The Gift which implies all gifts.
One very desirable habit of Christian experience is the habit of connecting all spiritual privileges and all providential favours with the supreme Gift which God has conferred upon us in the bestowal of his own Son. It is this habit which the apostle encourages by the appeal of the text.
I. THE ONE GIFT GOD ONCE GAVE.
1. The Person given was his own Son—the Only Begotten, the Well-beloved.
2. The sacrifice on the part of the Giver involved in the Gift. The use of the word "spared" implies "withheld" not, which suggests that the Divine heart felt the sacrifice and surrender, yet that its pity devised it and consented to it as the greatest revelation of the nature of Deity.
3. The Gift was more than a gift; it was a delivering up, i.e. to earth, to the society of sinners, with the knowledge that he who was thus surrendered would meet with misunderstanding and misrepresentation, would be maligned and insulted, rejected and persecuted, cruelly abused, and unjustly slain.
4. The Gift was intended for all; not for a select few, but for Jews and Gentiles alike, for sinners of every grade, of every nation.
II. THE MANY GIFTS GOD IS ALWAYS GIVING.
1. Every possession and privilege is, in fact, the gift of God; all "come down from above." However we may forget that we are needy and dependent recipients, the truth is that we have nothing which we have not received.
2. Spiritual gifts are chiefly intended, such as are so fully enumerated and characterized in this chapter; spiritual life in all its stages, from deliverance from condemnation, on to eternal, inseparable fellowship with Christ.
3. Yet, without question, temporal gifts are included. Of these we sometimes say they come through natural law; and this is so. Yet we, in so speaking of them, only describe the process, whilst the origin is in God alone.
4. These gifts are bountifully and generously bestowed. God bestows munificently as a King, tenderly as a Father; and we receive without any possibility of rendering repayment or recompense.
III. THE INCLUSION OF THE MANY GIFTS IN THE ONE.
1. A doctrinal explanation of the inclusion here affirmed. The greater includes the less; and, as Christ is the unspeakable Gift, his bestowal involves all other evidences of Divine generosity. The power which can give one, can give all; the disposition which could plan the one, can bestow all; and the mediation and advocacy of Christ are such that they are to be regarded as the channels by which the bounty of the Eternal flows copiously into human hearts and lives.
2. A practical explanation. Dwell upon the wonderful, significant, and precious phrase here employed by the apostle, "with him!" "With him" God gives his people pardon for their sins, a perfect model of goodness, a higher conception of human virtue, a powerful motive of obedience, a holy bond of brotherhood, a bright hope of everlasting life. As a matter of practical experience, this is so in the history alike of individual Christians and of the world.