The Forgotten Gift

Christmas Eve 1996

Underneath your Christmas tree right now, I’m sure, are many presents. By tomorrow at noon, I would venture to say, they will be all gone. You will have unwrapped them and you’ll be enjoying them. That’s what Christmas presents are for.

But I want you to imagine that under your Christmas tree one present is left. It is a very beautiful gift, carefully chosen and wrapped by someone who loves you very much. It cost a great deal for him to purchase - in fact it cost him everything. But it is still sitting there at the end of Christmas day - all alone under a Christmas tree that is beginning to look a little bedraggled. You just leave it there, ignored, as the days go by.

Finally, with the holidays over, you decide to take down the tree and the ornaments and the lights. After putting them all away for another year, all that is left in your living room is that one beautiful present. It’s covered with pine needles now. It looks out of place, now that all the decorations are gone, so you pick it up and stash it behind the sofa, where it will be out of the way.

Every now and then, when company comes over, you show them the beautiful gift stashed behind the sofa, and everyone admires the lovely wrapping paper and the exquisite bow. But the parcel remains there, unopened, ignored, and eventually forgotten.

Can you see what I am getting at? That is how most people treat Jesus Christ at Christmas. That gift is the gift of salvation that Jesus purchased with his own blood. He wants you to have it, he wants you to open it, to enjoy it. That’s why he came here to earth. That was the reason for his mission.

But most people ignore the gift. Oh, they pay lip service to how wonderful the gift looks, they even sing about it, but they don’t open it. They don’t receive it for themselves. Jesus Christ becomes one of the props of Christmas, along with Santa and his reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman, instead of being the central figure.

How do you think that makes him feel?

The NT over and over again talks about the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

Revelation 22:17 Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

My prayer for you this Christmas is that you’ll open the gift; that you’ll discover just how much God loves you; that you’ll receive the gift, and thank God for it. And that you’ll echo the words of the Apostle Paul who wrote…

2 Corinthians 9:15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!