God Willingly Gave

God gave to the world so they could choose to have faith in Him.  You get to choose.  You don’t have to, but you get to.  You decide your own life with your choice.  The gift of God is not this choice.  Man had the choice from the beginning and man choose evil.  Man has always had the choice.  The gift of God is Himself.  You get to change your mind.  “Oh God of second chances, here I am again!”  You get a second chance.  And a third chance, and a fourth chance, etc.  This is what God gave when He gave Himself.  He said to man, "I love you and nothing will ever change that!"

Since God is love, God gave love.  That love was in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, “His one and only Son”.  How many of us are willing to give the most precious thing we have, the breath of our own life?  This is a very difficult question to answer and the answer is deceiving.  Many men are bold in proclaiming that they'll give their lives for their loved ones, until the reality of giving up something they want for their loved ones is necessary.  As long as this giving goes along with the way they want their life to go it's okay, but the second it requires them to turn their direction - watch out!  Most people would rather take a bullet in one show of great love and have it all over in a single great act than to give their entire lives, which is full of a multitude of single great acts performed day after day requiring a lot more courage and an extraordinary depth of love. 

I think we fail to gain perspective on Jesus' death because we fail to understand the depth and extent of God's love.  He came and interacted with us.  He walked with us and talked with us.  A God of love had to restrain Himself.  A God of love wanted to heal everyone who hurt, cause no one to die, help everyone He saw, strengthen every poor spirit, renew everyone's courage, show everyone with faith the answer to it, but the only way to do that was to allow Himself to die.  I think about this and I try to imagine it, to feel the depth of the pain, and I just am unable to fully explore it.  How much would it hurt you to be with those you love intensely and have to restrain yourself in how much you help?  You know that with a single thought you could change their lives and ease their pain, but you also know God's plan is what is best for their life and "the world".

God didn’t have this problem.  He “so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son”.  He willingly gave Himself.  God, the author of time, could change this gift and none of us would every know that there ever was a Jesus.  But He doesn't.  He gives Jesus every day.  He crucifies Himself every hour; He dies again and again; And He heroically rises from the dead every minute of every day!  He does this because He so loves us.