Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 4:4
But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
4. the fulness of the time ] The completion of the time of the world’s nonage, corresponding to ‘the time appointed by the father’ in Gal 4:3. God’s appointed time had come, and man’s need of redemption had been proved to the full. Thus the eternal purpose of God and the preparation of the world had their fulfilment in the Advent of the Incarnate Son.
God sent forth his Son ] In the Gospels, and especially in that of St John, our Lord designates the Father by the expression, “Him that sent me.” It implies that our Lord existed before His incarnation, that He ‘was with God’, Joh 1:1.
made the law ] Translate, born of woman, born under the law. The Son of God Most High thus became very man, the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15) and also the Seed of Abraham in whom all nations of the earth should be blessed (Gen 22:18).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
But when the fulness of the time was come – The full time appointed by the Father; the completion (filling up, pleroma,) of the designated period for the coming of the Messiah; see the Isa 49:7-8 notes; 2Co 6:2 note. The sense is, that the time which had been predicted, and when it was proper that he should come, was complete. The exact period had arrived when all things were ready for his coming. It is often asked why he did not come sooner, and why mankind did not have the benefit of his incarnation and atonement immediately after the fall? Why were four thousand dark and gloomy years allowed to roll on, and the world suffered to sink deeper and deeper in ignorance and sin? To these questions perhaps no answer entirely satisfactory can be given. God undoubtedly saw reasons which we cannot; see, and reasons which we shall approve if they are disclosed to us.
It may be observed, however, that this delay of redemption was in entire accordance with the whole system of divine arrangements, and with all the divine interpositions in favor of men. People are suffered long to pine in want, to suffer from disease, to encounter the evils of ignorance, before interposition is granted. On all the subjects connected with human comfort and improvement, the same questions may be asked as on the subject of redemption. Why was the invention of the art of printing so long delayed, and people suffered to remain in ignorance? Why was the discovery of vaccination delayed so long, and millions suffered to die who might have been saved? Why was not the bark of Peru sooner known, and why did so many millions die who might have been saved by its use? So of most of the medicines, and of the arts and inventions that go to ward off disease, and to promote the intelligence, the comfort, and the salvation of man. In respect to all of these, it may be true that they are made known at the very best time, the time that will on the whole most advance the welfare of the race. And so of the incarnation and work of the Saviour. It was seen by God to be the best time, the time when on the whole the race would be most benefited by his coming. Even with our limited and imperfect vision, we can see the following things in regard to its being the most fit and proper time.
(1) It was just the time when all the prophecies centerd in him, and when there could be no doubt about their fulfillment. It was important that such an event should be predicted in order that there might be full evidence that he came from heaven; and yet in order that prophecy may be seen to have been uttered by God, it must be so far before the event as to make it impossible to have been the result of mere human conjecture.
(2) It was proper that the world should be brought to see its need of a Saviour, and that a fair and satisfactory opportunity should be given to men to try all other schemes of salvation that they might be prepared to welcome this. This had been done. Four thousand years were sufficient to show to man his own powers, and to give him an opportunity to devise some scheme of salvation. The opportunity had been furnished under every circumstance that could be deemed favorable. The most profound and splendid talent of the world had been brought to bear on it, especially in Greece and Rome; and ample Opportunity had been given to make a fair trial of the various systems of religion devised on national happiness and individual welfare; their power to meet and arrest crime; to purify the heart; to promote public morals, and to support man in his trials; their power to conduct him to the true God, and to give him a wellfounded hope of immortality. All had failed; and then it was a proper time for the Son of God to come and to reveal a better system.
(3) It was a time when the world was at peace. The temple of Janus, closed only in times of peace, was then shut, though it had been but once closed before during the Roman history. What an appropriate time for the Prince of Peace to come! The world was, to a great extent, under the Roman sceptre. Communications between different parts of the world were then more rapid and secure than they had been at any former period, and the gospel could be more easily propagated. Further, the Jews were scattered in almost all lands, acquainted with the promises, looking for the Messiah, furnishing facilities to their own countrymen the apostles to preach the gospel in numerous synagogues, and qualified, if they embraced the Messiah, to become most zealous and devoted missionaries. The same language, the Greek, was, moreover, after the time of Alexander the Great, the common language of no small part of the world, or at least was spoken and understood among a considerable portion of the nations of the earth. At no period before had there been so extensive a use of the same language.
(4) It was a proper period to make the new system known. It accorded with the benevolence of God, that it should be delayed no longer than that the world should be in a suitable state for receiving the Redeemer. When that period, therefore, had arrived, God did not delay, but sent his Son on the great work of the worlds redemption.
God sent forth his Son – This implies that the Son of God had an existence before his incarnation; see Joh 16:28. The Saviour is often represented as sent into the world, and as coming forth from God.
Made of a woman – In human nature; born of a woman, This also implies that he had another nature than that which was derived from the woman. On the supposition that he was a mere man, how unmeaning would this assertion be! How natural to ask, in what other way could he appear than to be born of a woman? Why was he particularly designated as coming into the world in this manner? How strange would it sound if it were said, In the sixteenth century came Faustus Socinus preaching Unitarianism, made of a woman! or, In the eighteenth century came Dr. Joseph Priestley, born of a woman, preaching the doctrines of Socinus! How else could they appear? would be the natural inquiry. What was there special in their birth and origin that rendered such language necessary? The language implies that there were other ways in which the Saviour might have come; that there was something special in the fact that he was born of a woman; and that there was some special reason why that fact should be made prominently a matter of record. The promise was Gen 3:15 that the Messiah should be the seed or the descendant of woman; and Paul probably here alludes to the fulfillment of that promise.
Made under the law – As one of the human race, partaking of human nature, he was subject to the Law of God. As a man he was hound by its requirements, and subject to its control. He took his place under the Law that he might accomplish an important purpose for those who were under it. He made himself subject to it that he might become one of them, and secure their redemption.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Gal 4:4-5
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son.
Christs Advent in the fulness of time
The question has often been asked, Why did not Christ come sooner? Why were patriarchs, kings, and prophets, left to experience the sickness of heart arising from hope long deferred? It was necessary that the world should be left to itself, in order that its own strivings being proved insufficient to the finding out God, there might be a standing demonstration of the need of a revelation. And this experiment demanded long ages for its development. Men must be tried under varieties of circumstance: whilst the traditions of a righteous ancestry were fresh in their keeping–when those traditions had been lost or corrupted, and natural religion had a clear stage to itself–when they had sunk into barbarism, and when through strenuous exertions they had wrought themselves up to a high pitch of civilization. It is, in a measure, a mistake which has been assumed as a truth in our foregoing reasoning–that mankind, with the exception of the Jews,. were abandoned by God, during those dark ages which preceded Christs coming On the contrary, if you rest not satisfied with a superficial glance, you will perceive that God was working upon the world with a distinct reference to preparing it for the gospel. Besides, if you examine the period of our Lords appearance on earth, you will not think it too much to say, that the season was made on purpose (so to speak) for the circumstances. The period was a most remarkable one–such as could only have been brought round by the revolutions and convulsions of many centuries. The Roman power had spread itself over all the nations of the then known world; and thus all those petty states, whose jostling and opposing interests might have withstood the propagation of Christianity, were swallowed up in one great empire. At the same time, the seat of that empire lay so distant from Judea, the cradle of our faith, that no opposition could thence suddenly arise to the infant religion. Christianity was sure to obtain a good footing before jealousy could be entertained, and, therefore, persecution appointed, by those who occupied the remote throne of the Caesars. Add to this, that in conformity with His character of the Prince of Peace, no breath of war ruffled the vast surface of the Roman empire, when the Saviour condescended to be born of a woman. The turbid waves of factious or ambitious policy had for a while settled into quiet, and the temple of Janus closed its doors that the Church of Jesus might throw open its gates. So that there was nothing to oppose the progress of the messengers of the gospel; the world stood free for their labours; they might pass from land to land; they might cross seas, and rivers, and mountains. It was, moreover, the fulness of time, because many prophecies met in it, and received their accomplishment. The great marvel of the prophecies which bear upon the work and person of Jesus is, that they were delivered by a succession of men, rising up with long intervals between, and each becoming more minute in his predictions, as he stood more nearly on the threshold of the Advent. The day of Christs birth lying a long way off from that of mans apostasy, might be made a kind of focus, into which should be gathered the prophetic rays of successive generations. You must readily perceive, that this collecting into one point the pencils of light emanating from successive ages, would mark out the birth-time of Messiah with a vividness and an accuracy which could not have been produced by a lesser combination. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The preparation of the world for the gospel
Two principles should be borne in mind by those who would discover the Divine purposes in history,
