UNPACKING THE UNDESERVED GIFT

Bonus time! Our employer hands out the end of the year bonus. We appreciate it and look forward to it, maybe even bank on it each year. It's a gift, but it feels like we deserve it. After all, good employees deserve a share of the profits, we think. The gift becomes a wage we earn not an undeserved gift. We, Christians, may develop a similar attitude with Christ's gift to us. We would never say it like that, but we come to treat His gift like the company bonus.

Paul begins his letter to the Galatians by stressing the gift they - sadly - have come to see as earned. He writes that God's grace and peace have come to us through Jesus Christ "who gave Himself for our sins" (Gal. 1:4). Christ's undeserved gift to us is the foundation for our entire Christian lives. We pervert the gospel whenever we treat Christ's gift as anything but totally undeserved! The Galatians have "fallen from grace" (5:4) because they "nullify the grace of God" (2:21) by treating His gift (2:20) like a bonus they earn.

Jesus Christ is the one who gave (τοῦ δόντος) Himself (ἑαυτὸν). First century writers traditionally used this description for Jewish martyrs and Greek soldiers who sacrificed their lives for others (TDNT, 2:166). Paul may well have drawn the expression from an early confession of faith used by Christians (F.F. Bruce, Galatians, 75) since we see it used elsewhere in the New Testament (Mark 10:45; Gal. 2:20; 1 Tim. 2:6; Titus 2:14). His death is His gift, voluntary and undeserved.

Christ gave Himself (ἑαυτὸν) in Galatians 1:4 and 2:20. Mark 10:45 says that Christ came to give (δοῦναι) His soul or life (τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ). The gift in Mark is clearly pictured as substitutionary. Mark goes on to say that Christ's life is a ransom (λύτρον) in place of (ἀντὶ) many (πολλῶν). The preposition ἀντὶ combined with πολλῶν teaches vicarious atonement. Jesus gave his life in place of our lives. In Galatians 2:20, Paul uses the more general preposition "for" (ὑπὲρ) but retains the personal force of the truth by saying that Christ "loved me and gave Himself for me!"

Paul adds a different predicate to explain the gift in Galatians 1:4. Christ gave Himself "for our sins" (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν, cf. 1 Cor. 15:3). There is a textual debate here. Some manuscripts use a different "for" (περί) in this verse. The preposition περί is generally used of things while the preposition ὑπὲρ is generally used of people (Lightfoot, Galatians, 73). However, the stronger textual evidence is for ὑπὲρ despite the fact that it is used of sins in this verse. Paul was thinking of people as he thought of sins. He uses ὑπὲρ in Galatians 2:20 and 3:13 to make the gift intensely personal (Bruce, 75). Christ redeemed us (ἡμᾶς) from the curse of the law "having become a curse for us" (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν).

Christ's gift for our sins is His gift for us. The emphasis is on "our" (ἡμῶν) in the expression "for our sins." Martin Luther pointed out how religious hypocrites minimize the "our" in "our sins." Hypocrites feel no horror over their sin so pay lip service to "our sins." When the soul "feeleth no sin, then it would believe that Christ was given for our sins" (Luther, Galatians, 12).  If our sins are minor, we minimize his gift. It is easy to sing about His gift for our sins when we don't really think our sins are that bad. In this way, worship services can promote hypocrisy. We turn His gift of grace into our bonus for good works.

The gift is personal. Without the "our" we will not grasp the grace! Mark the "our" to stress the undeserved gift. When Paul wrote that word "our", he surely thought back to the Damascus road with tears of gratitude. He came to understand the undeserved gift for his murderous soul on the Damascus road. It was no light matter for him to write the pronoun "our, and we must grasp the gift by claiming that pronoun too.

We can't unpack the gift without the "our" in "our sins."