Leithart
God Himself is a Giver of Gifts. His eternal life is a life of give and counter-gift. Our God is the giving God.
We can start with James 1:5, 17. Verse 17 tells us that every good thing and every gift is ultimately from God, who gives relentlessly, without reproaching us, both to the good and evil, the grateful and the ungrateful. There is no variation in the Father of lights who gives without reproach. Whatever things you have you have received; and you’ve received them from one ultimate source, the Father of lights. But verse 5 is even stronger. It is best translated “let him ask of the-giving-God.” God is not just a God who happens to give. He is defined by His giving, as the God who gives.
This is evident in the way that Scripture talks about salvation. Salvation is a gift. The righteousness of justification (Romans
According to Risto Saarinen (God and the Gift), “God is directly called the giver 104 times [in Scripture], of which 42 are in John’s Gospel and John’s Letters. In addition to these, the so-called divine passive . . . often occurs as an indirect reference to divine giving. Jesus Christ is presented as the giver 68 times, of which 26 are in John. Moreover, Jesus is portrayed as the receiver of what God gives 28 times in John.” The God revealed in the cross, in the resurrection, and at Pentecost is the God who gives. He is, as James calls Him, the “giving God.”
Creation itself is a gift, and all of God’s providences are also gifts. Luther’s Small Catechism asks, about the first article of the creed, What does it mean to believe in God the Father? The answer is, to believe is to recognize Him as giver, and to respond with thanks, service, and obedience: “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, and still preserves them; in addition thereto, clothing and shoes, meat and drink, house and homestead, wife and children, fields, cattle, and all my goods; that He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all which I owe it to Him to thank, praise, serve, and obey Him. This is most certainly true.” It is, most certainly.
Even this doesn’t go far enough, since the Bible not only talks about giving from God to creatures, but also talks about giving within the Triune life itself. God did not begin to be a giving God when He created the world as a recipient of His gifts. God has eternally been the giving God. The inner life of God is revealed in the fact that He gives us good gifts; and the inner life of God is especially revealed in the way that the Father, Son, and Spirit interact in the economy of redemption.
The Father gives His Son to us, and the Son whom He gives is the Son to whom He has given all things, the Spirit without measure (John 3:34-35); the Father has given Jesus life and authority to judge (John 5:26-27). By His resurrection and ascension, Jesus receives from the Father headship over the Church and over all things (Ephesians
As Saarinen says, Jesus is set in all three positions in the gift exchange: He is the giver, the gift itself, and the recipient of gifts from the Father. This is just another way of saying that Jesus is the mediator: That is, He is the one midpoint, the one who both receives gifts from the Father, and passes on, hands over (paradidomi, traditio), those gifts to His people.
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