The Time Has Come (Galatians 4:5-7)

It is the case that Paul in his letters does not refer in great detail to the birth of Jesus. He does not mention most of the details that we associate with the arrival of Jesus into the world and is silent about most of the events that the Bible elsewhere records such as the angelic visits to Joseph and Mary and the shepherds. Paul would have known about them, of course, and although it is not necessary to argue from it we can be assured that, for example, he and Doctor Luke, his companion, would often have spoken about the events the doctor records about the birth in his Gospel.

Paul does refer to the birth of Jesus in this verse and although it is a short verse he does mention several details that we can immediately see are connected to what the Gospel writers say about the birth of Jesus. He mentions the time when it occurred, he mentions the activity of the Father, he mentions, the role of Mary, he mentions that Jesus was under the Jewish law, and he mentions why Jesus came. I want us to reflect briefly on what Paul says in this verse.

1. The fullness of the time

In using this phrase, Paul indicates that God is in control of what takes place in history. He decided that this was the moment when his Son would enter our world as a baby. In order for this to happen as he had predicted, he ensured that the highest authorities on earth – the Roman Empire – would issue a decree that caused Joseph and Mary to be in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. Micah had prophesied that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem and that is what happened. No political power could stop Jesus from being born in Bethlehem.

The word ‘fullness’ also points to the idea of completion. In the context, Paul has been explaining the point of the Jewish law, which he says was to guide and guard the Jewish people until the Messiah came. He was responding to some believers who assumed that the ceremonial requirements of that law were still binding and Paul tells them that the need of them ceased when the Saviour was born. The point is that it was a momentous time when Jesus was born because something dramatic had happened to the way God’s kingdom would operate.

It is hard for us to imagine the great change that the arrival of Jesus brought to God’s people. I suppose one way to do this would be for you to read all the ceremonial requirements detailed in the Mosaic law, note how they affected virtually every aspect of life, and then thank God that you are not required to keep them. Even in that sense, the coming of Jesus had brought liberation to those who want to live for God. No longer are we commanded to keep them.

2. The time for sending

Obviously, here we have a reference to the Father sending the Son. Up until this moment, they had been waiting. There is a sense in which the Father could have sent his Son at any time, but the only reason why we would make that suggestion is because we don’t possess the wisdom to understand what would be the best time. But the Father does. How long has he been waiting for this moment? The wait began before the universe was made because the eternal Father and the eternal Son knew that it would come.

What kind of waiting did they have? We know what it is like to wait for a happy event and we can be impatient or we know what it is like to wait for a feared event with a sense of dread. One thing that we can say is that this was the beginning of something new for the Father and the Son because never before had the Son a human nature. Now he was God and man in two distinct natures. At that moment, his human nature could not say anything, but we get an insight into what his divine person thought by reading Psalm 40.

It is important to note that when God sent forth his Son the Son never left him. Sometimes we can give the impression that after the incarnation there was a distance between the Father and the Son. But the sending forth refers not to a geographical destination but to a mission. The mission would involve him going to certain places, but the sending forth refers to him becoming a man.

3. The time for appearing

If we had been asked beforehand how the Son of God would become a man, we could have suggested that perhaps he would appear as a full-grown man, similar to how Adam had appeared at the beginning. Or we might suggest that he would appear as a member of powerful family with lots of influence in society. Yet he did neither of those options.

When Paul says that Jesus was born of a woman, he is saying that his birth was natural, that he was born in the same way as every other infant. Is there a reason why this had to be the case? The answer is that he had to identify himself with us in a complete sense and had to go through all the stages of our existence. So he was conceived and born.

It may also be the case that Paul is hinting at the virgin birth here, although there is nothing unique about saying born of a woman because every baby is born of a woman. Still we know that he was born of a virgin, which reminds us that his conception was miraculous.  We need to put together those two details – identification and miraculous conception – to see that we needed a perfect Saviour, one who was unaffected by the stain of sin and yet connected to the race of sinners.

