The Gift and What Was In It for God

Last week, we took a look at the reason why God gave the gift of Jesus to a world that wasn’t particularly interested. His reason, quite simply, was to save the world through Jesus from the devastating effects of sin and death. As Jesus put it in what are arguably the most famous words he ever uttered, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:16-17).”

With that well established, I’d like to now examine what was in it for God. It’s wonderful that He wanted to save the world, but was there anything in it for Him?

Perhaps that’s a bit of a loaded question because it makes it sound like He may have done it for selfish reasons. But that is not at all the case. Still, it’s not like He didn’t have His reasons for doing it.

Have you ever had something you really liked and you lost it? Do you remember that feeling of frustration as you looked everywhere for it and couldn’t find it? Do you recall how you racked your brain as you tried to remember where you placed it or where you last had it, but it was all in vain?

You may remember that I wrote a few weeks ago about some special baseball cards I had as a kid and that I lost them and have no idea what ever happened to them. That was one of the special things I lost. Perhaps for you it was something very sentimental, such as a piece of jewelry from your grandmother, or a special gift from a close friend. Whatever it may be, you know that it’s not fun losing that item that meant so much to you.

Now imagine that what you’ve lost is someone you love. Perhaps you don’t have to imagine; perhaps you know exactly what I am talking about. It hurts deep in our hearts when we lose someone we love dearly. Whether it’s by death or distance, there’s no healing that pain overnight.

If you can relate to what I’m describing, then you are getting close to the heart of what was in it for God to give the gift of Jesus to the world. To understand what was in it for Him, we must go back in the past, back before the world even existed. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit shared an intimate fellowship with each other. In that fellowship they experienced perfect love and joy together. At some point, God then decided to create humanity. It wasn’t just a random decision; He had a purpose in mind. He wanted to share that fellowship of love and joy with us. He wanted us to experience the same sense of joy and fulfillment that He, the triune God, had experienced throughout eternity. That’s what was at the heart of God’s reason for creating man.

But then came the moment that Adam and Eve fell into sin. With sin came death and destruction, and the shared life of love and joy God desired for us was lost.

Losing mankind surely broke God’s heart, but He was not about to give up without a fight. From the time of the Fall on, the biblical narrative becomes a rescue story. How could God bring about restoration so that His purpose for mankind would still be fulfilled? How could he destroy sin and its disastrous effects without also destroying the ones He desired to share His love with?

That’s where the gift of Jesus comes into focus. To save the world and His purpose for mankind, God needed to destroy the very thing that threatened to destroy the object of His love. He needed to destroy sin.

To better understand this, I’m going to borrow an illustration from another Christian teacher I heard this from. Sin is to us spiritually like cancer cells are to the body. Cancer cells are living cells but they are diseased. If not treated, they will eventually kill the host. The way cancer cells are typically treated is through chemotherapy, which, as I understand it, is like putting a controlled poison in your body so as to destroy the cancer cells. Or to use a similar illustration, sin is to us what a computer virus is to a software program. If the virus isn’t destroyed, it will wipe out the program and it will not function as it was designed to. That’s the way sin is to mankind.

God’s plan was to send Jesus into the world as the chemotherapy, or the anti-virus program. By becoming sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), Jesus, by his death on the cross, destroyed sin. When he died, the power of sin died with him. In this way, he took away the sin of the world (John 1:29)  and set us free of its power and free to live in the light and love of our Father. And by that the purpose of God for us was restored and the fellowship He wanted us to share in has again been made possible. That’s what God wanted all along, That’s what was in it for Him to give the world the gift of Jesus.

Once more we see that the heart of God is all about restoring what was lost, just as Jesus revealed in his parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15. He also demonstrated that heart in how he pursued sinners throughout his earthly ministry, just as he continues to do through the Holy Spirit to this day.

So what was in it for God was regaining what was temporarily lost – opening the way for humanity to be joined in a loving and fulfilling fellowship filled with joy with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all this accomplished by the gift of Jesus Christ. Next we will examine what was in it for us and why the gift of Jesus is by far the greatest gift ever given.