My husband has a favorite saying. He likes to ask, “How do you know you’re in love?” He gets a variety of answers, but his go-to answer is, “If you truly love someone, you give,” according to how God loves us:

For God so loved the world, that He gave… (John 3:16)

The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us… (Romans 5:5)

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me … (Galatians 2:20)

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace … (2 Thessalonians 2:16)

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are… (1 John 3:1)

Christmas is especially a time when we think about love and the giving that comes from love.

Love for family – our parents, our children, our grandchildren, our extended families.

Love for friends.

Love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Love for the lost.

And most of all, love for Jesus, who first loved us!

Even the world thinks about love at Christmas:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

Instead of singing about partridges and geese, (12 Days of Christmas) what if we celebrate Twelve Days of Christmas Gifts? I’d like to think about some of the gifts that the ONE who truly loves us [our true love] has given us through salvation in His Son, Jesus. These won’t be long posts, but just some simple reminders that cause us to reflect on just how much God loves us!

Romans 8:38-39 – For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ephesians 4:13-19 – For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

In Genesis 2:16-17, God drew one boundary for Adam. He freely gave him all the fruit of the garden, except for one tree – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was no confusion about which tree God meant. When Satan tempted Eve to disobey and take the fruit of the tree, Eve clearly knew which tree was off limits.

God warned Adam because there was a serious consequence for eating the fruit of this tree: death. Because we know they did not immediately die physically, we understand that God was speaking of spiritual death. Before they sinned in disobedience, Adam and Eve knew no evil. They only knew good because they only knew God. The knowledge of both good and evil became experiential, however, once they took a bite of that fruit. And the experience of evil – sin – brought spiritual death. It also resulted in their (eventual) physical death and brought death into the world.

The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5:12).

The gift of eternal life that Jesus brought was a reversal of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Sin has a wage, and that wage is death, so God sent Jesus to pay the wages of our sins. Jesus laid aside His glory and entered the realm of physical creation in the form of a human baby. He lived a perfect, sinless life because He was still God, and He suffered death as an innocent sacrifice. This death was acceptable to God for the payment of all the world’s sins.

1 Peter 3:18 – For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:21 – He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

1 John 2:2 – And He [that same Jesus Himself] is the propitiation (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins, and not for ours alone but also for [the sins of] the whole world.

Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection fulfilled the requirements demanded by the holiness and righteousness of God. When we put our faith in Jesus, confess and repent of our sins, and trust in His righteousness for forgiveness, we are made righteous, and can now live eternally.

We have been given eternal life, and death no longer has any hold on us – either spiritual death or physical death. Physical death simply becomes a door to walk through to our eternal existence.

John 3:36 – He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

Oh, how grateful I am for the gift of eternal life!

1 Corinthians 15:50-57 – Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.