Bestowed

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are”.   I John 3:1

Bestowed – In the New Testament this Greek word (dedoken) belongs to the same cognate group as the word for gift.  It could be translated as giving, granting, presenting or bestowing.  It is particularly important because it indicates that the ultimate gift giver is God Himself and the ultimate gift given is His Son. 

In this verse, John expresses how unimaginably wonderful it is to know that God the Father loved us so much that He chose to favor us with the gift of His Son, a gift that was so perfectly given that we become His adopted children by accepting His gift.  We are the children of God, not because we did anything to deserve being His children but simply because we were favored with His love gift to us.  For every recovering person, this proclamation of God’s love toward us tells us something very important about who we are.  It tells us that we matter to God.  In fact, God places so high a value on us that He gave us the best gift He could – the gift that would bring us back to Him.  When we are trapped in destructive lives, we are often faced with the despair of self-worthlessness.  But God says NO to this inner degradation.  God says that we are worthy of His love.  See how great a love that is!

I’ve seen lots of self-help books about creating a new you.  The only book that can create a completely new you is the one God wrote.  It is the only book that let’s God rewrite your life.  And that’s what we need.  We are only able to remodel the mess we’ve made.  God is able to do re-construction.  I didn’t need self-help.  It was my “self” that was causing the problems.  I needed God to give me a new “self”.  The old one was not up to code anymore.

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