It’s done! Gifts purchased and wrapped under the tree. And thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I experienced the great delight of buying the best gifts at the best price. There is just a special pleasure that comes when you are able to snag a deal―being able to give a better gift because it could be bought on sale! Not retail price, but a super sale, discounted price!

But there is a gift that has been purchased for each one of us, a gift that was not purchased as a Black Friday or Cyber Monday super sale. It is a gift not paid with a credit card or by PayPal. The price of this gift was far more precious and costly, paid by the One who loves us!

During the Christmas season we celebrate the birth of our Savior, our Redeemer ―Jesus Christ. A birth that would lead to his death on the Cross, a death that would pay the price that sin demands, so that we can receive the gift of salvation. A costly gift! There was no discount, no bargain basement deal. The gift of salvation required that God the Son leave his throne of eternal glory and enter humanity as an infant. The Infinite took on the body of a finite being. And as tremendous a price as that was, there was more.

“Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:5-8 (TLB Emphasis mine.)

The price to save us required the humiliation and suffering of Jesus through crucifixion. Yet as he hung on the cross, experiencing the tortuous, physical pain of being crucified, there was a greater spiritual price he had to pay. It was a price that had caused him to sweat drops of blood as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking the Father if there could be another way to pay the price to redeem mankind. For you see, on the cross there would be a great exchange!

“For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then in exchange he poured God’s goodness into us.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

He who had never sinned, never experienced the guilt, shame, or remorse of sin, experienced it all―the sin of all humanity―so that when he died that debt we all owe because we sin was paid in full. The gift of the cross, the gift he purchased for us, was to exchange a destiny of eternal death, being eternally separated from a holy God, for a destiny of eternal life in the presence of our God. What a precious, costly gift! As the gifts we have purchased for those we love are opened this Christmas, let’s celebrate the One who so loved us that he paid a tremendous price for the gift of salvation we have already received!