Because the three Persons of the Trinity are identical in
nature, what makes them distinct must relate to their respective roles. One of the Father’s roles that we
considered last night is that the Father is the giver of every good and perfect
gift.
Every good gift and
every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with
whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (James 1:17).
What good thing do you have that you did not receive from
the Father? Nothing. From the
smallest good to the greatest good, all good things comes to us from the
Father.
And this includes the gift of the Son, whom the Father gave
to save us from the wrath to come:
"For God loved
the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes
in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
In this is love, not
that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins (1John 4:10).
The Father’s good gifts include the Spirit, as well, who
teaches us, intercedes for us, and testifies to us about Christ:
“But the Helper, the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things
and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).
Likewise the Spirit
helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but
the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Rom
8:26).
“But when the Helper
comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who
proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26).
The gifts of the Son and the Spirit prove the Father’s
benevolent heart toward us. As
Paul wrote in Rom 8:32, He who did not
spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him
graciously give us all things?
If the Father did not withhold the greatest gift, the greatest
sacrifice, why would He withhold lesser good gifts?
Still, we may on occasion regard God the Father to be a
stingy ogre, who only begrudgingly gives us good gifts when He is absolutely
sure they won’t make us happy. We
regard Him this way because we perceive that He withholds from us things that
we believe are “good” for us. God
certainly denies us things we want, but He does this because He knows better
than we do what is good for us. We tend to equate what will make us happy with what is good for us. God is wiser than that. The things that may make us happy for a
moment are often the worst possible things for us.
How many of us, in our fallen state, would have chosen the
gift of the Son over our own idea of what is good? None of us would have.
Paul teaches in 1 Cor 1:18 that the word of the cross – the gift of the
Son – is foolishness to the world.
Left to ourselves we never would have chosen this greatest Gift. And we only regarded that gift as a
wonderful blessing after the Father opened our eyes and gave us repentance and
faith. Praise the Father that He
knows better than we do AND that He did not leave it up to us to see the desirability
of the gift of Christ.
If the Father knew better than we did regarding the gift of
the Son, certainly we should trust Him with all lesser things. If God withholds a certain thing from
us, it must not be good for us, at least not at that particular time. After all, if He did not withhold His
Son, “how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”
The extravagance of the gifts of the Son and Spirit should
indicate to us that God's great desire is to lavish His children with good gifts. If He hasn’t given something to us, it is because He knows best what is good for us. But the
things He has given us, particularly
in Christ and the Spirit, are of inestimable value.
Comments