1. The first is that God has the supreme control of events–that He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.
2. The other principle is that the operations of Providence should be studied in connection with any other disclosures which we may have of the laws and plans of the Divine workings. This rule is necessary if we would distinguish between those evils in our world which have been permitted and overruled for beneficent and holy ends, and those events which have been brought about either because in themselves excellent or for the accomplishment of good results. Let us spread before us the map of the worlds affairs as they stood in the days of our Lords appearance among men, and let us see the mighty hand of God in the disposition of them all, First, if we regard that age in its secular aspect, we find two great preparations for the successful diffusion of the gospel. The one of these was a general union and tranquility of the world, under Roman law; and the other a wide-spread civilization, accompanied by a well-nigh universal language, resulting chiefly from Grecian influence That of the one, if we may so speak, was negative, and was chiefly occupied in removing obstructions, so that a free course might be given to the Word of God. That of the other was positive, and furnished great facilities for the presentation and dissemination of the truth. It fact it would have mattered but little that the nations were kept in quietness under the compelling power of Roman law, had not the spirit of Grecian civilization, pervading the organization of Rome, exerted everywhere a beneficial influence. Let us now turn from the secular to the spiritual aspect of the ancient world if we would discover yet more convincing evidence of the workings of Divine wisdom. Here, again, the attentive reader of history can perceive two great preparations for the introduction of the gospel. The one of these was a deep consciousness of moral debasement and of religious darkness pervading the Gentile nations; and the other was a very general diffusion of the knowledge of the Jewish faith throughout the Roman Empire, accompanied by a recognition of its truth and excellence. The condition of the heathen world at the time of our Saviours advent was truly deplorable. That dreadful description which Paul gives in the first part of his Epistle to the Romans is fully verified by the accounts of contemporary historians. The heathen were not without a knowledge of God, a sense of moral obligation and a perception of the distinction between right and wrong. In the discussions of their philosophers we find not only some of the most eloquent praises of virtue that ever were written, but also the clearest directions regarding the various duties of life. The taw of God was plainly written on their hearts. In proof of this we may cite the remarkable fact that the treatise of Cicero, Concerning Morals, was long used as a text-book in seminaries of the Christian Church. Indeed, this treatise must ever give delight to those who can appreciate the wisdom and purity of its instructions. But it was the wretchedness and the condemnation of the heathen world that they knew their duty and they did it not. Their philosophy was utterly powerless to resist the influences which destroyed them; and their religion was worse than powerless. None save the lowest class of the people retained any faith in the polytheistic creeds; a general feeling a want regarding both the knowledge and the efficacy of religion pervaded the nations of the world. But there was yet another method in which a Divine Providence was preparing the nations for our Saviours advent. This was, the diffusion of the principles of the Jewish faith throughout every part of the Roman Empire. All classes in society had some followers of Moses; even kings and queens did not blush to own themselves believers in the God of Israel. Then also multitudes of thinking men who made no profession of Judaism were familiarized with the conceptions of the ever-living Jehovah and of His promised Christ. In this way the ancient form of religion went before Christianity, heralding its approach and predisposing men for its clearer and more powerful revelations. There was then an external fitness for the successful impartation of the truth. Under the security and tranquility of Romes imperial sway the gospel was committed to the language of educated and thoughtful humanity, and was borne on the life-currents of Grecian civilization to the various populations of the earth. There was, also, a deeper and spiritual preparation. Bitter experience had proved the worthlessness of the ancient superstitions, and had shown that extremity of wickedness and misery to which our race is tending, and from which there can be no deliverance save through the power of a Heaven sent faith. And, finally, the Jewish religion, containing in its bosom the essential truths of salvation, by its gradual diffusion, gave men a prophetic foretaste of Christianity, and a readiness to receive further; Divine instructions. From this whole subject we may derive two important lessons. First, let us learn to adore and love and trust that Almighty Being who rules, with purposes of mercy, over the children of men. That is an exalted conception of God which is presented to us in the Christian doctrine of providence. No evil genius presides over human destinies; nor a blind, unconscious fate; nor a stern God of justice who has forgotten to be gracious. It is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, from the beginning of the world till the present day, has been controlling the affairs of our globe to advance His compassionate designs. What a confidence have Christians here! In the midst of the revolutions, and disasters, and evils of earth, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Let us, also, be taught by this subject, the inestimable importance of the religion of Jesus Christ. When the Roman procurator of Judea carelessly questioned the Galilean who stood before him, accused by the malicious Jews, he little thought that the very empire, in which he himself was but an insignificant officer, was brought into existence and built up into power to advance the mission of that despised and persecuted Nazarene. And when the light-minded Athenians mocked the unpretending preacher of the Cross, they were far from conjecturing that the chief object for which the language and the civilization of Greece had been developing for centuries, was to diffuse the gospel which Paul proclaimed throughout all the habitable globe. Yet, in the mind of the Supreme Being, this was a worthy end of a providential control of human affairs during a period of thousands of years. See how differently God and man view the same things! But if Christianity has received such care from Almighty God, how important should this religion be in the eyes of those for whose welfare it is intended! (E. J. Hamilton, D. D.)
Christ obedient to the law
1. Christs obedience to the law was not a matter of course, following upon His Incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent with His high purpose, in sinless purity–without expressly undertaking, as He did, openly to fulfil the law.
2. It was not only an integral, but also a necessary part, of His work of redemption. He came, as regarded this matter, not to stand beneath the law, but to stand above it; and this He could only do by fulfilling it, and carrying out its higher and more spiritual meaning, and causing Gods truth and purity and holiness to shine through the outward veil of its commandments and ordinances. Moreover, He was the end of the law. It all pointed to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found their fulfilment in His person and work. All sacrifice was consummated by His suffering. And not less striking is the way in which the fact of Christ having been made under the law, unites and clears and justifies all Gods dealings with man. God gave a law which was valid through whole generations of men; a law with various sanctions and ordinances and prohibitions. That law is done away. The Church of God seems to stand on other foundations; to have changed the ground of her obedience, and the warrant of her hope. But this is not so. Not a jot nor a tittle of that law has fallen away, or become void. All has been fulfilled. (Dean Alford.)
Man in the light of the Incarnation
The pivots on which the crises of history revolve are seemingly very minute.
I. The incarnation implies the greatness of human nature. It is a fact, that God has been manifest in the flesh, in the person of His Son. God has expressed His attributes in many things. Men do the like in their works. In the Incarnation God did not embody mere qualities and perfections, but Himself. How closely must the nature of man be related to the nature of God; for God Himself became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth! It was through the points of similarity between the nature of God and the nature of man, involved in the Divine Fatherhood, that the Incarnation of Deity in humanity became possible. We revolt at the heathen idea, that a Divine being can be enshrined in an idol of wood or stone, because there are no godlike faculties through which the radiance of a Divine presence can stream forth on the kindred faculties of the worshippers who are to be illumined by the manifestation. If man be the offspring of God, the Incarnation becomes rational and credible. Of the grandeur of our nature, as set forth in this early announcement, the coming of the Son of God in the flesh is the demonstration.
II. The incarnation indicates the high destiny of man. Christ Jesus was the sample of that moral perfection to which humanity may be raised by the power and grace of God. The nature of a thing discloses more or less distinctly its primary intention. In all departments of creation we argue from the adaptations of an organ to the uses for which it was designed. The eye is for light and for the objects of beauty and deformity which light unveils. The ear is for sounds–melodies, harmonies, and discords. Reason and conscience are faculties related to truth and duty. It is but an application of the same process to infer from the powers of man the purpose of his Maker.
1. Our souls were evidently intended for fellowship with God. That we have faculties resembling the Divine attributes, is an intimation of this purport of our being.
2. Men were plainly framed to work with God as well as to commune with Him. We have benevolent activities resembling the beneficent energies of the Almighty. From our humble level we can pity and succour. We were formed for God-like thoughts, God-like motives, and God-like deeds.
