The generosity of God, Part 2: The Son's priceless gift

It is easy to show generosity when we have plenty, to give in a way that is comfortable for us. 

Jesus told a story about a rich man giving a big donation to the temple – yet that donation cost him nothing. Instead, Jesus noticed the poor widow who had only a small coin to give – yet it was all she had in the world. As far as he was concerned, her gift was worth so much more.

Divine accountancy is different to earthly measurements

 In 2 Samuel 24, when David had to make a sacrifice to the Lord God, Araunah the Jebusite offered King David both his threshing floor and bulls for free. However, David explained: ‘No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’

 The depth of generosity is measured by the cost of the giving.

A gift that costs us nothing may be weighty on an earthly level but it doesn’t weigh anything on the heavenly scales. A gift may not weigh much on earthly scales but it has great weight in the divine throne room.

The generosity of the Son 

Jesus is the eternal and infinite ever-begotten Son of the Father. He is always filled with the Spirit without limit. The whole universe was formed and ordered by him – and it all holds together in him. He was enthroned in the highest heaven, surrounded by hundreds of millions of angels in glorious assembly, all yearning to do his will.   

 

Jesus was impossibly rich – yet he gave all this in order to rescue us.

 

As 2 Corinthians 8:9 says: ‘You know the generous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make you rich.’

 

It is important for us to follow the generosity of the Son. Only through his birth, life and death can we fully appreciate just how costly his generous giving really was.

The spotless champion

Let’s follow the journey of Philippians 2:6–8: ‘Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.’

At his birth, Jesus became lower than the angels. His birth was not into royal palaces of privilege, but into poverty and into an animal trough.

 

His early life saw him on the run as a refugee. He went to the very bottom of human society in order to reach every last one of us.

 

In his life, the devil tempted him to take the easy options: to use the power of the Spirit to turn stones into bread to please himself; to do publicity stunts to gain popularity; to compromise with the devil in order to gain control of the world.  

Jesus refused all those temptations in order to be the spotless champion with perfect integrity that we all need. In order to be that for us, he had to sacrifice so much, day after day after day.

The Son sent from the Father 

The generous giving of God the Son was taken to the most extreme limit when it came to his passion and death.  

Jesus had come from the highest heaven in order to… GIVE. In Matthew 20:28 he said: ‘…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ 

 

For everlasting ages, the Son had only known the endless, wonderful love of his Father and the joyful fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  

 

That unbroken, glorious koinonia is the very essence of who the living God is. Jesus, throughout the Gospels, had always defined himself as the Son sent from the Father – and that they were one: to see Jesus is to see the Father precisely because they are so utterly united in every way.

 

Yet… could he give up his own experience of that divine fellowship in order to rescue us?

Could he give if the cost of reaching us was that he had to be forsaken by his Father?  

Could he give if, on the cross, he had to go down to the very depths of darkness and hell?  

Could he give when giving would be so infinitely costly?

Could the generous costly giving of the Son go as far as him becoming the forsaken, lost Son who had to go to the furthest pigsty of damnation to bring all the lost ones home to the Father?

The cost of giving 

No matter how much we have felt the cost of giving, we have never felt the battle of Gethsemane. None of us has faced giving to the point that our own identity is so deeply threatened. Yet, that is the depth of generosity of the Son. 

 

'Lord, you were rich beyond all splendour,

Yet, for love's sake, became so poor;

Leaving your throne in glad surrender,

Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor:

Lord, you were rich beyond all splendour,

Yet, for love's sake, became so poor. '

- J.W. Pepper, Lord, You Were Rich

 

Read Part 1: The generosity of God: The Father's infinite love

Read Part 3: The Generosity of God, Part 3: The Spirit 

 

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