The Gospel as a Gift

We usually estimate the contents of a gift by the attractiveness of the paper with which it is wrapped.  If the paper is plain, we might not think very much of the present itself at first.  But judging a box by its trimmings and bows can never accurately determine the worth it possesses.  This was definitely the case when God sent the greatest gift, His Son, Jesus Christ. The unattractive wrapping was intentional.  Isaiah says, “He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.” (Isaiah 53:2) The people of Christ’s day did not think very much of who He was or the town that He came from (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Jn. 1:46). Neither was his father’s trade held in high regard (“Is not this the carpenter’s son?” Mt. 13:55). Outward appearances and displays of power meant as much to Christ’s contemporaries as they do to us today. Not only were these people displeased with the appearance of Jesus, but they despised His purpose as well. It was the wrappings of a political savior that the multitudes longed for; a man who would free them from Roman oppression.  But the Savior who would come was to free them from much more than from any tyrannical leader; He had come to release them from the bondage of their own sinful hearts.  As the angel said to Mary, “You shall name Him Jesus for He will save His people from their sins.”  Adding to all this uncomeliness, Jesus Christ was hung on a cross to be crucified, the most shameful way for any man to die during this period. 

Jesus was and is the greatest gift that mankind has or will ever know.  In considering this great Gift and the unattractive, humble state in which He came, we need to shift our focus to the wrapping that covers our eyes. As sinners, we are spiritually dead and “blinded by the prince of this world” so that we cannot “see the light of the gospel of Christ.” We must study the Gift with new eyes, eyes that will enable us to see Jesus- God incarnate, fully God and fully man, who lived a life of perfect obedience and suffered and died as the only sacrifice for our sins. When we do this, we will see not the unattractiveness of God’s own Son, but the unattractiveness of our sin.  Once we allow Christ to unveil the filth of our own hearts, we will be able to love and delight in the magnitude of His gift, the beauty of Calvary’s love and the riches of God’s mercy, which will then allow us to share in the experience of what happened three days after Christ’s death—His resurrection! Only then will we see Jesus for who He truly is.