3. Human beings were distinctly marked out for dominion and glory.
III. The incarnation brings out in deepest hues and darkest shades the sinfulness of our race. But of this be sure, that the greatness of mans sin is inseparable from the greatness of mans nature.
IV. The incarnation should inspire mankind with brightest hope. If our state had been without the prospect of deliverance, the Son of God would not have become flesh. He would not have appeared in our nature to mock our despair. The Incarnation is Divine testimony to our recoverability.
V. The incarnation seems to suggest, that the moral and regal perfection of our humanity is unattainable unless God dwell in us. Life and beauty, stem and leaf, bloom and fruit, lie hidden in the seed. While there is nothing but the seed, the wonderful vegetable fabric, with its verdure, fragrance, and loveliness, is merely latent. So all the spiritual capabilities of our nature continue undeveloped while the soul subsists in vital and moral isolation from God. The Divine ideal of humanity cannot be fulfilled by humanity alone. There must be a Divine vivification of the dormant energies. The re-creating Spirit must brood over the chaos.
VI. The incarnation demonstrates that your souls are very dear to God. How vast is Gods interest in us! He has sent His own Son to us in the nature of one of our race, one of our very selves. If a monarch waives the pomp of majesty, lays aside the burden of empire, and crosses the threshold of some humble cottage, to minister to a sufferer among the lowly poor, how obvious and how touching is his concern for his obscure and afflicted subject! (H. Batchelor.)
Preparation for the Advent
Our Lords appearance on the scene of human history corresponds with the general law so far as this–that He comes when a course of preparation, conducted through previous ages, was at last complete. But then He was not the creation, as we say, of His own or of any preceding age. What is true of all other great men, who are no more than great men, is not true of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they embody and reflect its spirit. They catch the ideas which are in circulation–which are, as we speak, in the air–and they express them more vividly than do others, whether by speech or by action. The age contributes much to make them, and the age is pleased with them because it sees itself reflected in them, and their power with it is often in an inverse ratio to that of their real originality. With our Lord it is utterly otherwise. He really owed nothing to the time or the country which welcomed His Advent. He had no contact with the great world of Greek thought, or of Roman politics and administration. He borrowed just so much rabbinical language and sayings as to make Himself intelligible to His own generation; but no rabbi, of whatever school, could have said, or could have omitted to say, what He did. The preceding ages only prepared His way before Him in the circumstances, in the convictions, in the moral experiences of men; and thus a preceding period marked in the counsels of God had to be run out. At last its final hour had struck. That hour was the fulness of time: it was the moment of the Advent. There was a threefold work of preparation for the Son of God, carried forward in what was then called the civilized world; and each portion of this preparation demanded the lapse of a certain period.
I. The world had to be prepared, in a certain sense, politically for Christs work.
1. A common language. This was partly provided by the conquests of Alexander. He spread the Greek language throughout Western Asia, throughout Egypt; and when Greece itself was conquered, the educated Romans learnt the language of their vanquished provincials. And thus, when our Lord came, the Greek language, in which the New Testament is written, was the common tongue of the civilized world, ready to St. Pauls hand for the missionary work of Christianity.
2. A common social system, laws, and government. During the half-century which preceded the birth of Christ, the Roman Empire was finally consolidated into a great political whole, so that Palestine and Spain–so that North Africa and Southern Germany–were administered by a single government. Christianity, indeed, did not need this, for it passed beyond the frontiers of the empire in the lifetime of the apostles; and the earliest translation of the New Testament–that into Syrian, in the first half of the second century–showed that it could dispense with Greek. But this preparation was, nevertheless, an important clement in the process by which preceding ages led up to the fulness of time.
II. Then there was a preparation in the convictions of mankind. The heathen nations were not without some religion–a religion which contained within various degrees certain elements of truth, however mingled with, or overlaid by, extraordinary error. Had it not been for the element of truth which is to be found in all forms of heathenism, heathenism could not have lasted as it did. Had there not been much true religious feeling in the ancient world, although it was lavished often upon unworthy and miserable objects, the great characters with whom we meet in history could not have existed. But the ancient religions tended from the first to bury God, of whose existence the visible world assured them, in that visible world which witnessed to Him. Those powers of nature which are, as we know, but His modes of working–which are but the robe with which he covers Himself–become more and more, when man is without a revelation, objects of devout veneration. The principle is the same in the fetishism which finds a god in some single natural object, and in the pantheism which, like that of India, looks forward to the absorption of the individual soul into the universal life of nature. The Greeks never knew, at their best time, of a literally Almighty God; still less did they know anything of a God of love; but it was necessary that their incapacity to retain in their knowledge the little they did know about Him should be proved to them by experience. Certainly, their great men, such as Plato, tried to spiritualize, in a certain sense, the popular ideas about God, but the old religion would not bear his criticism. It went to pieces when it was discussed; and philosophy, which he wished to take its place, having no facts, that is, no religious facts, to appeal to, but consisting only of views, could never become a real religion, and so take its place. The consequence was the simultaneous growth of gross superstition and of blank unbelief–a growth which continued down to the very time of the Incarnation. Never before was the existence of any Supreme Being so widely denied in civilized human society, as in the age of the first Caesars. Never were there so many magicians, incantations, charms, rites of the most debased and most debasing kind, as in that age. The most gifted of races had done its best with heathenism, anal the result was that all the highest and purest minds loathed the present, and looked forward to the future. It was the fulness of the time. The epoch of religious experiments had been closed in an epoch of despair which was only not altogether hopeless.
III. There was also a preparation in the moral experience of mankind. There was, at times, much of what we call moral earnestness in the ancient world; but men were content, as a rule, with being good citizens, which is by no means necessarily the same thing as being good men. In the eyes of Socrates, for instance, all obligations were discharged if a man obeyed the laws of Athens. Plato, St. Augustine said, approached Christianity more nearly than any other; and yet Plato tolerated popular vices of the gravest description, and he drew a picture of a model State in which there was to be a community of wives. And the moral teachers whom St. Paul afterwards found at Athens were Epicureans and Stoics. They divided the ancient world between them, practically. The Stoic morality has often been compared with Christianity; it differed from it vitally. Every single virtue was dictated by pride, just as every Epicurean virtue was inspired by the wish to economize the sources of pleasure. Nowadays, says a pagan writer, Quinctilian, the greatest vices are concealed under the name of philosophy. And the morality of the masses of men whom the philosophers could not and did not dare to influence, was just what might be expected. The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul draws (Rom 1:1-32.), is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers–of moralists like Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practices. Man still had, however obscurely, some parts of the law of God written deep in his heart. Men saw and approved (they said it themselves) the better course, and they followed the worse; and the natural law was thus to them only a revelation of sin and of weakness. It led them to yearn for a deliverer, although their aspirations were indefinite enough. Still this widespread corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments; it announced that the fulness of the time had come. (Canon Liddon.)
Preparation of the Jewish people for Christ
1. Politically the Jews were expecting change. They retained the feelings while they had lost the privileges of a free people. Their aspirations looked to a better future, though they mistook its character. The sceptre had departed from Judah. Shiloh, they believed, would immediately come.
2. Their purely religious convictions pointed in the same direction. Prophecy had in the course of ages completed its picture of a coming deliverer. Beginning with the indefinite promise of a deliverance, it had gradually narrowed the fulfilment, first to a particular race, then to a particular nation, then to a particular tribe, and a particular family. And the birth, the work, the humiliations, the death, the triumph, of the deliverer had been described during the interval the nation had been particularly active in arranging, comparing, discussing the great treasures which it had received from the past; and there was consequently what the New Testament calls an expectation of Israel, for which all good men in that age were waiting.
3. Above all, the Jews had a moral preparation to go through, too–the law, which they had not kept either in letter or spirit, and which was therefore to them nothing less than a constant revelation of their own weakness and sin. It showed them what in their natural strength they could not do; it showed them, like a lantern carried into a dark chamber of horrors which had never been lighted up before, what they had done. Thus the law was a confidential servant (which is the true meaning of pedagogue; not schoolmaster), to whom God had entrusted the education of Israel, to bring him to Christ. And this process of bringing him had just reached its completion; the fulness of the time had come. (Canon Liddon.)
