Gifts come in different sizes and varying grades. Some gifts are best described as “it is the thought that counts” if you know what I mean. Then there are those gifts that you know the person who gave it to you really thought deeply about and after much deliberation decided that was the gift they would get you. These gifts are just perfect. Then there are those gifts that are way beyond your wildest expectations. They are way to expensive for you to buy for yourself.

These gifts are way out of your league, that you really can’t even dream of owning them, without thinking that you are simply, out of your mind. Let me think of something quite absurd. Like a person living in a hut, that got a palace as a gift. It leaves you jaw agape. You cry and laugh at the same time. You pinch yourself to check if you are truly experiencing what you are experiencing. You dance and jump and scream and shout and you still can’t fully express how you truly feel.

Whatever the quality of the gift, one thing is certain, gifts have a cost element attached to them. Someone pays and we get them for free. Consequently the more elaborate, ostentatious and expensive the gift, the more it costs. Grace is free, but way out of our league expensive. Grace is God’s most elaborate, ostentatious, expansive, expensive, sublime and painfully elegant gift. It is free to us but it cost Jesus.

Jesus in purchasing our free gift of God’s grace, paid. He paid with his reputation being maligned, His name blasphemed, His head pricked in many places with thorns, His hands and feet pierced through with nails, His back and body lacerated with stripes from lashes of whips and scourges, His face marred and disfigured from His beard being plucked out. He paid with His being rejected by those He came to save. He paid by being betrayed by one of His close friends.

He paid by being falsely accused. He paid by being nailed to a cross and suspended in mid-air and allowed to choke and suffocate on his own fluids in the scorching noonday sun of Jerusalem. He paid with His blood being drained out of His body. With His heart melting like wax within Him. With His Father turning away from Him for a moment. With His mother watching Him suffer. He paid with His life.

My friend grace is free but it is not at all cheap. So please treat this free gift with the care in deserves.

I will end with this most sublime bible text “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” 2Cor 9:15

Let Us Pray: Dear Jesus, I am overwhelmed by thought of what it cost you to purchase for me your free gift of grace. Let me forever live in the consciousness of how expensive grace is and let me be forever grateful. Lord Jesus, I fall at your feet once more and say, where would I be without your grace. Thank you so much for your indescribable gift!!!