Still relishing the joys of fatherhood for the first time, Jessa Duggar's husband Ben Seewald has taken time off from his daddy duties to share a devotional about the the "perfect gift" God has bestowed on people.
"Every good and perfect gift is from God," he writes on the Seewald Family Blog. Ben says this is because gifts are given freely, and they are never earned. If a person must do something in order to earn something, then it becomes a wage or "due compensation," and not a gift.
"Now God created us for Himself and He therefore owns us as Creator (Col. 1:16). As a result, we owe God our very life breath, and He owes us nothing (except for wrath and damnation because of our sin)," says Ben. "This fact should cause us to realise just how much we have been gifted by God and live in perpetual gratitude to Him."
In this vein, Ben says people should never boast about the accomplishments they make in life because all glory belongs to God. "This completely eliminates all grounds for boasting," he says. "Too many times stars, celebrities, highly skilled professionals, politicians and other well knowns can be prideful and boastful. Even people who feel like they are less gifted often take great pride in how hard they work. Let this be clear, humanity may boast in itself, but there are no valid grounds for it."
God might have given people the gift of sight, physical endurance, and incredible brain capacity, adds Ben, but the greatest gift He has ever given people is salvation through Jesus Christ.
"This gift was costly—so costly that we will never know the extent of it. But The God-Man Jesus sacrificed Himself to free all who believe in Him, from the punishment we deserved. He stood in our place as our substitute, taking on Himself our infinite sin debt, and He gives believers His infinite Holiness that He earned while living on this earth," shares Ben. "This is the 'gift of God' as Ephesians 2:8-9 tell us, 'not a result of works, so that no one may boast.'"