The Divine plan in human affairs
This remarkable expression, the fulness of the time, is with a slight variation elsewhere used by St. Paul. He calls the gospel, when writing to the Ephesians, the dispensation of the fulness of times; and it is easy to see that in both cases he really means by fulness that which fulfils or finishes; he means the arrival of a given hour or moment which completes an epoch–the hour which thus makes its appointed measure and brings it to a close. It was in a like sense that our Lord and His apostles used the word hour, as marking a particular point in His life, determined in the counsels of God (Joh 2:4; Joh 4:21; Joh 5:25; Joh 7:6; Joh 13:1; Mat 26:45) All such language is only understood when we bear in mind that that succession of events which, looking at it from a human point of view, we call time, is distributed upon a plan eternally present to the Divine mind, and that particular persons or particular characters are assigned, by this eternal plan, their predestinated place in the succession. To everything, says the wise man, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. All the lesser incidents of our separate lives are really arranged in a preconcerted order. There is a fulness of time at which, and not before, we can understand particular truths or can undertake particular duties, because for these truths or these duties all that has preceded has been a preparation. My time, we may say in this sense, too, is in Thy hand. And this is peculiarly true of that last awful moment which awaits us all, and for which all that precedes it is one varied preparation–the moment of death. And in like manner it is true, generally, of those whom the world recognizes as its great men, that each appears in the fulness of time; each has his predestined hour, which he may not anticipate. He is in some sense the ripe product of the ages of thought, and feeling, and labour, which have elapsed before he comes: and that he should come when he does is just as much willed by the providence of God, as that he should be born at all. So it is with writers, with artists, with statesmen, even with discoverers and inventors. When such men as these are said to be before their age, it is only meant that the age has not yet taken its own true measure, and that they surprise it by a discovery. They really appear, one and all of them, in the fulness of time. (Canon Liddon.)
The fulness of time
The fulness of the time means that moment which filled up the measure of the appointed time, which completed the number of the allotted days; it does not refer to the feelings of men, but to the predestination of God. Scripture tells us that the world was being educated for the coming of Christ, so as to be able to receive Him and to profit by His work. As the heir of some great house is during his childhood treated as a servant, and kept under tutors and governors, so were we under the elements of the world; if heathens, we were under the vague teaching of natural religion; if Jews, under the formal instruction of Mosaic ordinances. History tells us how all things were ripe for the Redeemers coming just when He did come. God had prepared the civilized world for the reception of Christianity thus:–
I. By means of the Roman Empire He had reduced all the world under one government, so that there was free intercourse between all parts of the known world, and there was no political obstacle to the spread of the faith from one nation to another.
II. By means of the Greek language, the most perfect instrument of thought ever known, He had made the earth to be (in a very great degree) of one tongue, and thus He had prepared the way for the apostles and evangelists of Christ.
III. By means of the chosen people of the Jews–having still their religious centre at Jerusalem, yet scattered throughout the world–He had provided a nursery for the tender plant of the gospel, where it should be sheltered and fostered under the protection of an elder but kindred religion, until it was strong enough to be planted out in the world.
IV. By reason of the general confluence and mutual competition of all kinds of heathen idolatries, He had caused heathenism to lose all its old repute and power over souls. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)
Timeliness of the Advent
It was the fulness of time.
I. In reference to the giver. The moment had arrived which God had ordained from the beginning, and foretold by His prophets, for Messiahs coming.
II. In reference to the recipient. The gospel was withheld until the world had arrived at mature age; law had worked out its educational purpose and now was susperseded. This educational work had been twofold:
1. Negative. It was the purpose of all law, but especially of the Mosaic law, to deepen the conviction of sin and thus to show the inability of all existing systems to bring men near to God.
2. Positive. The comparison of the child implies more than a negative effect. A moral and spiritual expansion, which rendered the world more capable of apprehending the gospel than it would have been at an earlier age, must be assumed, corresponding to the growth of the individual; since otherwise the metaphor would be robbed of more than half its meaning. The primary reference in all this is plainly to the Mosaic law; but the whole context shows that the Gentile converts of Galatia are also included, and that they, too, are regarded as having undergone an elementary discipline, up to a certain point analogous to that of the Jews. (Bishop Lightfoot.)
Shall we say that great events arise from antecedents or without them
In the fulness of time, or out of due season; by sudden crises, or with long purpose and preparation? It is impossible for us to view the great changes of the world under any of these aspects exclusively. The spread of the Roman empire, the fall of the Jewish nation, the decline of the heathen religions, the long series of prophecy and teaching, are the natural links which connect the gospel with the actual state of mankind; the causes, humanly speaking, of its spread, and the soil in which it grew. But there was something else mysterious and inexplicable beyond and above all these causes, of which no account can be given, which came into existence at a particular time, because God chose that it should come into existence at that time. This is what the apostle calls the fulness of time. (B. Jowett, M. A.)
Christs human birth a wonderful thing
Is it not strange, asked a thoughtful boy one day of his tutor, is it not strange that St. Paul should tell us that our Saviour was born of a woman? Everybody that I know is born of a woman, and it is hard to see why such a matter should be mentioned at all as if it were remarkable. There is, it is true, nothing remarkable in this circumstance, if we take human life simply as we find it. For us men to be born of a woman is not merely a rule, it is a rule to which there is no known exception. Since the first parent of our race, no human being has appeared upon this earth who has not owed the debt of existence to the pain and travail of a human mother. The rule holds equally with the wisest, with the strongest, with the saintliest. Millions there have been among the sons of men, who have been also by Divine grace made to become sons of God; millions who have been born again, and thus have seen the kingdom of God; but of these each one was also first born of a human mother. So that we are driven to ask why a circumstance which might have been taken quietly for granted should be invested by the apostle with such prominence in the case of our Saviour Jesus Christ. But observe, the question is whether in His case it could have been taken for granted? If St. Paul mentions it thus emphatically, it is because he, at least, will not at once presume that this is the case. If, indeed, the Christ whom St. Paul loved and served was only a Son of God by grace, while by nature He was only and purely a man, then to have written down that he was born of a woman would have been an unmeaning truism. But if, in naming Him, St. Paul is thinking of Being whose nature is such as to make His appearance at all to the eye of sense, and in this visible sphere of things, in a very high degree extraordinary, then to say that He was born of a woman is to make an assertion of startling significance. Now, that St. Paul is thinking of such a Being is clear, for when he says, God sent forth His Son, he used the same word as when, just after, he says, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son. It is a word which implies, not simply the action of Gods providence, placing a created being on the scene of life; it is a word which implies a sending forth from the inmost life, from the depths of Deity itself, of One who shared the essential nature of the Sender. (Canon Liddon.)
Woman exalted by Christs birth
The position of women in the ancient world was, as a rule, one of deep degradation. There are some great and saintly women in ancient Israel–Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah. There are women who are socially or politically great in paganism, without being at all saintly–Semiramis, Aspasia, Sappho, and the wives and mothers of the Caesars. But, as a rule, in antiquity woman was degraded; women were at the mercy, and the caprice, and the passions of men. They lived as they live to-day in the Mohammedan East, at least generally, a life in which the luxuries of a petty seclusion scarcely disguise the hard reality of their fate. And yet women were then, as now, the larger part of the human family; and one object, we may dare to say, of the Divine Incarnation, was to put womans life on a new footing, within the precincts of the Kingdom of Redemption; and this was done when the Redeemer Himself Gods Own Eternal Son, owning no earthly father, yet deigned to be born of a woman. The highest honours ever attained by or bestowed upon the noblest or the saintliest members of the stronger sex, surely pale into insignificance when contrasted with this altogether unique prerogative of Mary. She herself, in the great hymn of the Incarnation, is already conscious of this. Let us think of the best man or woman we have ever known in life, and ask ourselves if it would be possible for him or her to say, without presumption, without absurdity, Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. But Mary–she utters these words, and from age to age Christendom verifies them. To have been the mother of the Divine Redeemer is a privilege unshared and incommunicable, and it sheds a glory upon all Christian women to the very end of time. It is this fact which has silently created that rare and beautiful feeling which in the Middle Ages took the form of chivalry, but which is wider and more lasting than to be identified with any one period of the Churchs life; that feeling which, without the aid of legislation, without reducing itself to a theory or a philosophy, insensibly corrected the wrongs of centuries, and secured for woman that tender respect and deference which is the true safeguard of her commanding influence, and which alone secures it. The best guarantee of womans liberty and influence is to be found in the fact that the Eternal Son deigned to be born of a woman. (Canon Liddon.)