At the same time, he was born under the Jewish law. On the eighth day, he was circumcised; for forty days after his birth his mother who had given birth to a perfect child had to undergo the ritual period of uncleanness; presumably Joseph would have offered the sacrifice of redemption that was required in order to release the infant at birth; and many other details he would have had to obey.

What do we learn from the fact that he was born under the law? We can see from the sacrifice offered by Mary and Joseph in the temple when her time of ritual uncleanness was over that Jesus was born into a poor family. We have no reason to assume that they moved up from that social level. We can also see from his adherence to the law that he was a pious man who loved to do what God required. There is also a sense in which looking at his obedience to the law we can see his perfection because he knew when it was appropriate to keep it (when he told the cured leper to go and offer a sacrifice out of gratitude) and when it was wrongly applied (such as when the Pharisees tried to trap his disciples over breaking the Sabbath. 

4. The time for redeeming

Paul moves forward thirty years now and explains what Jesus did at the cross. His mission was ‘to redeem those who were under the law’. What does Paul mean by those terms in the clause? Redeem is connected to slavery, and the clause indicates that the slavery was connected to being under the law.

We have to remember that the law has different functions. Sometimes it is a guide regarding how we should live, sometimes it is tool for convicting us of our sins. Here it is regarded as a master who instead of delivering us from the power of sin condemned us in it and prevented us from being set free from the power of sin. No matter what it told us about God and about ourselves, it did not have the ability to deal with our sins or set us free from its condemnation.

The good news is that what the law could not accomplish Jesus did achieve when he offered up his perfect life on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and so to redeem us from the domineering bondage of a condemning law. Bethlehem was a step on the road to Calvary. God the Father sent forth his Son to the cross in order to pay the full penalty for our sins. And the Son paid for them fully, which means that we can go free from condemnation.

5. The time for adopting

We now need to enquire about the nature of the freedom that God the Father had in mind when he sent his Son to redeem his people from the captivity of sin. Paul describes it here as adoption. Sometimes we have to be careful that we don’t force a contemporary understanding of a word back on to the word and so miss the point that the writer was saying. Today, when we use the word ‘adoption’ we usually have in mind the practice of taking an orphan or a parentless child into a family. Sadly, sometimes, the infant does not know much the background of his actual parents. Yet it is a happy event when he or she is no longer an orphan. In biblical times, it was not orphans who were adopted, but slaves who were brought into a family of a rich and powerful person.

It is important to see that here because Paul is saying that those who were enslaved under the law cease to be so and instead become sons of the heavenly Father. A slave had nothing, which is a very different status from that of a son. We have also got to remember why the rich person adopted the slave – he usually did so because he wanted an heir to whom he could pass on his possessions. So we can see that when a sinner is adopted into God’s family, he experiences a complete change of circumstances. The lawgiver becomes his Father, his condemner becomes his justifier, and the slave who was held in unbreakable chains becomes a son.

6. The time for giving

Last week, lots of presents were given. Sadly, the time for giving only lasted one day, although it can be repeated again next year, which is just as well because last week’s presents may soon be broken or damaged in some way. God also has a time for giving and what he gives is never taken away. Paul here says that the Father gives two presents to his sons.

The first is the Holy Spirit, but he comes into our hearts in a certain way. Paul says that the Spirit comes in the capacity of the Spirit of his Son; in other words, he comes to be to us what Jesus would be if he were here physically. After all, Jesus did say that when the Spirit would come, he would take of the things of Christ and show them to us. He comes to be the other Comforter, the one who is always alongside us to help in whatever way we need it.

The second gift that the Father provides is one of status – we become his heirs. This does not mean that we have to wait for him to die in order to enjoy the inheritance. Of course, he cannot die, but if he did we would lose the inheritance. Recall the parable of the prodigal son. The one thing that both sons had in common was that each of them already had their inheritance while the father was alive. What does the inheritance include? If we started to list the details, we would be here for a long time, but suffice to say that since we are joint-heirs with Jesus we have the same inheritance.

In the time for giving, which lasts between the two comings of Jesus, the heavenly Father gives the same two presents to all of his sons. So in the week of receiving earthly presents, perhaps we should give some time to thinking about the heavenly ones that we either have as believers or would have if we became believers.