The Web He Gave Away

In 1989, a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in Geneva. He created the protocols that would allow documents to link to one another across any computer, anywhere on Earth. His employer encouraged him to patent the technology. Financial analysts have since estimated that owning the web's foundational patents could have made him one of the wealthiest human beings who ever lived — worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Berners-Lee refused. He insisted the web be released with no patent, no royalty, no licensing fee. He gave it away completely so that anyone, anywhere, could build on it freely. Today, billions of people read, learn, connect, and worship through the infrastructure one man sacrificed his fortune to make available.

When Paul writes that Christ Jesus, "though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself" (Philippians 2:6-7), he describes a sacrifice that makes even Berners-Lee's generosity look small. The Son of God held the rights to glory itself — and released them. He gave away what was infinitely His so that the connection between heaven and earth could be open to everyone, free of charge, without restriction.

No one can pay for what was freely given. They can only receive it — and be changed by it.