“Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’ And ‘who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.” (CSB – Read the chapter here and here)

Christmas is a time for giving gifts. That has been the tradition at least in the West for hundreds of years. And how interesting it is that even as Christmas has been thoroughly secularized and commercialized by our culture, stripping away almost everything that saw to the creation of the holiday in the first place, gift giving has remained. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, whenever we got a gift we had to write a thank you note. It’s a practice we have instilled in our kids as well. When you receive a gift, it is right and proper to respond in some way to demonstrate your gratitude. Well, the gift that sparked all the gift giving we still celebrate today was the gift of Jesus. It is only right that we respond to this gift. Let’s talk about how.

As Christmas has continued to secularize in our culture over the last generation, it has had to find things other than Jesus to anchor itself down so that it hasn’t just faded away. Given, as the name suggests, that it is all about celebrating Christ, you might think that taking Christ out of Christmas would have led to its undoing. But it is far too significant a retail season for the businesses of our culture to let go without a fight. Their bottom line often depends on the massive amounts of money spent in the weeks leading up to this critical year-end holiday. That’s why the gift-giving season has been extended further and further out each year. The sooner they can get us spending all that extra money, the better.

That may sound a bit cynical (and it’s certainly not completely devoid of cynicism), but I say that to point to the fact that one of the major anchors for our increasingly culturally secularized Christmas holiday is gift-giving. Given the range of things Christmas could have morphed into without Christ as its focus, doing good for others is definitely not the worst. That mindset of generosity and charity comes out of the Gospel, and can be used as intentional pointers back to the Gospel when we are willing to meet our culture where it is rather than griping about where it is.

The closing doxology of Romans 11 and the opening verse of Romans 12 offer up ideas and themes we have explored fairly recently on here. But honestly, when I was studying through them several months ago, and when I finally wrote about them several weeks ago, I treated them and separate entities. There was the end of Romans 11, which closed that whole section of the letter, and then there was Romans 12. There is a definitive turning of the page from one section to the next. I treated the themes and ideas of each without much in the way of reference to each other.

As I was reading through an Advent devotional of my own recently, though, the authors erased the page break, and offered some reflections on Romans 11:33-12:1 as a complete unit. Seeing that, I noticed something that had not occurred to me before. Romans 12:1 answers a question Paul raises in that Romans 11 doxology.

The closing doxology in Romans 11 is a response to Paul’s exploration of the nature of salvation and the grace of God to extend that incredible gift to the whole world and not keep it only for the Jews. As far as the Jews were concerned, and frankly, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, this was not what was expected. When we look back at ancient peoples, we do so through the lens of modern assumptions. Today we identify and talk about religions as finite movements that are all very distinct from one another. Yes, there are occasionally attempts to blend the lines and conflate one with another, but the truth is that different religions make different and mutually exclusive truth claims. It’s only honest to draw sharp lines between one and another.

In the ancient world, that’s not how people thought. People didn’t think in terms of different religions. Especially not in Israel’s neighborhood in the first century, or the Roman Empire more generally. Judaism was different from everything else, but once you left those boundaries, you were in a fairly uniform landscape. This doesn’t mean, however, that people who followed one god didn’t think of themselves as distinct from followers of a different god, there just weren’t a lot of theological differences from one to the next. But the dividing lines they did draw were significant.

One god was concerned with his people and his people alone. The good things he wanted to do for them (assuming he wanted to do good things for them…not all of them did) he wanted to do for them and not anyone else. For all of their theological distinctiveness, though, Jews mostly thought the same way. God cared about them and not about the Gentiles. Now, as Paul points out at length, God was absolutely and always concerned about revealing Himself to the Gentiles as well as His own people, but the Jews tended to ignore those parts of the Scriptures. God was for them and not for their enemies, a mindset that fit the broader cultural pattern of thinking when it came to what we might identify today as different religions.

But, drawing directly and intentionally from the Scriptures (our Old Testament), Paul pointed out again and again how God actually wanted to do the good things He had long promised to do for His people for people who were not yet His people. He claimed to be the God of the world and everything in it, and so He wanted to include everyone in His kingdom. He wanted to extend the blessings of His kingdom throughout the world into the hearts and lives of all those who were willing to receive Him.

Having spent a fair bit of time exploring all of this through what we know of as Romans 9:1-11:32, Paul finally breaks out in praise in v. 33: “Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!” In other words, God is incredible beyond all human reckoning. The gift of salvation He has determined to give the whole world through Jesus is good at a level we can’t fully wrap our minds around except to simply marvel at it in awe and wonder.

Given how people thought at the time (and still often think today), this is something that could have only come from God. We draw lines and refuse to cross them. But our God erases lines and seeks to include everyone in His blessings. This is surprising to us. It is totally unexpected to us. This surprising goodness of God, though, shouldn’t surprise us. He’s always been like this. As proof, Paul quotes from the prophet Isaiah who was just as surprised as this when He first spoke of it as the Spirit’s direction hundreds of years before Paul was writing. “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”

God doesn’t need our input to do good things that go beyond what we could expect or imagine. He does that all by Himself. His goodness goes beyond our ability to keep up. We can’t out think Him here. We can’t out give Him either. He quotes from Job at the point God had finally responded to his impassioned queries and he was reduced to humble praise to make this point: ‘And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.”

We serve the God who gives good gifts. He gives great gifts. He gives gifts that go beyond all reason or expectation. Best and most of all, He gave us the gift of Himself through His Son – the very thing we celebrate in this season; the very thing that created Christmas in the first place. This makes Job’s ancient question one that is haunting to us. How could we ever repay God for all He has done for us? What do you give to the person who has everything? That’s a tough question to answer when you are thinking about buying a Christmas gift for a person who is well off. It’s an impossible question when you are thinking about how to respond properly to the God who is the source of all things.

What could we possibly give in return? Romans 12:1 answers this question. We give Him the one thing He doesn’t already have: us. We give Him ourselves. We give Him our lives. We give Him our hearts. We present our body to Him as a living sacrifice, holy and please to God. This kind of full-bodied acknowledgment and celebration of and participation in God’s character is the truest worship we could offer. It is the most reasonable service we could give. It is the one thing that makes the most sense. If we want to properly honor God for all that He has done, giving ourselves wholly to Him in humble service is the way to go.

As you continue in this special season of waiting and preparing for Jesus, how could you give yourself more fully than ever to the God who has already given you everything? Where you are holding back on Him in your life? What areas of your life are not yet fully surrendered to His will and command? Where are you resisting His righteousness in favor of your own desires? What offenses have you refused to forgive, staying seated instead on His throne? To borrow the cliched line, at which points in your life do you keep rolling off the altar rather than remaining there in sacrificial obedience? As you consider which gifts to give all of the special people in your life, make sure you are giving God the most important gift of all: yourself.