The Immaculate Conception
These words not merely affirm, they also deny. Their silence is as exclusive, as their positive import is significant. Born of a woman. Nothing, then, is said of another earthly parent. No human father is named as the instrument of the Divine providence. The apostle is thinking, we may say with confidence, on our Lords birth of a virgin mother. It is true that in St. Pauls writings there is no definite and unmistakable reference to the Immaculate Conception; but we must remember
(1) that there is no one occasion in St. Pauls writings on which such a reference would seem necessary; and
(2) that St. Lukes Gospel, written under St. Pauls direction and illustrating his teaching, gives the fullest account of the circumstances of our Lords Conception and Birth which we have in the New Testament. The word woman, then, is in this passage emphatic. It pointedly implies that our Lord had only one earthly parent. Observe the import of this. It was a prime necessity that the Redeemer of mankind should be sinless. If He was to help our race out of its condition of moral degradation, He must have no part in the evil which it was His work to put away (Heb 7:26). But, then, human sin was not merely actual, hut original; not merely a result of each mans separate life and responsibility, but a consequence of the withdrawal of Gods first gift of righteousness after Adams transgression. It was, in fact, a twist of the hereditary human will; it was a taint upon the native affections and intelligence of the race; it was a subtle ingredient of the common character; it was an entail from the obligations of which the generations could not of themselves hope to escape. Men have constantly resented, as they resent to-day, the very idea of such an inheritance of evil; but they act, I observe, at least in social and in public matters, upon the presumption that it is true. Man is ever upon his guard against his brother man, as if he were a disguised or a possible enemy. Society protects itself by laws against human nature, by laws which would be a superfluous and insulting libel upon it if human nature were not by instinct and originally sinful. And thus for the apparition of a Sinless Being, truly sharing in our common nature, yet absolutely free from its inheritance of evil, some striking irregularity in the transmission of natural life–some flaw, if we might say so, conspicuous and intentional–was plainly suitable, in order to mark the entrance upon the scene of human life of One who shared the inheritance of flesh and blood, without sharing the tradition of sin. This was the meaning of the Lords Birth of a virgin mother. It was because He became sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, that He was in this emphatic and exclusive sense born of a woman. (Canon Liddon.)
Christs Birth of a woman consecrates family life
The life of the family is indeed older than Christianity; it is grounded on facts and instincts of human nature. It is perhaps, in the last analysis, the product of the action of mans reason and mans conscience upon his rudimentary physical instincts. But the nature and sacredness of family life has been recognized with very different degrees of clearness in different ages and countries of the world. It has had to contend with selfish passions always threatening to break it up, and, in particular, with the widespread and degrading institution of polygamy. Those who have best understood the true well-being of our race have done their best at all times to insist upon and to uphold family life as the safeguard of pure human life, as the firmest foundation of social order. Now, when our Lord condescended to be born of a woman, He became a member of a human family, and He bestowed upon family life the greatest consecration it has ever received since the beginning of human history, He had, indeed, no earthly father; but He was subject to His foster-father, St. Joseph, as well as to His own mother, Mary. He was subject, while yet He blessed them. In every age Christians have loved to dwell upon the picture of that incomparable home, first at Bethlehem and then at Nazareth, that home in which for a while Mary presided, and for which Joseph toiled, and in which Jesus was nursed and trained. No homestead, we may be sure, ever rivalled the moral beauties of that which was set up on this earth when the Son of God was born of a woman. From that day to this, He has been the inspiring, regulating, combining influence in all Christian households. In the Christian faith we trace His moral authority, in the Christian mother His tenderness and love, in the Christian child His lowly obedience. (Canon Liddon.)
The character of the Messiah
I. Here is the character of the person sent into the world. God sent forth His Son. The phrase is of the same import, with those other expressions we meet with in Scripture (Joh 3:16; Heb 1:1). The meaning is: God having of old established several forms of religion among men, by divers ways of revelation, by discovering Himself to the patriarchs, by the delivering of the law to Moses; He did at last in mercy and compassion to mankind vouchsafe to afford them one more clear and perfect revelation of His will, by the preaching of a person of far greater excellence and authority than any before; even by His own Son. The person here declared to be sent into the world, was in a peculiar manner the Son of God. The text also implies that He was with God, in the bosom of the Father, before He was sent into the world.
II. Here is a description of this Divine Persons condition, and His manner of conversation in the world–He was made of a woman, made under the law. He was made of a woman, i.e., He became truly and really a man; not taking upon Him only the similitude of our nature, but being really and truly such; subjected to all the infirmities of human nature, and tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15; see also Heb 2:17).
III. Here is the end and design of his coming thus into the world; set forth in the last part of the words–To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. The same phrase the apostle again makes use of in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom 8:15). God deals not with us as a master with his servants, but as a father with his sons, requiring of us not any hard and burdensome service, but only a rational and sincere obedience. Our Lord came to redeem them that were under the law; i.e., to abrogate the burdensome ceremonies of the Jewish institutions; That we might receive the adoption of sons; i.e., that He might establish with men a new covenant, which should be most easy to observe, and most sufficient to justify those that should observe it. Most easy to observe, is this covenant of the gospel; because its precepts are not positive and carnal ordinances, but the great duties of the moral and eternal law of God. Christ has suffered for us, that we might receive the adoption of sons; but if we continue not to live virtuously as becomes the children of God, it will nothing profit us to have received this adoption. They only who are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). (S. Clarke, D. D.)
Of the fulness of time, in which Christ appeared
1. We may consider it with respect to Gods fore-determination; and then it was therefore the fulness of time, because determined and foretold by the prophets. According to that ancient prediction of Jacob (Gen 49:10), the Messiah was to appear before the total dissolution of the Jewish Government. Again; the prophecy of Malachi (Mal 3:1), determines the coming of our Saviour to be before the destruction of the second temple. And that no less remarkable prediction of Haggai (Hag 2:6-7; Hag 2:9). Tis evident therefore that the incarnation of Christ was in the fulness of time; that is, exactly at the time foretold and fore-determined by the prophets. And indeed these prophecies were so plain, that about the time of our Lords appearance, the Jews, and from them the Romans, and all the eastern parts of the world, were in great expectation of some extraordinary person to arise, who should be governor of the world. But–
2. Though it be evident that our Saviour came into the world in the fulness of time, viz., at the time foretold by the prophets; yet the question may still return, Why was that time determined rather than any other, and accordingly foretold by the prophets; for, without doubt, it was in itself absolutely the fittest and the properest season. Now two reasons there seem to have been more especially, of our Saviours appearing at that time: the first is, because the insufficiency of the Jewish dispensation, as well as of natural religion, was then, after a long trial, become sufficiently apparent: apparent; not to God, who knows all things at once, and makes accordingly provision for all things from the beginning; but to men, to whom the counsel of God is opened by degrees. The second reason, why we may suppose our Savior appeared just at the time He did, was because the world was at that time by many extraordinary circumstances, peculiarly prepared for his reception. Now, about the time of our Saviours birth, it is observable that there was a concurrence of many things in the world, to promote and further the propagation of such a religion. The Romans had then conquered almost all the known parts of the world; they had spread and settled their language among all the nations of their conquests, and had made the communication easy from one part to another. They had, moreover, improved moral philosophy to its greatest height. Further; the great improvement and increase of learning in the world about this time (according to that prophecy of Daniel, Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased) gave occasion to the Jewish books to be dispersed through the world: and particularly the translating of the Bible some few ages before the birth of Christ into one of the then most known and universal languages upon earth, which had before been confined in a peculiar language to the Jews only, was a singular preparative to the reception of that great Prophet and Saviour of mankind, whose coming was in that book so plainly and so often foretold. Indeed this seems to have been the first step of Gods discovering Himself further than by the light of nature to other nations as well as to the Jews, and of His giving the heathen also the knowledge of His revealed laws, and remarkably instrumental it afterwards appeared to be, in the propagating the Christian religion through the Gentile world. (S. Clarke, D. D.)
