How much did God spend on Christmas?
Romans 8:32
Christmas Day is known for the giving of gifts, many gifts, sometimes extremely costly gifts. I sometimes marvel at the ads that show an expensive luxury car in the driveway with a huge red bow on top and the giver walking the blindfolded recipient to the dramatic moment of unveiling. I wonder, “Do people really give $75,000 gifts for Christmas?” Such people move in a stratosphere with which most of the world is unaccustomed!
But how can any material gift compare with the infinite worth and value of the true Christmas gift, the one given to the world two thousand years ago in Bethlehem? How can we put a price on God’s lavish generosity in giving his Son to a rebellious and raging world? Romans 8:32 gives a glimpse into the value of that gift to God himself. According to the logic of that verse, God considers all other things in his immeasurable treasury (which includes all of creation!) to be of lesser worth than the gift of his Son, incarnate in the virgin’s womb, slaughtered at Golgotha, and raised on the third day. The God who did not spare—withhold—his only begotten Son but gave him up for us all would not withhold any lesser gift. The phrase “gave him up” refers to the atonement, where God poured out his wrath on him and allowed death to have mastery over him. Any other thing that God could ever give is infinitely less than that.
“How can we put a price on God’s lavish generosity in giving his Son to a rebellious and raging world?”
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.” That means that God is worth more than “everything else.” What is “everything else?” It is all of creation… all created things in the universe. By the same logic we can look at the gift of Jesus Christ the same way. He who has Christ and everything in the universe has no more than he who has Christ alone. Because Christ is everything! In him all the promises of God are yes and amen. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In Christ is life and that life is the light of people. If we put the weight of the glory of all created things on one side of the scales, and Christ on the other, the weight of the glory of Christ would be as one million pounds and the weight of all creation would be as a dust speck or a drop of water from a bucket.
Therefore, if there is anything missing from your assembly of gifts on Christmas morning, it is as nothing. So also if there should be anything finally missing from your list of desires and goals and yearnings and possessions when you lay on your deathbed, it will not be because God was holding out on you. God gave the greatest gift he could ever give in Christ incarnate and crucified.
