A Brief Theology of Thanksgiving
Let’s think about Thanksgiving.
No, not the middle child of holidays, that neglected sibling born after Halloween and before Christmas. I’m writing about a state of the heart that recognizes dependence and is open to receiving and expressing gratitude in affection, words, and action. Thanksgiving is among the less contemplated Christian virtues. It’s a virtue we want to be known for—we want to be known as being a grateful person—but we spend so little effort trying to understand and practice it . There is a good reason for wanting to pursue thanksgiving. G. K. Chesterton described gratitude as “happiness doubled by wonder.” Who doesn’t want that? But there’s a bad reason for wanting to remain ungrateful. We are all sinners, as Augustine reminded us, incurvatus in se, or “curved inward on oneself,” rather than oriented outward toward others and God. To be outward-oriented is inevitably to be grateful; to be inward-oriented is just the opposite.
It’s helpful to consider what the Bible tells us about Thanksgiving. This brief theology of thanksgiving is based on the book of Leviticus, the Psalms, and New Testament.
Thanksgiving in Leviticus
We often think of gratitude in terms of its twin opposite, ingratitude. Our hearts take offense when we give but do not receive. “So and so was so ungrateful,” we mutter beneath our breath. “Let’s see if I ever do that again for them.” Petty retribution for a gift ungiven. This is wrong, of course. It’s the same kind of reflexive indignation that landed the “wicked servant” of Christ’s parable in jail even though he had his debts forgiven (Matt 18: 21–35). The man would not bring himself to extend the same forgiveness to a lesser debtor, in part, because of his ingratitude. The parable is a sobering reminder that God gave the greatest gift He ever could—His only begotten Son—to a largely indifferent, ungrateful world (John 1:11–12).
Yet even in our private tantrums, God can teach us something about gratitude. Thanksgiving is, fundamentally, give-and-take-and-give-again. So when “so and so” took but didn’t say a quick “thank you” in exchange for your act of kindness, you rightly felt the cold absence of gratitude. It felt wrong, unjust, even. (Hold that thought for later.)
On their way from Egypt to the Promised Land, God instructed the fledgling nation of Israel about the Law, His covenantal self-revelation of holiness. Much of this instruction is recorded in the book of Leviticus, where it just so happens that the very first instance in the Bible of the word “thanksgiving” presents itself to describe a type of offering (Lev 7:12–13, 15). The nation is told to bring their “thanksgiving sacrifice” to the Lord to give a tangible, material expression of the heart’s present feeling. In fact, the Hebrew word for “thanksgiving” is related to another word that means “to extend one’s hand.” How appropriate. In a thanksgiving sacrifice, two hands extend. First, the grateful giver’s hand extends with the sacrifice, and second, God extends His ‘hand’ through priests to receive the sacrifice. We give; God gets. And in return, God gives the blessing of forgiveness, as the sacrificer receives life. God gives; we get.
Reflecting on this give-and-take-and-give dynamic, Carmelite nun Thérèse of Lisieux discovered a hidden blessing of thanksgiving. “What most attracts God’s grace is gratitude,” she said, “because if we thank Him for a gift, He is touched and hastens to give us ten more.” God’s ability to bless is infinite; it’s endless. At issue is not God’s ability to bless our gratitude, but in our ability to seek blessing in Him through our gratitude. To search for blessing in an ungrateful “so and so”—or in the many idols and gods of the world—is to court ingratitude because it grinds against God’s will. He wants our highest thanksgiving to end in Him, and for all other gratitude in all other situations to lay downstream from His throne. So, we ought to “give thanks in all circumstances,” wrote the apostle Paul, “for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess 5:18).
Gratitude, then, is a state of humility that leads to blessing because it indicates our need, dependence, and willingness to receive. In gratitude, we remember the One “from whom all blessings flow.” Indeed, as we consider the origin and nature of Levitical gratitude—that it requires some sort of giving—it’s no wonder we come to the inescapable conclusion that thanksgiving is doxological, that it is properly expressed in giving praise to God.
Thanksgiving in the Psalms
It should surprise no one that thanksgiving praise is found most frequently in the book of Psalms. In fact, pound-for-pound, there are more instances of “thanksgiving” among the psalms than anywhere else in the Bible. Perhaps most famously is Psalm 100. “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” (Ps 100:4). This psalm is well-known as a doxology of gratitude, and appropriately so. Its fourth verse captures the heart of thanksgiving in the Psalms—worship is a form of gratitude to God. Never once is thanksgiving used outside the context of worshiping God in any psalm. This means that gratitude to God is not only a state of humility but also a posture of humble worship.