The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
Four thousand years elapsed between the giving of the promise and its fulfilment. It is natural to ask–why?
I. Consider the wisdom and propriety of delaying the fulfilment of the promise until what Paul here calls the fulness of the time. St. Paul asserts that at any earlier period it would have been as unwise to have sent His Son into the world, as to make any young man master of his own property till he came of age.
1. At no period before the fulness of time would the Incarnation of Christ have been so proper, all things considered. Redemption was equally needed at all times, but taking into account Christs doctrines, life, miracles, etc., it would have been untimely earlier. During the antediluvian age, there was no man living who could have written such an account of it as to interest future generations, and at the same time benefit those of his own time. From the Flood to the time of Moses the worlds population was comparatively small and uncivilized. From the time of Moses to the prophets, the Jews required fuller instruction and discipline to fit them for Christs teaching. During the four monarchies war was so rife that the religion of Christ would not have gained public attention; or, if it had, men would afterwards have asserted that Christianity was the invention of some political tyrant of that age.
2. In the Augustan age, when Christ did come, the world was prepared thoroughly to examine His claims, was able to appreciate His doctrines by comparison and contrast, and was in such a state as to afford facilities for the extension and propagation of Christianity.
II. Consider the manner of His incarnation.
1. Christ came as a child. Fit emblem of the mission of mercy which brought Him.
2. He was born in a lowly station. No fear, then, but that the poorest and humblest are welcome to Him and to all His benefits.
3. Obedient to the law, and under its curse.
III. Consider the great design of His incarnation.
1. To redeem from the curse, not the obligation, of the law. You cannot obey the law too much, but you must look for justification to Christ alone.
2. To confer on all men the adoption of sons. We must believe this before we can feel it. (R. Philip.)
The Advent of the Redeemer
The purpose of Christs earthly manifestation cannot have been to effect any change in Gods disposition towards us, to make Him placable or propitious, for it was the fruit and issue of His love. (1Jn 4:10; Joh 3:16).
I. The timeliness of the advent. Every event in the unfolding of the Divine plan has its proper place. Evidence of this is not wanting in regard to the advent.
1. The proof of the worlds need was complete. Philosophy and religion had been tried, and failed. Nothing remained but disappointment and despair.
2. The Jewish nation was prepared. Prophecy fulfilled. People expectant. The old system worn out.
3. The circumstances of the age were favourable. Peace. Civilization. One language.
II. The subjection to human conditions which Christs advent involved.
1. His true humanity.
(1) Identity of nature with all men.
(2) Antecedent mystery of another and higher nature.
(3) Progressive development.
(4) Completeness of sympathy.
2. His legal obedience. He submits to the yoke under which all are bound. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Christ, the Saviour of men
A little above Niagara Falls there is a cluster of islets. The most considerable of these is called Goat Island, and between Goat Island and the shore there is a stream of some breadth, and of exceeding swiftness, crossed by a little wooden bridge. One day a man was painting that bridge, and while thus engaged he happened to miss his footing and slip into the rapids, and was carried down with terrible swiftness. Though he struggled hard to make for the shore, his struggles were all in vain; the current was far too strong for him. Down, down he went, and it seemed as if in a few moments he would take the fearful leap into the unbottomed abyss. But just as it appeared that all hope was gone, he was intercepted by a little islet of rock not very far from the edge of the precipice–you would scarcely have noticed it if you were looking casually on the stream, it was so small; it attracted attention only by the ripples the water made about it. That little islet happened to lie right in his way; it intercepted his progress, and gave him foothold and handhold for a time. There he clung, and cried out for assistance. By and by a crowd gathered on the shore, and they began to devise all sorts of means to save him. They tried one thing after another, and plan after plan failed, until at last one brave man got the idea of having a rope put round his waist; and, getting into the river at just about the place where the man entered the water, so managed to angle across the stream, and yet be carried down it, that he reached the little islet of rock, and grasped the man there with all the strength he had left. And now, firmly clasped in each others embrace they set out back again on their perilous journey, and safely reached the shore. By this time a great crowd had gathered, and you may imagine the ringing cheer which went up from that large company when the two men came safely back. Take this story as an illustration of mans helpless condition in this world until Christ left the eternal shore to come and rescue him. If man was to be saved these six conditions must be fulfilled; and they were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
I. Some one from the shore must undertake to save him.
II. The Helper must leave the shore and come to him so that he can grasp Him. Not enough to see in the distance One who has pity; must be actual contact.
III. In order to reach him the Deliverer must come within the sweep of the law. No other way of reaching him, but through the current.
IV. The Rescuer must bear the drowning mans share of the curse of the law if He would save him. Powerless to bear the strain himself.
V. The Rescuer must have strength enough to get safely back.
VI. The Saviour and the saved must be firmly bound together. Otherwise the; strain will fall on both, and the latter will inevitably be drowned. Hence the need of faith, which is the grasp of the soul. (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
The worlds majority
A doctrinal explanation of the birth and life of Christ. That event marked–
1. The worlds coming of age. All pre-Christian history anticipative and preparatory.
2. The character of the new relationship opened up to men.
(1) Liberty.
(2) Divine sonship.
3. The means whereby the spiritual maturity of men is brought about.
(1) It involved self-sacrifice on the part of God.
(2) The proper human nature of man is assumed by Christ.
(3) The obligations of the law are voluntarily discharged. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
The fulness of time
Trench thinks it a very remarkable fact that Gods prophecies concerning the advent of His Son seem to have spread athwart the habitable globe, and in the shape of traditional echoes to have been dispersed all over the world. The poet Virgil says in one of his poems that He would soon be born into the world who would, he expected, bring in the golden age. Suetonius, an ancient historian, states that a certain and settled persuasion prevailed in the East that the cities of Judea would bring forth, about this time, a person who should obtain universal empire. And Tacitus states that it was contained in the ancient books of the Jewish priests that the East should prevail, These were scattered lights that went out from Judea, their reuniting centre, and gave the heathen an anticipation and a persuasion that some great and illustrious Deliverer was about to be born into the world.
Gods gift to the world
An epitome of the scheme of redemption–an outline of the gospel plan–an abbreviating system of Christian divinity.
I. The important event stated.
1. The illustrious Person spoken of.
2. This illustrious Person was divinely commissioned.
3. The nature which He assumed.
4. The obligations to Which He was liable.
(1) He was subject to the ceremonial law. He was circumcised, and presented in the temple; He worshipped in the synagogues, went up to the feasts, etc.
(2) He was under the moral law. He lived it; and in all He spake, and did, and thought, He honoured it. He kept it, in all its extent, perfectly. He also taught it, spiritualized and vindicated it.
(3) He was under both the ceremonial and moral law in His mediatorial capacity. He was both the Victim for sin and the High Priest of our profession.
5. The peculiar period of His manifestation.
(1) The time referred to by the prophets.
(2) After the world had been sufficiently informed as to the event, in various ways and forms, from the first promise to the last prophecy given.
(3) When all means for mans restoration had proved totally inadequate.
(4) When the world was in a state of profound peace.
(5) When there was a general expectation of Him, especially among the Jews.
(6) At that particular time, fixed upon as the best, by the infinite wisdom of God.
II. The grand ends contemplated in these events.
1. That we might obtain redemption.
2. That we might receive adoption.
3. That believers might thus enjoy redemption and the adoption of sons.
Learn:
1. The way in which redemption has been effected.
2. The invaluable blessings it presents before us.
3. The importance of a saving, personal interest in them.
4. Exhort the guilty and perishing to believe and have life. (J. Burns, D. D.)
The first Advent of Messiah
I. The time of His coming. He came when the fulness of the time was come. And what time was that?
1. It was the time appointed of the Father–the time fixed for His coming in the mind and counsel of God. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world, and even from all eternity. Nothing happens to Him by chance,
2. It was the time foretold by the prophets–those holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
3. It was a time peculiarly suitable for His coming, and is, therefore, called the fulness of the time. It was a time when events seemed to have gradually ripened for this glorious consummation. It was a time, lastly, when His forerunner appeared to prepare His way before Him, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and thus making ready a people prepared for the Lord. Such was the time of the Redeemers advent.
II. Consider the manner of His coming. When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law. There are here three particulars for our consideration.
