Free salvation through Jesus. It’s a free gift, right? And all I have to do is believe. So then, how can it cost nothing but ask for everything?
Today we’re going to look at something we talk about as being free. Salvation through the Death of Jesus on the Cross. It’s a gift from God.
When I asked DALL-E 3 to make me a watercolor image of a man, appearing to be God, holding out a gift, the adjacent image is one of the things it came up with for me.
It’s a gift box. We don’t really know for sure what’s in it until we open it. We think we know what’s in it.
But do we? And, more importantly, if we don’t really know, is that God’s fault?
Or maybe it’s ours?
Ouch on that last one. And yet, I’ve come to believe it’s true. We really don’t know. Not at first. I certainly didn’t when I first decided to follow Jesus. I looked to Him to take care of me. But then, how much does an 8-year-old really understand about that?
Later, much later, I wrote the first version of this. That was about 7 1/2 years ago, in June of 2016. I would soon find out what it meant. Both the cost and what I got were so much bigger and better than I could’ve ever imagined.
So now, here I am, after learning the answer to the title question, updating this. Of course, your answer isn’t likely to match mine. We’re not robots coming off an assembly line all made to do the exact same things in the exact same ways. Just as our lives are unique, what’s in the box is also unique. Except for one thing. Salvation. But everything else is different. I expect that’s going to include the next life, since we’re also not going to be a bunch of angels singing praise songs for the rest of eternity.
But whatever it is, God promised us something that’s more than worth whatever happens here in this life.
So with that in mind, let’s get moving on the update. Unless it turns out to be more of a rewrite.
There is one thing I want to add right away. It has to do with the idea that salvation is a gift from God. Do you know how many times salvation is referred to as a gift by Jesus? In the 1984 NIV, it’s one time. Once. Do you know where that reference happened?
I didn’t remember. Not the number of times or the location(s). I was surprised to find it was only once.
If we stick with the NIV, we’ll only find the English word used a few more times. If we switch to something like the ESV, we’ll find more references, but still only the one from Jesus. Why is that? The Greek word actually appears 14 times in 13 verses. Many have nothing to do with salvation, but are about actual gifts from people.
It’s kind of surprising that the concept of salvation as a gift is so common given that it appears so few times. Is it, maybe, because we like to attach the word free with the word gift?
Anyway, no more suspense. Here’s the one time Jesus referred to salvation, not as a free gift, but as a gift from God.
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
Surprised?
Jn 4:1 The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Jn 4:4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
Jn 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
Jn 4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. )
Jn 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Jn 4:11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
Jn 4:13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jn 4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jn 4:16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
Jn 4:17 “I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
Jn 4:19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jn 4:21 Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Jn 4:25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Jn 4:26 Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
There it was, in verse 10.
Jn 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Here’s more on the appearance of the word we read as “gift”, as it relates to the gift of salvation from God. But again, is it free salvation?
God and me - this life and the next 
Please Leave a Comment or Ask a Question