Gift After Gift After Gift – Brad Jersak

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We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift (John 1:16, MSG, The Message Bible).

Out of his full store we have all received grace upon grace (John 1:16, NEB,The New English Bible).

The first chapter of the Gospel of John presents an unequalled, beautiful and profound exploration of what, to the human mind, is “the genesis of God the Word,” made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, God has no actual beginning, but the eternal One concedes to speak to the limitations of our human perspective and language.

John draws a parallel in his New Testament genesis to the first chapter of the Old Testament Genesis, emphasizing the Word who was God and with God in the very beginning (or literally, “at the foundation of the cosmos”). In this grand revelation of the beginning, John speaks from the perspective of the Trinitarian God, one in harmony and unity, coequal and co-eternal, three Persons in one essence.

Upon this Trinitarian foundation, John builds his glorious and majestic story of Jesus, the eternal Word, God the Son, God in the flesh, full of grace and truth:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

“Full of Grace and Truth”

This brief phrase—full of grace and truth—speaks of the grace of God we receive from the fullness of the Son, which is gift after gift after gift (MSG) and grace upon grace (NEB). Lyrics in the soaring hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” echo Lamentations 3:22-23, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness” (RSV, Revised Standard Version).

Grace is always new, always fresh and refreshed, forever vital, never ending, an inexhaustible and eternal spring that flows from the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

How do we fathom this magnificent gift after gift after gift called grace? First, it is a gift that opens our eyes, leads us, draws us and fills us with the oh-so-beyond-human positive response to God. This grace upon grace presents us with the opportunity to overcome the human tendency to reject God, his love, mercy and grace, and opens the door for us to respond in gratitude.

Grace frees us to offer an uncoerced response to God, our relational YES to love, for as John explains in his first epistle, “We love because he loved us first” (1 John 4:19).

In John’s prologue to his Gospel—a New Testament perspective on the genesis of all things—we are taken to new depths of insight about creation and its/our Creator. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3).

The grace of God the Son, the true light-creating Light, shines into all of creation and “gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:9). Out of his full store Christ the Light of the world opens our eyes (Matthew 12:35; 2 Corinthians 4:6) and “brings us to our senses” as did the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:17). Our spiritual eyes are not opened by anything we accomplish or anything we can attribute to ourselves. The eyes of our heart are opened by grace, “not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:9).

The grace of God, in gift after gift after gift, generates the righteousness of the risen Christ in our lives: “But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in [or, through the faithfulness of] Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Romans 3:21-22).

Repentance, faith and belief are themselves gifts of God, by his grace, gift after gift after gift. Grace is somewhat like the unending waves of the ocean, rolling in, crashing on the shore, an inexhaustible experience of wonder and awe.

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