Is it possible, then, to worship God without thanksgiving? No, because ingratitude is an appendage of injustice, and “those who worship [God] must worship in spirit and truth,” Jesus taught (John 4:24). What justice is there in lies? Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas described gratitude as a subset of justice because we owe our highest thanks to God as sinful debtors of his mercy and grace. Any act of gratitude, then, is an act of justice, another prominent theme of the psalms. And so, we begin to see the cyclical relationship of gratitude and praise and justice, the give-and-take-and-give-again nature of thanksgiving. “For the Lord loves justice; he will not forsake his saints” (Ps 37:28). Does this truth make you grateful to God? Then shout His praise with thanksgiving and receive the blessing that follows, i.e., “entering the gates” of His presence! It’s right and just to do so, and attracts God’s grace as he ‘hastens to give us more.’ Which, in receiving again, ought to lead us to a deeper space of gratitude, so we praise Him even more, and on and on.
Thanksgiving in the New Testament
Finally, we come to thanksgiving in the New Testament. Our greatest reason for being thankful is on full display in the Gospels. It begins with the incarnation of the Son of God—“from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom 11:36)—“who for a little while was made lower than the angels” (Heb 2:9) because He “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6b–7), our Immanuel, which means “God with us.” Then, the Lord Jesus Christ, “being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedience to the point of death, even death on cross” (Phil 2:8), “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb 12:2a), so that He might “reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Eph 2:14) by “making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:2). Finally, this Jesus was “raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25) “and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2b), so that we might be “raised us up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Praise God with thanksgiving that we “enter the gates” because He first entered our world, died, and rose again!
But there’s more. There is power in our gratitude for the person and work of Christ, the realization that we live in a new reality on this side of Easter Sunday. The Holy Spirit is on the move, leveraging our thanksgiving to preserve the fallen world and transform a people being raised to heaven. In fact, gratitude as a transformative power seems to be the apostle Paul’s big idea on the subject.
Thanksgiving has the power to transform, “for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4), and with that transformative power, the ability to discern in gray areas for our sanctification. So often, when faced with vague options, we ask, “Can I do or have?” What if instead we pray, “Lord, may I thank you for this? May I thank you for this gift, this opportunity, this film, this friendship, this kiss, this promotion?” Asking this question taps into the true meaning of “free will.”
Free will doesn’t mean the ability to choose right from wrong; at least, it didn’t mean that prior to the Enlightenment, when men supposedly killed God and were left with the ethical consequences. Long before Leibnitz, Hobbes, and Kant, “free will” meant—and still truly means—the ability to please God by our desires, thoughts, and actions. So, if instead of asking, “Can I do or have,” we pray, “Lord, may I thank you for this?” When God says, “My son, that’s not from me!” then you have your answer. But if the unexpected answer is, “Enjoy it, my daughter!” then you’ve just discovered the antidote to works-righteousness: holy gratitude.
In fact, thanksgiving is more than a transformative power; it’s also an occupying power. Gratitude conquers and replaces sin and vice. For example, thanksgiving occupies the space where anxiety once flourished. “Do not be anxious about anything,” said Paul, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6). This is less a command than it is an invitation, one in which our RSVP is signed with gratefulness.
In other words, thanksgiving is a state of being, a posture of worship, and a lifestyle.
We ought to thank God for what He has done by offering ourselves as a humble, thankful “living sacrifice,” as Paul reminds us in Romans 12. It’s interesting that he listed the ungrateful among a litany of other vices, e.g., the proud, abusers, reckless (2 Tim 3:2–5). “Avoid such people,” he said rather bluntly, and for good reason. If Aquinas was right, that “gratitude should incline [us] to do something greater,” then ungratefulness inclines us to less. It’s the irresistible lure into selfishness where we become trapped by entitlement, resentment, and loneliness. Ingratitude is an incarceration of the heart. In Christ’s parable, it was the ungrateful “wicked servant” who, once forgiven, was inclined not to more (grace) but to less (petty comeuppance). “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers” (Matt 18:34), warned Jesus.
Praise God, though, we need never to see the inside of that jail cell. But more than this, praise God that gratitude pushes anxiety out of our hearts, humbles us in our worship, and gives-to-take in an exchange that makes us more outward-focused toward Him and others.
May this brief biblical theology of thanksgiving inform and form your gratitude.