1. God sent forth His Son. This expression evidently implies that the Son of God existed before He was sent forth. And does not the Scripture everywhere corroborate the truth thus implied? But where did He exist before His Divine mission? He existed with God in heaven. He was in the bosom of the Father. I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. Consequently, we are not to suppose, when God is here said to have sent Him forth, that it implies any inferiority of nature on the part of the Son; for such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such, too, is the Holy Ghost.
2. The Son of God was made of a woman; and He was so made in accordance with the prophecies respecting Him.
3. He was made under the law. As a Divine person, a partaker with the Father in the Godhead, He was not subject to any law; nor as a perfectly holy man was he bound to submit to the ceremonial law, which in everything implied the sinfulness of man. Yet, for us men, and for our salvation, He humbled Himself to be made under the law. He was born of a Jewess, and was circumcised the eighth day, and thus was placed under the law as a covenant of works; that, as the surety of His people, He might in every way answer its full demands.
III. Consider the object of His coming. This was to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. By the law, we may here understand both the ceremonial and the moral law. And what is the adoption here spoken of? It is a blessing of which by nature we are utterly destitute; for by nature we are without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But when does God thus adopt us? It is when we truly repent us of our past sins, and embrace by faith the method of salvation revealed in the gospel. And what are the privileges to which as adopted children we become entitled? They are numerous and important, too numerous indeed, to be here all specified.
1. The spirit of adoption, which enables us to approach God with filial confidence, and to open our whole heart before Him.
2. Heirship. (D. Rees.)
The fulness of the time
I. The fulness of time.
1. Time hath a fulness, because it has a capacity (Eph 4:13).
2. That fulness comes by degrees. As with life so with time.
3. There is a time when time cometh to its fulness (Joh 7:8. cf Joh 12:23). In the day at the meridian; in man at full age.
4. When that when is. When God sends it. That which fills time is some memorable thing of Gods pouring into it. Moses and the prophets filled it to a certain degree; Christ filled it to the brim. Well might it be called the fulness, for
(1) Christ was the fulness of God (Col 2:9; Joh 3:34; Joh 1:14-16).
(2) In Him the promises were fulfilled.
(3) The heir, the world had come to his full age, and so was ripe to receive Him its inheritance.
II. The filling of time.
1. From the fulness of His compassion God sent.
2. From the fulness of His love He sent His Son.
3. In the fulness of humility He sent Him.
(1) Made of a woman, to make full union with our nature.
(2) Made under the law to make the union yet more perfectly full with our sinful condition by undertaking, at circumcision, to fulfil all the righteousness of its law (Gal 5:8), and at His passion fulfilling all our obligations to the law (Col 2:14).
III. The fulness of the benefit to us.
1. Redemption. Consider
(1) The price paid;
(2) The captives;
(3) The liberation.
2. Adoption.
(1) Prisoners translated into children;
(2) Slaves of sin into joint heirs with Gods Son.
IV. The fulness of duty by us. Christmas should be–
1. A time of fulness of joy; but not that only; also a time of–
2. Thankfulness to God.
3. Piety.
4. Beneficence. (Bp. Andrewes.)
I. Christ came in the fulness of time.
1. What is this?
(1) The time appointed by the Father.
(2) Foretold by the prophets.
2. How doth it appear?
(1) From Gen 49:10.
(2) Dan 9:25.
(3) Hag 2:9; Mal 3:1.
II. Christ was sent, therefore He had a being before. This appears from
(1) Joh 6:33; Joh 6:51;
(2) Joh 1:15; Joh 8:58.
(3) Joh 1:2; Heb 1:2; Col 1:15-16.
III. Christ was Gods Son.
1. He was God (Rom 9:5; 1Jn 5:20).
2. This Godhead He received of the Father (Joh 5:26).
3. This communication was properly a generation.
IV. Christ was made of a woman.
1. He received His human body substantially from a woman.
2. Made, i.e., without the help of man (Isa 7:14; Mat 1:23-24; Luk 1:34-35).
Uses.
1. Information.
(1) See the infinite love of God to man.
(2) The dignity of man above all other creatures.
2. Exhortation. Be thankful for this inestimable mercy.
(1) How miserable you would be without it. Your sins unpardoned; your God unreconciled; your soul condemned.
(2) How happy by it: your person justified; your God reconciled; your souls saved. Sing with the angels (Luk 2:14). (Bp. Beveridge.)
I. There was a threefold work of preparation, each portion of which demanded the lapse of a certain period.
1. The Gentile world had to he prepared.
(1) Politically. A common language and social system with laws and Government were required and provided in the Greek language and the Roman Empire:
(2) In religious conviction. The old religions went to pieces, and an age of vice, superstition, and unbelief supervened. The epoch of religious experiments closed in an epoch of despair.
(3) In moral experience. Men saw and approved the better course and followed the worse. Consciousness of sin and weakness led them to yearn for a deliverer.
2. The Jewish world–
(1) Politically was expecting change, and that Shiloh would appear.
(2) Their religious convictions pointed to Him.
(3) Their law was a moral preparation, a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ.
II. When the time was full Christ came.
1. If we had seen Jesus in His earthly life what impression would He have produced on our unprejudiced souls?
(1) We should have observed in Him a totally different relation to truth from that of every other man.
(a) There was no struggle between His will and Gods law.
(b) He never sinned.
2. His nature was at harmony with itself. No one excellence is out of proportion. Contemplation and action; the desire for the public and the individual good; all that was most manly and most womanly; the Jewish, Greek, Roman types, all harmonized. The first Adam contained the whole race of his descendents; so Christ became the Head of a new race.
3. As we looked steadily we should have seen that He was Gods Son, made of a woman.
III. From what did Christ come to deliver us.
1. From false views of the world and life.
2. From base and desponding views of human nature.
3. From bondage. (Canon Liddon.)
The fulness of the time
I. When Rome had reached the zenith of her power and influence.
II. When civilization had attained her utmost development.
1. Politically the world was one as it had never been before and has never been since.
2. Intellectually. Except, perhaps, the golden age of Greece, without a parallel. Cicero, Lucretius, Caesar, Pliny, Juvenal. Philosophy now in her prime.
3. Materially: every source open from which pleasure could be derived.
4. Artistically.
III. When men had fathomed the lowest depths of degradation. The fulness of time was marked by–
1. Disgusting licentiousness.
2. Inhuman cruelty.
3. Widespread practice of suicide.
4. Blank atheism.
5. Utter despair. (J. Macgregor, D. D.)
The fulness of the time; or, the ruined world redeemed by Christ
I. A period in which were manifest the bondage, degradation, and misery of man, and the corruption, decay, and death of nations.
1. After the Flood a new term of probation was granted; but Babel became the monument of mans pride and self-will.
2. After the call of Abraham Gods administration took a two-fold form:
(a) to prepare salvation for the nations;
(b) To prepare the nations for salvation.
(1) To the Jews the law was given as a pedagogue to conduct them to Christ; but they lost sight of the end in the means.
(2) To the Greeks were given exquisite intellectual faculties;.but these great gifts were prostituted to the basest uses.
(3) To the Romans was given the faculty for law and empire; but they became slaves of lust. The worlds extremity was Gods opportunity.
II. A period of special, supernatural, and Divine intervention as manifested in the person and work of Christ, and the spiritual freedom and moral elevation of men.
1. The person of Christ.
(1) His Divinity–sent forth His Son.
(2) His humanity–born of a woman.
(3) His nationality–under the law.
2. The work of Christ–to redeem, etc.
3. The kindred and representatives of Christ–sons, whose distinctive marks are:
(1) Freedom.
(2) Spirituality.
(3) Permanancy.
(4) Hopefulness. (Giles Hester.)
The Advent
I. The general expectation of the people when christ came, as witnessed by Josephus, Suetonious, and Tacitus
II. The state of the world at the period.
1. The Jews.
(1) Their inordinate zeal for ceremonial.
(2) Their moral depravity.
2. The Roman empire.
(1) Its power and wealth.
(2) Its effeminacy and corruption.
