Daily Devotional Series: Sufficient, Shining Gifts

This is always a unique time of year. The new year has begun, life is moving along (with or without your short-lived resolutions), and the Christmas gift haul is beginning to be naturally sorted by your daily wants and needs.

Do you know what I am talking about? Every year we all receive gifts—typically a variety of them. Some are big, some are small, some are silly, and some are just plain odd. There are things that we’ve expressed to others that we’ve wanted or needed, and then there are things that we are given that we didn’t know we wanted or needed. And then there are those gifts that we definitely didn’t want or need but feel blessed by anyway (because it is the thought that counts, right?).

Gift-giving is a uniquely insecure experience. There is a sense of tension in the giving and receiving of a gift because there is a natural economy that has arisen through the relational dynamics of gift-giving. This economy is further described in Marcel Mauss’ work, The Gift, where he explains that gift-giving is a social system governed by three obligations: giving, receiving, and reciprocating. This is to say that, in traditional societies, gift-giving is not a matter of benevolence but of equivalence. What I mean by that is that gifts are not always given out of the purest motivations. Generosity is the ideal basis of giving someone a gift, but the unfortunate reality of our lives is that giving a gift has become a societal norm that either consists of unnatural obligation or is the byproduct of manufactured social order.

Most people give gifts because they feel obligated to do so—either on the basis of a particular occasion (such as a birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.) or because they find themselves relating to another person from a higher vantage point in terms of status (whether financial or reputational).

All of this surrounding gift-giving creates a distorted paradigm for people to understand what it means both to give and to receive. The distortion is the perversion of true benevolence, both morally and pragmatically. We don’t often know what it means to give freely simply because giving is good. We also lack the ability to give a gift that is truly good, complete, or whole.

This is what makes James 1:17 so easy to gloss over:

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

For one, the easily perceived redundancy of “good gift” and “perfect gift” causes the reader to immediately take for granted a powerful truth about God’s character—specifically, who he is as Father. Secondly, English translations often fail to accurately communicate the message James is conveying to his audience.

This is where we find out who the Father is as a gift-giver. First, understand that God is good in the act of giving. What could God possibly stand to gain from us? As our motives are distorted by obligation, his are pure in generosity. He gives out of his complete abundance. It is the perfection of his moral uprightness that leads him to give. This is contrary to our need to meet expectations, satisfy the demands of societal hierarchy, and reciprocate. Second, see that the gifts God gives are perfect. This means they are complete, of the highest quality and composition, and are never needless or unuseful.

These two points together help us understand that God’s economy of giving is not one defined by free and fair trade—because there is no such thing. God gives out of the purest and most perfect form of benevolence, and the gifts he gives are pure and perfect in their form and function.

The implications of this truth are massive.

On the horizontal axis, all things we have are, by nature, gifts from God, since the only thing we truly deserve is hell—namely, separation from God and from his specific and common grace. And if all things we possess are gifts, they are given with the best intention and the most complete function. Think about the practical implications of that. Your old, beat-up car? A gift from above—perfect and complete, fulfilling its divine purpose in your life. Your old, beat-up body? Same thing. Understanding the why and what behind the gifts God gives transforms the way we see the world we live in and produces in us a heart of contentment and gratitude.

On the vertical axis, the Father, out of his abundance, chose at the proper time to send the perfect gift—one we would never be able to reciprocate. The Father gave the Son with the expectation that his sending would be sufficient. The Father gave the Son knowing that he would be the gift of all gifts—the one that would keep giving, the one that would never be broken or lost.

In a season of sorting all types of gifts, remember this: God’s giving is unlike ours. He is not obligated to give. He gives because he is love. So look around. Think about the gifts you have been given. They are but an ounce of that which was given in a manger and consummated on a cross—and their meaning is that God loves you.