What gift are you looking for this year? Which one would be the greatest ever? Would it be a new car, a house or maybe a trip to some exotic place?
All those things would be great. The problem with gifts is that even those big ones eventually wear out and have to be replaced, or it may be that all we have left of such things are pictures and memories.
God has given us a gift that is far better than any of those mentioned above. He has given us a gift that can be seen only by the eye of faith, but it is a gift for all mankind that will endure until the end of time. It is a gift that gives hope to the lost, direction to the wanderers and freedom to those enslaved in sin.  
It is the gift of his son.
This precious gift given by God shows his love for man. John wrote, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Man is God’s creation. When God created the world, he prepared a place for man to live (Genesis 1).
When man sinned, God could have allowed man to be destroyed, but his love for his creation led him to send his son to be the sacrifice for man’s sin. The sacrifice of animals that was to be done according to the Law of Moses could not take away sin.
The blood of God’s son was the only sacrifice that could do this.
The Hebrew writer put it this way: “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices, which they offered year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou hast had no pleasure.
“Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.’ Above when he said, ‘Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law.’ Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:1-10).
This gift is beyond comparison, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (2 Corinthians 9:15).
This gift from God must be accepted. God does not force man to accept his gift — it is up to each individual. There have been those who turned down cars, houses and other such things. A person can refuse God’s gift, but he wants it to be accepted.
God’s gift can be accepted by following God’s instructions to procure it: Believing in Jesus as God’s Son, repenting of sin, confessing Jesus before men, being baptized for the remission of sin and living faithfully for God.
God had given the greatest gift of all time. Will you not accept his gift on his terms?