Identity: Gift (Part 2)

Last week in part 1 (read here), we explored gifting in the Trinity. How does that touch us? 

~ Stepping In: Us Today ~

It seems a little abrupt, almost irreverent, to shift so soon from dwelling on the Triune God’s love and giving to our Monday mornings. But worship is to form us, our identity is derived from him. So what does it look like to live out our identity as gifts?

Our God treasures us—not because of anything in us (Deut. 7:6-8), but because the Father has chosen us as gifts, the Son has redeemed us as gifts, the Spirit has prepared us as gifts. Love, to paraphrase Martin Luther, bestows value. We are now the treasured possession of the Triune God. This creates such security, for our love is based on his eternal purpose, on his inter-Trinitarian love and delight, and not in what we do. It heightens the sense of delight, for can you imagine the great pleasure the Father has in the Son and the Son in the Father by the Spirit? An infinite heart and delight? A pure, holy delight? Greater than the galaxy, a love that cannot be contained, bordered, counted, beyond time and any dimension! And we are caught up in this divine delight.

I-as-Gift puts a new lift in my sanctification. When we see the Father’s delight in the Son, it augments our own love for the Son. We thirst to become more like the Son as we treasure his image. We want to be a beautiful Bride for the Son by the Spirit. We want to be a glorious inheritance for the Father by the Spirit. To have such confidence that the Father will not present a ragged Bridge to his Son, and the Son will not present an impure people to the Father, oh that is confidence! He works in us to will and to do, and undergirds by his grace our response of obedience to him, for he will gift us beautifully.

I-as-Gift begin to see others as gifts as well, and like Paul, we feel a divine jealousy for others, betrothed  to one husband, to be a pure virgin to Christ (2 Cor. 11:2). Lie Paul, we are in anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in our friends and children (Gal. 4:19). We begin to call beautiful what God calls beautiful, for we too sing, “Fairest Lord Jesus.” It changes parenting and friendship, for others and our children and family and friends are a gift to God, to be treasured and in whom Christ is being formed in them to be a gift.

Seeing ourselves as gifts reframes our daily life as part of a love story. We are not just saved forensically (although not to undermine that), but this emphasizes the relational, participatory, glorifying nature of our salvation. We are saved to be Brides, a Kingdom, Gifts. My heart while cleaning the toilet, waiting in the line at the grocery store, are all framed as gift. By the Spirit, I desire to be pleasing to the Father and the Son(2 Cor. 5:9). I desire the Son’s beauty in me. I desire to gift myself as a living sacrifice, to bring a smile to my Bridegroom and my King. My choice glorifies the Father in his choosing a radiant Bride for his Son; my attitude glorifies my Savior by his redeeming a pure Kingdom. Jesus’s gift to us, to his Father, was his life and death and ascended ongoing mediation. It was a joy to him to be so submitted to the Father! And that joy by the Spirit is ours too. We gift ourselves, as a pleasing fragrance, a pleasing offering to our Triune God by his Spirit.

It can transform the weariest moments, when I’m housebound and unable to do. I am a gift, and the Father and Jesus still delight in me. My being pleasing is bigger than what I do. My worship is part of a Triune Love.

We as gifts become givers, for we get our identity from God. When we see his self-giving, gifting nature from eternity and beyond, we grow in trust. For he who did not spare his own Son, how will he not graciously give us all things (Rom. 8:31-32)? We grow in giving of time, money, goods, and most importantly, our own selves (1 Thes. 2:8).  

So let us, gifts, sing and give a gift of worship:

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,

O thou of God and man the Son,

Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,

thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.

*Do you think of yourself as a gift? How can you intentionally grow in that?

*Would you add other ways that thinking of yourself as a gift would transform the way you live daily and in the big picture?