Receiving

We usually think of Christmas as being more or less synonymous with giving. And so it is, when one remembers that it all began with the most amazing Gift the world has even known, summed up in familiar John 3:16.

But from our point of view, Christmas is to be identified with receiving. Christmas just cannot exist unless a person accepts and personally appropriates God’s marvelous Gift, and the world’s greatest tragedy lies in the fact that people simply refuse to receive the greatest gift that any person ever can be given, everlasting life.

Everyone who walks the earth is a recipient of God’s favor, whether he want to admit it or not. Paul told the proud Corinthians that there is nothing that we have, or are, which has not been given us. Nobody ever gave anyone a thing, either at Christmas or any other time, that he in turn did not first receive. So whether we like it or not, we are constant beneficiaries of God’s benevolence, and what we ought to do is learn the art of being cheerful, gracious receivers.

This–believe it or not–is far from easy, as witnessed by the well-nigh universal rejection of Christ, who is, once more, God’s greatest Gift to man. It is far easier to give than receive–we rush a Christmas card back to an over-looked person who sent us one, and worry whether what we gave was equal in cost to the gift we received.

As Dr. Richard Westmaas once penetratingly put it, “We would rather not accept love that is offered, and complaining about how nobody cares, than to accept the love and to live in response to it. I suspect, too, that this is a part of the nature of man in his response to God as well as to other persons.” Just how independent can a person get?

Neglect

“Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good words, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some….”           Hebrews 10:24, 25

The Christian life is such like riding a bicycle or flying an airplane; unless a person keeps going forward he will fall.  There is no standing still.  Many think of salvation as a kind of gift that a person possesses, like a package or a ticket.  But salvation is a living, growing thing; it must be kept alive.  A plant will not last long without care; much less a human body.

The same thing is even more true of eternal life, the new life in Christ Jesus.  A man may say:  I have been born again; I have faith in Jesus Christ.  But unless that faith is fed and taken care of, it dies.  That is why Hebrews is so full of warning about falling away from the faith.  And Peter adds that it were better not to have known the way of righteousness at all than, having started out on it, to turn back.

A devout Scottish minister quietly began his sermon one Sunday by saying, “There is a question in the Bible that I cannot answer; the angels cannot answer it; even God Himself has no answer.  That question is found in Hebrews 2:3, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”

This warning is not addressed to people who reject the gospel, but to professing Christians.  It is addressed to people who neglect church-going, who are irregular in their Bible-reading.  “Neglect not the gift that is within you.”  That gift is more costly than anything you own, even the most luxurious limousine.  It is far more fragile than your body.  It is more important than your own children.  Take care of it.