On my twelfth birthday I got a video game as gift from my father. This was a very precious and non rivaled gift. The make was a Micro Genius and it was a direct competitor to brands like Nintendo, Sega and Atari. All I needed to play games configured for other video game brands was a converter. This gift made me and my house very popular on my end of the street. I remember vividly how many children known and unknown trooped to my house because they wanted to play a video game. As the commander in chief of the “game zone” I determined the people whom I would give access. As a child I thought this gift would last forever so I guarded it jealously.
As years pass many more different versions of video games have been produced. Many more will still be produced, because technology improves every day. My obsolete Micro Genius is at best a relic of the past’s glory. Some of the children I flaunted my “priced asset” for are now adults with children. They are now wealthy enough to buy dozens of better configured games for themselves and their children. This birthday gift was so limited in nature like any other gift subject to man’s ever changing whims. There was never a need for me to guard it jealously.
As I thought of the limited nature of this human gift by my father on my twelfth birthday, I saluted the gift of Eternal Life given to Christians by God on our birthday into His magnificent kingdom of Life with awe (John 1:12, James 1:17-18).
Our birthday gift is unrivaled, precious, incorruptible and unlimited in nature (1Pet.1:23-25). This gift transcends the physical and eternally upholds us in the embrace of the divine (1Pet.1:3-5). The manufacturer of this gift is not man so the gift isn’t subject to any changes (Eccl.3:14, Rom.11:29). God is unchangeable in nature and is the same from everlasting to everlasting (Heb.13:8). The access and illuminating prominence this gift gives to Christians can’t in anyway be compared to the transient and dwarfed prominence associated with humanly crafted gifts.
Humans keep on coming up with new innovations to celebrate their limitations, but we have a God who doesn’t need to come up with new innovations – God is unlimited, unfathomable and incomprehensible (1Tim.1:17). This very nature is deposited in the life of the Christian because we are God’s temple (1 Cor.6:17).
Every Christian has the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor.9:15). We have the very life and essence of God. I admonish that we all live with this mentality.
– Emeka I. Ofia
I think it must be the size that puts people off from swallowing this pill. Some people had to travel miles to get an “official” backing to show that this pill like the ones mentioned before now is really worth swallowing.
Let’s start like this … Have you ever heard “Nothing is free, you’ve got to just work for it”. Well I’ve heard it in various versions but more importantly we tend to view salvation this way as well. Some view it as a debt. It just has to be paid back somehow. The mode of payment may differ but all the same you’ve got to pay it back. Some work in fear wondering if ever they have meet up to this debt.
But if ever salvation was a debt it had long been paid not by your sweat or mine but by the precious blood of Christ Jesus who redeemed us from the pit of hell and is now offering it to us as a gift.
Some accept this half but the other half of the pill is still so difficult to swallow that some just nibble on it lifelong. The other half is a corollary to the first which says that you don’t work for a gift; you don’t work to get a gift neither do you work to earn a gift. A gift is free of any charge to you otherwise it ceases to be a gift.
Some well meaning but misguided brothers met Apostle Paul to say now that these could not be saved unless they had done do this and done that (Acts 15). Paul did not give them a single moment of time. So much the more He walked miles to seek the support of some others before Him if anything to ensure that this Grace remains what it is – The Grace of God.
God calls us not to try and prove that we could have earned this gift rather He calls us to open this gift up – explore its depth, its breadth, its height and bask in the Glory of all that we have now been made qualified to partake of.
– Dr bolaji akanni