The Gift of God

Gary Henry

“And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God’” (Revelation 21:3).

WHATEVER SECONDARY BLESSINGS FLOW FROM GOD, WE OUGHT TO SEEK NONE OF THESE AS DILIGENTLY AS WE SEEK GOD HIMSELF. We must be those who seek God primarily for His sake, because He is our God and we long to give ourselves to Him.

Selfishness and manipulation are nowhere more out of place than in our relationship with God. And selfishness here would be quite self-defeating, as it always is. If we’re concerned only with the other things God can give us, we’ll miss the greatest Gift of all. “God’s chief gift to those who seek him is himself” (E. B. Pusey).

When we speak of “the gift of God,” we should think of God as both the Giver and the Gift. Jesus, for example, said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “If you knew THE GIFT OF GOD, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (John 4:10). What is the living water which only God can give? Paul would later write that “THE GIFT OF GOD is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). But concerning eternal life, Jesus had gone to the heart of the matter on the night of His betrayal when He prayed: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). God gives us life by giving us Himself. Other blessings may flow from a right relationship with God, but that relationship itself is God’s greatest gift to us. If we “have” God and His Son, we have the highest thing to which we can aspire. “He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).

Even when we try to appreciate what God should mean to us, we can hardly grasp the glory and grace of a God who would give Himself to such people as we are. But it would take a hard heart indeed not to be moved by Jesus’ simple words: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). This seems much too good to be true. Only God could make it true.

“God, of your goodness, give me yourself for you are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In you alone do I have all” (Julian of Norwich).