1 Corinthians 4:7, “What do you have that you did not receive?”
I was reading some of Martin Luther’s theology this weekend and this passage was mentioned as foundational to his understanding of the human condition. Our existence itself, the very fact that we are, is GIFTED to us. This is not a new concept, but one that—when ruminated upon—ought to reorient our self-image and world-view from the ground up. We are, at the most fundamental level, those who must receive…..in fact, more than that, even the presence of a self that is able to receive gifts is itself a gift of God. We are GIFT, all the way down.
And Paul’s words here imply that we are also gift all the way up, as it were. ALL that we have, we have received. Not only regarding our being itself, but also regarding our abilities, strengths, faculties, proficiencies—and lack thereof. ALL that we are is gift. And this means boasting of any kind, comparison of our selves with other selves (either to our exaltation or frustration), self-advancing ambition, etc….ALL of these things are equivalent to the infant boasting in his birth, or in the life that flows to him from his mother’s breast…..so must ALL human boasting look in the eyes of Him whose gracious word of command is the ground and cause of all that we are.
In this image, the wound of Christ is at the center of the man since, for those in Christ, the very core of our being—the ontological ground of all that we are and will be—is the self-giving love of God in Christ with which we have been loved from before the foundation of the world. Yes, the Christian’s existence is a gift of cruciform love from everlasting to everlasting. Oh that we would be granted to rest in this reality rather than following after a world that seeks to build itself up so that it might be “something.”
