There is a beautiful contrast between the manners of giving the two sets of gifts implied in words of the original, perhaps scarcely capable of being reproduced in any translation.  The expression that is rendered ‘freely give,’ implies that there is a grace and a pleasantness in the act of bestowal.  God gave in Christ, what we may reverently say it was something like pain to give.  Will He not give the lesser, whatever they may be, which it is the joy of His heart to communicate?  The greater implies the less.

Farther, this one great gift draws all other gifts after it, because the purpose of the greater gift cannot be attained without the bestowment of the lesser.  He does not begin to build being unable to finish; He does not miscalculate His resources, nor stultify Himself by commencing upon a large scale, and having to stop short before the purpose with which He began is accomplished.  Men build great palaces, and are bankrupt before the roof is put on.  God lays His plans with the knowledge of His powers, and having first of all bestowed this large gift, is not going to have it bestowed in vain for want of some smaller ones to follow it up.  Christ puts the same argument to us, beginning only at the other end of the process.  Paul says, ’God has laid the foundation in Christ.’  Do you think He will stop before the headstone is put on?  Christ said, ’It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.’  Do you think He will not give you bread and water on the road to it?  Will He send out His soldiers half-equipped; will it be found when they are on their march that they have been started with a defective commissariat, and with insufficient trenching tools?  Shall the children of the King, on the road to their thrones, be left to scramble along anyhow, in want of what they need to get there?  That is not God’s way of doing.  He that hath begun a good work will also perfect the same, and when He gave to you and me His Son, He bound Himself to give us every subsidiary and secondary blessing which was needed to make that Son’s work complete in each of us.

Again, this great blessing draws after it, by necessary consequence, all other lesser and secondary gifts, inasmuch as, in every real sense, everything is included and possessed in the Christ when we receive Him.  ‘With Him,’ says Paul, as if that gift once laid in a man’s heart actually enclosed within it, and had for its indispensable accompaniment the possession of every smaller thing that a man can need, Jesus Christ is, as it were, a great Cornucopia, a horn of abundance, out of which will pour, with magic affluence, all manner of supplies according as we require.  This fountain flows with milk, wine, and water, as men need.  Everything is given us when Christ is given to us, because Christ is the Heir of all things, and we possess all things in Him; as some poor village maiden married to a prince in disguise, who, on the morrow of her wedding finds that she is lady of broad lands, and mistress of a kingdom.  ’He that spared not His own Son,’ not only ‘with Him will give,’ but in Him has ‘given us all things.’