“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
that WHOEVER believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[1]
Consider the
way that Christmas presents are addressed to a particular person, or a specific
group. Some gifts are labeled to one member of the family or another, or to one
friend or another, while others are labeled as a “family” gift, knowing which
family we are talking about. The label always identifies the recipient of the
gift.
In a sense,
the label tells us who is the beneficiary of the generosity of the gift-giver.
Someone spent time and money to purchase the gift, and so has identified its
intended recipient. The recipient will benefit from what was bought, what was
spent and sacrificed in the purchase, and what the gift means between giver and
receiver.
The first
Christmas gift ever, the loving God giving his Son to the world, is labeled
with the recipient’s name of “whoever."
It reminds me of those envelopes that come in the mail with the designation, “homeowner,"
or “recipient." It is a generic designation meaning that anyone who opens
the letter is entitled to the offer contained inside.
One of the
characteristics of Christmas for children is that they look at the presents
under the tree hoping that the biggest ones are for them. Or, when they think
of what they have requested for Christmas, and they imagine the size of the box
that gift would be in, they hope that any package looking the right size will
contain the gift they have asked for. In other words, we know what it is like
to want to be the recipient of a gift, or a certain gift, or the largest gift.
When God tells
us that the recipient of the first Christmas gift is “whoever,” it means that any one of us could be the beneficiary of
the gift. The question is, are you a Whoever?
With this
wonderful word, God cuts across all racial divisions, all prejudice, all
intolerance, all prideful demands, all selfishness, and simply indicates that
he has done something for the whole world, for all the nations, that can be
received and welcomed by Whoever. It is a gift so expansive, so God-sized, that
every Whoever who wants it, who opens it, receives it.
And, the
interesting thing is,[2]
that this is not a divisible gift, but a whole gift to every Whoever. What I
mean is that, no matter how many Whoevers open the gift, it is not divided up
into pieces according to the number of people who receive it. Neither is it
like a family game that can only be played by two-to-four players at one time.
No, this is a
gift to every Whoever; a gift that can be enjoyed and experienced by every Whoever
at the same time, each one receiving the full measure of the gift to do in
their lives whatever the “that” of
God’s purpose intends.
In other
words, whatever God sent his gift out to do, you can be a Whoever who
experiences the fulfillment of God’s purpose. Yes, GOD’s purpose. YOU, can
experience GOD, doing his thing in your life, just be seeing yourself as a
Whoever.
The day before
writing the rough draft for this entry, I attended a public school Christmas
concert. As usual, there was plenty of focus on Christmas, without any focus on
the Christ who started it all. When one of the songs identified what Christmas
was all about, it explained that it was all about love. That’s it. It’s about
love. It’s not about the presents, or thinking only of ourselves, or wanting to
be the Christmas tree Santa chose instead of everyone else. It is about love;
no explanation of whose love started off the love that the world now seeks; no
identification of the need for God’s love; no honor shown to the love that God
expressed to the world in the gift of his Son. In fact, there was no mention of
God’s Son at all!
At the end, a
few hundred people left a concert believing that Christmas is about love, but
without any reference to Christmas being about Christ. They could allow a fictitious
Santa to tell them that Christmas is about love, but not welcome the real
Christ who expressed the love of God that solves the messed-up condition of our
world.
It is into
such a world as this, where people would rather have love without God, and without
the Christ God sent, that God so loved the world and gave us his only Son. It
is into such a world of people who want nothing more than the warm-fuzzy love
of family and friends, that the Christ lays down his life for his friends, so
they can become his adopted family.
There is still
more to this gift, and Christmas, than we have yet identified. There are still
four more days of Christmas to unwrap. There is more under the tree, so to
speak, just waiting for our participation.
However, today
there is an indisputable Whoever inviting you to open God’s gift. There is a
Whoever that rings through every subsequent generation of time, showing God’s
love to the Worldlings of every nation, telling everyone without prejudice that
“whoever” receives the gift of love
God has given in his Son will experience the full measure of the gift.
Yes, Christmas
is about love, no doubt about it. However, it is about God so loving the world
that he gave us his Son, so that Whoever opens the gift, receives the greatest
expression of the greatest love the world has ever known. When the Who’s Who of
Christmas is the Father giving his Son, then the greatest experience of
Christmas is for the Whoevers who open the gift.
The gift is
waiting, so don’t forget to have a blessed “About Christ” Day!
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures
are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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