nature.  In Psalm 96, the psalmist speaks of “the splendor of his holiness” (v. 6).  He also speaks of the glory due his name (v. 8) and that he is “most worthy of praise” (v. 4).

But God is not merely abstractly good. He has been good to each one of us, whether believer or unbeliever.  He created everything, including you (Acts 17:25; Isa. 42:5).  He provides for all people, the righteous and sinners alike (Matt. 5:45). He sustains our very existence every day. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

What did we do with all of God’s goodness and all of his provision?  We spit in his face.  We denied his existence. We mocked him as a myth.  We were fools. We promoted ourselves to God. We said we were masters of our own destinies.

Every unbeliever has done and continues to do the wicked act of denying God with the very breath that he gives us. Every unbeliever continues to spit in the face of infinite, holy, good, and kind God.  Such infinite sin against infinite God requires only one just punishment:  infinite wrath.

What about you, believers?  Do not feel smug.  I say we have sinned even worse. Before we confessed Jesus Christ as Lord, we committed all those same sins I just said every unbeliever committed. We spit in God’s face. But even after he saved us, even after he moved us from death to life, even after we confessed him as Lord, we continue to sin—perhaps not in the same way, perhaps not to the same degree, but we still sin.

Now, I am not teaching that we should still sin, or that we may be saved without repentance.  No, that is a blasphemous lie.  But I am acknowledging the reality that sin is still in us and with us, and we still sin from time to time.  In fact, we still sin every day. But unlike the unbeliever, we have a choice. We have the power to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to righteousness. But sometimes we say “Yes” to sin and “No” to righteousness.

Sin is no longer our master. Sin is no longer our goal and purpose in life. But we still sin, and we still fall.  Even though all of our past, present, and future sins are dealt with in Christ, we still sin. Even though he saved us, we still sin. We should be appalled at our wickedness of sinning in view of what Christ did for us on the cross. So a believer’s sin is wicked, wicked, wicked. It is dealt with, it is forgiven, but it is still wicked.

In view of all of our wickedness, God had to punish our sin. He had to dole out an infinite punishment for the infinite crime of sinning against infinite God.  But we could not pay it, and we cannot pay it. This is obvious, of course. We are finite beings and cannot make an infinite payment.  Nor could any other finite being pay in our behalf. Psalm 49:7 says, “No man can redeem the life of another.” It is too costly.

What about sacrifices or religious observances? Maybe we can pay it that way. The answer is no. Hebrews 10:4 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  What about money? Maybe we can buy our way out of this problem. No, again. Proverbs 11:4 says, “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath.” We already said that we could not be redeemed with worthless things like silver and gold.

Maybe we could avoid incurring this infinite debt in the first place, or repay it with some good deeds, some good works, some earned merit. Again, no.  We are all sinners.  Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.”  We all understand this is speaking about us.

We may think that maybe some other god could intervene in our behalf and save us. The answer is still no.  Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  In fact, any worship of or reliance on a false, fake, powerless god—which is any god other than the true and living God of the Bible—is detestable in God’s sight. Relying on some other “god” to save you is not going to get you there. It is only going to get you deeper in the hole.

This leaves us with one way and one way only. God—infinite eternal God—had to pay the price in our behalf. Jesus Christ alone could bear the infinite wrath of God because he himself is very God. He alone was sinless. He alone perfectly obeyed God in thought, word, and deed. He committed no sin (1 Pet. 2:22). In John 8:29, Jesus said “I always do what pleases [the Father].” He obeyed God the Father with joy by becoming man, living a sinless life, and offering himself as a sinless, infinite sacrifice to pay for our infinite sin.

This is what we celebrate on this Christmas Sunday: God became man. His incarnation was the first step in the process of sacrificing himself. He had to become a man, so that he could stand as a representative in our behalf, and he had to be God to pay our infinite debt. And he did it. The infinite became finite. The all-powerful became subject to weakness. The all-holy became subject to temptation—severe temptation (Heb 2:18).  But he never sinned. He endured the scorn, the mockery, the flogging, and the devil’s temptations in the desert, in the garden, and on the cross. The devil tempted him to not do the work he came to do; he tempted him to sin. But Jesus did not sin.

And after all of this—after his perfect life—Jesus suffered the full blast of God’s infinite wrath on the cross for us. He was forsaken by God for us. He suffered a human injustice so that God could forgive us with divine justice. Only the unique God/man could do so, and he did.  Praise God for this amazing gift!  And God showed that he accepted Jesus’ willing sacrifice by raising him from the dead. Death could not keep hold on him because he was sinless.

4. This gift is also amazing because it is free.

Now I said already that the gift of Jesus Christ was very costly, and it was—very costly to God the Father and God the Son.  But it is available to all of us for free by grace through faith. We cannot buy it with money. We cannot earn it with good behavior. We cannot deserve it by our religious observances. We cannot inherit it based on our family name. Indeed, any such earning or buying or inheriting would cheapen this priceless gift.

There is one way, and one way alone to receive it—by grace through faith, which are themselves gifts of God. We must trust in Christ alone for our salvation (Eph. 2:8–9; Rom. 5:1).

