God’s Christmas Gift to You
We want to share with you Rick Warren’s beautiful Christmas message. It’s so right on.
“Merry Christmas to everybody! By now you may have opened all of your Christmas gifts. But this Christmas morning I want to talk to you about the greatest Christmas gift you will ever receive. –And you may not have opened that particular gift yet! The greatest Christmas gift is God’s gift to you!–And it is the whole reason we celebrate Christmas! It is talked about in the greatest verse in the Bible!–The most famous verse in the Bible: John 3: 16.
Throughout history literally billions of people have memorized this verse! Why is John 3:16 so important? For one, it explains the reason for Christmas, and also, it summarizes the Bible in a single sentence. Plus, it shows you how to settle your eternal destiny, then, how to build a friendship with God, and lastly, how to get into His family!
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (Jn 3:16). This is the Gospel in a single sentence! It is the “good news” in a single sentence.
God’s Christmas gift involves the greatest passion! “God so loved the world.” In the original Greek the word “so” is an adverb of intensity. He loves you intensely, passionately! That is God’s passion. God’s love for you is extravagant, lavish and beyond comprehension. No one will ever love you with the intensity that God, Who created you, loves you.
There are several outstanding verses in the Bible which talk about God’s love for you. In Eph 1:4 says this, ”Long before He (God) layed down the earth’s foundation God had us in mind and He settled on us as the focus of His love.” Before God created anything else, God thought of you! God created the universe because He wanted a family to love. This means that God has always loved you! Before God created the world to sustain you in life, He planned your life.
God shows His love for you every single day! Psalm 145: 9, 10 says, “The Lord is good to everyone, He showers compassion on all of His creation!” God has never made a person that He doesn’t love. Everything in life is a gift of God’s love! God gave His gifts of love to you whether you loved Him or not.
God’s love for you is unconditional. There is no situation in which God will ever stop loving you. Human love wears out. But God’s love never wears out. Human love has limits, but God’s love never ends. The Bible says in Romans 8:39, “Nothing in all of creation is able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.” God’s love, this kind of love that is constant, continual, everlasting, continual…that kind of love is the first part of God’s great gift of love for you. It is His passion for you.
Eph 3:18,19 says this, “May you be able to feel and to understand how long, how wide, how deep and how high God’s love really is and experience this love for yourself!” God’s love is everywhere! His greatest expression of love is giving His Son to bring you to Him!
God ‘gave” His only begotten Son! Jesus came to earth in human form. Jesus became a man. That little baby that we celebrate on Christmas day…Who was that baby? Col 1:15 says this: “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.” If you want to know what God is like, take a long look at Jesus. In John 14: 9 Jesus says this: “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.” Jesus was God in human form! He didn’t meet us halfway, He came all the way!
Jesus didn’t come simply to live, He came to die.–To die for our sins. In Romans 5: 8 it says: “God put His love on the line for us by offering His Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him.” God is a God of LOVE, but He is also a God of judgment and when there is a “wrong”, it has to be made “right”, there has to be “justice”. Jesus came to correct what was wrong. He came to pay for our sins so we don’t have to pay for our sins. He came to give grace.
Because the Kingdom and Heaven are perfect, and we are not, we needed a Savior to get us “in”. The good news of Christmas is that everything we have ever done wrong has already been paid for. That is why Jesus came to earth! That is God’s Christmas gift to you. “When Jesus served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for good. Not only our sins, but for the whole world (1 John 2:2)”.
What actually happens when I receive God’s Christmas gift? The Bible says in second Corinthians 5:21: “God took the sinless Christ and poured into Him our sin. Then in exchange He poured God’s goodness into us.” That is the greatest gift you will ever receive.
God also has the greatest proposal for you in the verse John 3:16. “Whoever believes in Him, shall not perish.” That is a promise! Notice who this offer is for. ‘Whoever’. In Titus 2: 11 it says this: “The free gift of eternal life is offered to everyone.” In Acts 10:35 it says, “It makes no difference who you are, or where you are from, if you want God and are ready to do what He says, the door is open.”
In Romans 10: 9 it says: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is your Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This is the greatest gift!–And it has been given on Christmas day!