Good Gifts For Our Children

by Henry Morris, Ph.D.

“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask Him?” (Matthew 7:11).

It is typical for parents to shower gifts on their children at Christmas time. No doubt this is usually because of love, but there often may be also a sort of guilt-feeling involved—an unconscious attempt to make up for lack of love shown on other days, or maybe even to elicit their obedience and love in response.

Whatever the reason, the Lord does not rebuke the giving of gifts to our children, especially when it is done in such a way as to be a small picture of our heavenly Father giving gifts to His children. His gifts are always good gifts—gifts that are good for us, although they may not always seem so at first.

For example: “Unto you it is given . . . to suffer for (Christ’s) sake” (Philippians 1:29). But, when this is true, “He giveth more grace” (James 4:6). He may give a difficult day, but He also gives strength for the day. He may give an untraveled way, but then gives light for the way.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Because He is the Father of lights—that is, of all energy and power—“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength” (Isaiah 40:29).

The greatest gift of our “Father which is in heaven,” our “Father of lights,” is of course the “gift of God (which) is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). And that is not all He gives! “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). HMM