Eternal life in Christ is “the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). There is no other way to get there; Jesus says so.  In verse 18 of our text, he says, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Now the fact that the gift is free to us, that it is received by grace through faith, does not mean that it is free of obligation. So just because we cannot earn it does not mean we do not owe some obligation to God who gave it to us. It is not as though we are saved and go on living the same way.  Romans 6:1 explicitly rejects this idea.  No, having been saved, we live a new life of holiness and obedience to our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:4; Heb. 5:9). He died for us, so we must live for him, by obeying what he commands (2 Cor. 5:15).  Having been saved and being baptized, we certainly owe the obligation to obey Master Jesus quickly, exactly, and with joy. And we should count the cost. But that is another sermon.

My point right now is to say Jesus is the only way.  As he said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Only this God/man could save us.  Only the God/man can save you today. So do not be a fool. This is a good deal. For free, you can have the one thing needful, which is eternal life, forgiveness of sin. For free, all your infinite debt to eternal God can be wiped out and replaced with the infinite righteousness of Jesus Christ. For free, you can go from eternal death to eternal life.

Why would not everyone receive this amazing gift from this trustworthy source? And yet we know that some will not receive it. Some will refuse this great gift out of their own wickedness.  It says so in verses 19–20.   It says some loved darkness because their deeds were evil.  So, despite the fact that God makes his free offer of salvation available to all, not all will receive it and be saved. Some will foolishly reject the gift.  I urge you today, do not be one of those people. Do not be a fool.  Receive the gift.  Receive it today.  Cry out to God and ask him to save you. He never rejects anyone who comes to him (John 6:37).

If you do not bow your knee to Jesus, if you do not entrust yourself to him alone, if you do not confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will regret it.  That great day will arrive when he comes to judge the living and the dead, when he comes again—not as a man in humility, not as a baby in the manger, not to die on the cross—but when he comes again as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, when he comes in glory to judge both the living and the dead.

If you reject his free offer of salvation now, it will be too late then. You will not have an opportunity to change your mind. In fact, the very words I am speaking now will be held up as a testimony against you.

You heard the gospel today. Do not reject it. Confess it. Believe it. And live. Live for the Lord. Live a new life of holiness. Live a life of love for God and for his word and for his people.  Live a life of obedience to God.  You will not regret it. Such a life is joy unspeakable and full of glory. Then, later, when you have persevered to the end, you will not go to judgment. You will go to be with God, to live a life of eternal joy with eternal God in eternal heaven, where you will worship him in spirit and in truth forever.

Therefore, I say, as Ezekiel 33:11 says, “Turn!  Turn from your evil ways!  Why will you die?” Why will you die this eternal death? You do not have to. God is offering your life today. Live! Receive the free offer of life in Christ!  Confess him as Lord and Savior. Repent of your sins and live a new life of joyful obedience, secure in Jesus Christ.  Receive this amazing gift of eternal life, achieved for us by Jesus Christ, the amazing gift of God, and live!

5. Having received his amazing gift, let us all re-gift it.

What should we do if we have received this amazing gift? Re-gift it! Go and tell others about Jesus Christ. There is sufficient grace available to save any sinner—in fact, theoretically, to save all sinners. The eternal blood of Jesus Christ and his infinite righteousness are inexhaustible.  We will not run out.  Share it with everyone.  Offer it to everyone.

As I said, not everyone will receive it. As I said, some will reject it. There is an element of mystery in eternal election. We do not know who is going to receive it and who is not going to receive it. We do not know who God has appointed to eternal life, and it is not our job to figure it out. It is not our job to sovereignly choose who should be saved and who should not be saved.  That is up to God.  Our job is to spread everywhere the fragrance of Christ. Our job is to spread everywhere the fragrance of eternal life. And we must spread it freely to all people.

Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations” – not some nations, not the nations who seem like they might be open to it, not the nations who seem like good people. He said spread it to all. Go into your home and into your neighborhood, into your school and into your office, into the city and into the country, into the suburbs and into the ’hood.  Go everywhere and give the gift of the gospel. Spread to all the fragrance of Christ.

If you have received this great, amazing gift, re-gift it!  Testify to others how God took you, an unworthy sinner, and saved you and brought you into his family, his church, the household of God.  Tell everyone how he took you from death to life. This is the greatest gift you can give. The greatest act of love you can show for other people is to tell them this truth.

Conclusion

Friends, let us all remember what we celebrate at Christmas. It is not just celebrating the end of another year, or enjoying all the material blessings, or even being thankful for the love of our friends and our families. No, we celebrate the Advent—the coming of the long-awaited Savior. We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, God-become-man.

Keep this truth foremost in your thoughts and foremost in your speech this Christmas season. Marvel at the amazing gift of God.  Marvel at the amazing love of God.  And then tell everyone, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.”  Amen.

Lord, we thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ. We thank you for the gift of eternal life in Christ. We thank you for the gift of faith, and the gift of repentance, and the gift of a new life of joyful obedience to our Lord and Savior.  You are indeed great and most worthy of praise.  We pray that you would save every person hearing this word today, that each would receive your gift and not reject it—receive it and then give it to others. We ask all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.