Identity: Gift (Part 1)

~ The Biblical Story ~

It is right that we sing “Fairest Lord Jesus”? Isn’t that just a human wording of the angels’ cry, “Holy, holy, holy”? More than that, isn’t it what the Father sings? God is Love, and as Michael Reeves and others have pointed out (1), God is Love only because he is triune (a single-personed god cannot truly extend love in his essence, or is dependent on something else to be able to extend love and thus not god). Eternal God of love, forever self-giving in love to the other members of the Godhead. The Father loved the Son and the Son loved Father and the Spirit the bond of love.(2) God’s love is not static, but I AM THAT I AM gives expression to his love. All that the Father does is for the Son, and all that the Son does is for the Father.(3)

Out of overflow of love, Father-Son-Spirit birthed creation. Love in the blood red poppies that ballet. Love in the dolphins’ pure-pleasure play in the turquoise. Love in the nightingales that charm the evening.

But I think creation was more than just a result of love…

…more than a response of praise, where rocks and heavens and we cry out in love.

But surely creation was from the Father for the Son, and creation was from the Son for the Father by the Spirit.

Surely we are a gift to God from God.

We don’t often think of that perspective when we think of our identity. We often define ourselves as Christians by the gifts he gives us, and rightly so. But there is something beautiful, dramatic, huge, personal, intimate, grand, inexpressible when we see ourselves in the light of being a gift from the Son to the Father and the Father to the Son by the Spirit.

*Why do you think God created? How does that influence the way you think about yourself?

*Just spend a moment reflecting on the Triune God before there was—before before, before anything, before time, before creation. Do you think there was joy, love, community, personality, relationality?

~ Jesus’s Story ~

Jesus, our firstborn brother (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:6) gifted himself to the Father. He was the Sanctified Servant, the one who set himself apart, gifted himself entirely to God (Jn. 17:19). Every deed, even every word to glorify the Father by the Spirit. All his mind, all his heart, all his soul, all his strength for his Father by the Spirit. His life was a gift of obedience, a gift of all.

By gifting himself to the Father, he gifted us to the Father. He the Perfect Son by whom we are reconciled, by whom we are made sons, by whom we participate in the Triune God. Can you hear Jesus, who “is not ashamed to call [us] brothers, saying ‘I will tell of your name [Abba Father,] to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’… ‘Behold, I and the children God has given me’” (Heb. 2:11b-13). He presents us before the throne, a pure and holy people!

The Father gifted us to Jesus. Especially in the gospel of John, there is a repeated refrain:

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (Jn. 3:35; cf. Jn. 13:3).

“All that the Father gives me will come to me… And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me…” (Jn. 6:37, 39).

“My Father, who has given [these sheep] to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand” (Jn. 10:29).

“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me…” (Jn. 17:6; cf. Jn.  17:2, 9, 11, 24).

The Father gifted a bride to his Son. Jesus’s first Sign the apostle John records is the promise of his own wedding banquet: the turning of water into wine, a foreshadowing of the Messiah’s wine in the great end of age wedding. He is the Bridegroom! And Revelation clarifies, “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure” (Rev. 19:7-8). We are the Bride the Father gives, prepares, for his Son. We are a love gift!

Jesus will gift the kingdom to the Father at the end of time as we know it. When Jesus has finished his completed work, Jesus will deliver “the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24). The eternal giving and love of the Triune God etched in the lines of history. Can you see Jesus in love, beaming, “Father, here! The kingdom!” We are God’s ”glorious inheritance” (Eph. 1:18 [4]). We the saints, we the kingdom of priests of a redeemed cosmos, will be his (Rev. 1:6; 1 Pet. 2:9).

The Spirit forms us into Jesus’s image to the Father’s delight. The Spirit prepares the Bride; the Spirit prepares the kingdom. The Father’s delight is in the Son, and he delights in seeing the Son’s image in his people. The Father beams, “That’s my Son’s beauty in her! That kind word—that was like my Son!” Our being delighted in takes on a whole new, greater level. Rather than undermining our being delighted in as individuals, it heightens it, captures it in a bigger story, and absolutely secures it. We are a gift of delight in the Son by the Spirit for the Father, and by the Spirit from the Father for the Son.

The very gospel shows the depth of this identity: Jesus gave himself to the Father and for us on the cross, so that we might be gifted to the Father. He gave himself for those the Father gifted to him. Gift is at the heart of our faith.

*Are there other ways you see “gift” between Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit?

*Spend a moment in praise for the self-giving God who is love.

NOTES

(1) Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: IVP Academic, 2012).

(2) Something I’m still trying to grasp, but my understanding of Jonathan Edwards and Augustine on the Holy Spirit. This does not negate his personhood or equality within the Godhead at all.

(3) Bartel Elshout, “The Father’s Love for the Son,” Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary Conference, August 24, 2012, Windows Media Audio, https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=82412119530

 (4) Willam Mounce, “Do You Feel Like a ‘Glorious Inheritance’? (Eph. 1:18),” Zondervan Academic (blog), September 19, 2016,  http://zondervanacademic.com/blog/do-you-feel-like-a-glorious-inheritance-eph-118-mondays-with-mounce/