3. Its hopelessness. Polytheism and philosophy had failed, and had given place to atheism and sorcery.
III. The results that flowed from the advent.
1. The abolition of Judaism.
2. The extirpation of every preexisting religion and philosophy.
3. The ultimate triumph of Christianity in its effects–
(1) On the individual whom it regenerated;
(2) on the race which it unified into a brotherhood;
(3) on the family which it purified and elevated
(4) on woman to whom it gave power and a sphere;
(5) on children whom it snatched from the murderer;
(6) on legislation which it humanized;
(7) on labour which it ennobled;
(8) on education whose sphere it widened;
(9) or, slavery and war whose horrors it mitigated and whose extinction it requires. (G. Sexton, LL. D.)
The Advent of the Redeemer
I. Its timeliness–In due time (Rom 5:6).
1. The proof of the worlds need was complete.
2. Gods preparation as regards the Jews had fulfilled its course.
3. The circumstances of the age were favourable.
II. Christs subjection to human conditions which it involved.
1. His true humanity (Heb 2:17).
2. His legal obedience. (J. Waite.)
The Advent in redemption
I. Christ became the Son of Man that we might become Sons of God. Christs incarnation is–
1. The secret of His influence over us. Attraction is in proportion to nearness. Christ stooped that He might lift (Heb 4:15).
2. The source of His power to conquer our foes (Hebrews if. 14).
3. The ground of His atonement unto God (Heb 2:17).
II. Christ was made subject to law that He might free us from bondage of law.
1. He was born subject–
(1) To Levitical law as a Jew.
(2) To the social law–subject to His parents (Luk 2:51).
(3) To the civil law (Mat 17:24-27).
(4) To the moral law.
2. He was subject to the penalties of the law, although Himself sinless.
(1) To the shame and trouble of the world generally.
(2) To death, the distinctive doom of sin.
3. This leads to our liberation.
(1) By facing the death-doom of this law Christ conquers this for us.
(2) By obedience to the law He triumphed over the law.
(3) By rising from obedience to the letter of the law, and the higher obedience of the spirit He leads us also to that freer service of love which is emancipation from law. (W. J. Adeney, M. A.)
Christs mission for the adoption of sons in the fulness of time
I. The mission of Christ, and the manner of His manifestation.
1. The dignity of His person–Gods Son.
2. The manner Of His manifestation.
(1) Born of a woman; conceived by the Holy Ghost, Frequently noticed in Old and New Testaments (Gen 3:18; Isa 7:14; Mat 1:23; 1Ti 2:14-15).
(2) Made under the law; plainly implying that He was put into a situation different from that which was originally His (cf. Php 2:7-8). The necessary condition of every creature is that of submission to the law of God. Christ was born of a woman that He might be made subject to that law.
He was made under–
1. The ceremonial law.
2. The moral law.
3. The mediatorial law; and fulfilled all perfectly.
II. The design of His mission.
1. He came to accomplish that which could not be accomplished by other means or an inferior agency.
2. He came not merely to exemplify a rule of life but to satisfy its violation; not to explain the law but to bear its curse.
3. The character in which He appeared was that of a Substitute and Daysman.
4. In this character He magnified the law and procured justification for us.
5. And further, secured to us the adoption of sons.
III. The fitness of the season which God in His infinite wisdom appointed for the purpose. It was a period–
1. Foretold in prophecy, Jacob, Haggai, Daniel.
2. Of general expectation.
3. Of profoundest peace.
4. Of advanced learning and scepticism; so a time most favourable to detect imposture and to test the merits of true religion.
5. Of toleration.
In conclusion:
1. The advent was the most important event in the history of the world.
2. You are all interested in it. Those who neglect it will be eternally deprived of its provisions. (Robert Hall.)
Christmas Day and what it teaches
I. Wherein consisted the preparation of the fulness of time for a new turn in the history of the world? There was a general sickness in the worlds condition.
1. War had left its sores and scars behind.
2. Popular religion was worn out and dying.
3. The faith of Moses and Isaiah had degenerated into a discussion of dress and posture, and into a fierce fanaticism. It was the darkest period before the dawn. Men were dreaming–
(1) That a prophet would come to solve the riddle of life.
(2) That a king would appear who would establish universal monarchy.
(3) That the Golden Age would be restored.
II. Wherein consisted the peculiarity of the coming of Christ which made it the germ of what there was to be in the ages following?
1. The evils of the world, however glittering, found their level in Christs presence.
2. Christ revealed to man a new image of the Divine nature and a new idea of human destiny, and made both realizable.
3. All that was good in the world took courage, and was revived and assimilated and strengthened by Christ; what was true in thought, beautiful in art, just in law, were incorporated, and the organic unity of the world gave a framework into which the gospel could fit and spread without hindrance and violence.
III. What are the conditions and what ought to be the effects of Christianity on its nineteenth-century birthdays?
1. As regards our manners and customs.
(1) We have left behind gladiatorial games; have we learned that mercy which the humane spirit of jesus should teach us?
(2) We have left behind the luxury and selfishness of Rome; but is not our extravagance in dress and living contrary to the simplicity, the plain living, and high thinking of Jesus?
(3) We have left behind the foul sins of ancient heathenism; but is our conversation and our literature free from a frivolity and coarseness alien to Him who blessed the pure in heart?
(4) We have left behind divisions between Pharisee and Sadducee, Greek and Barbarian; but have we not so multiplied sects and churches as to break the unity which should be in Christ?
2. As regards our outlook. Just as the advances of Roman civilization were preparations for the gospel, so the advances of modern science, etc. so far from being contrary to the gospel are means of its wider spread.
3. As regards us individually. When the fulness of time is come in joy or sorrow the one redeeming thought is that Christ has redeemed us that we might receive, etc. (Dean Stanley.)
The fulness of time
The phrase marks a great crisis in the history of the world. The ages flow on until they reach a certain defined boundary line, and then a new order of things is established. An apprentice is bound for a term of years; at the expiration of that period the fulness of time has come, and he obtains his freedom from service. An heir arrives at his majority and enters into the possession of freedom when he has filled with service the term fixed by his father or by the law. Boys and girls at school count the weeks which intervene between the period appointed for breaking-up, and long for the fulness of time to come that they may obtain their liberty and hasten home to see their fathers and mothers. So in the history of the world. The old order came to an end. The sand in the hour-glass ran out. It was time to put the old lesson books, the old habits, the old employments, away. (G. Hester.)
The Incarnate Person of Christ
He possessed our human nature in all its completeness–body, soul, and spirit. United to this perfect humanity was the infinite Divine nature with all its glorious perfections. The human nature is the temple, the Divine nature is the glory which dwelleth in the temple. The human nature is the cloud, the Divine nature is the sun shining through that cloud, giving light and life to the souls of men. When He spoke, His human words conveyed Divine wisdom. When He worked His miracles, His human hands were vehicles of Divine power. When He loved, His human heart was surcharged with an infinite, changeless, and everlasting love. (Thomas Jones.)
The three births of Christ
His eternal birth in heaven is inexpressible, where He was born without a mother; His birth on earth is inexpressible, where He was born without a father; His third birth in thy soul is most inexpressible, without father or mother. He had a heavenly birth, by which He was the Eternal Son of God, and without that He had not been a Person able to redeem thee. He had a human birth, by which He was the Son of Mary, and without that He had not been sensible of thine infirmities and necessities. But He hath a spiritual birth in thy soul, without which both His Divine and human birth are utterly unprofitable to thee, and thou art no better off than if there had never been a Son of God in heaven or a son of Mary on earth. (Doune.)
Redemption
Gods law is spoken of as a fetter or chain, binding a condemned spirit unto sure and speedy punishment. And Christ Jesus is set forth as a gracious Saviour, coming with both price and power to ransom and deliver. These two parts of the figure should be considered in order. First–Here is the Divine law as a bondage or imprisonment. A principle, or power, hemming the sinful soul in and ensuring its destruction. Law–that substantial and sublime thing. Law, a cloud, presently to vanish! Ah me! it is anything else! The very word law means something fixed, established, immutable. And as everywhere seen in the Divine government, the thing law is the most permanent and immutable of all things. We observe this in regard even of the lowest physical laws of the universe, Take the law of germination–the transmission of vegetable life through the earthly flora–that Divine ordinance at creation: That grass and herb and tree should yield seed after their kind, whose seed is in itself after its kind; and observe with what immutable power it reigns over its broad domain. All the physical changes since creation have not abated jot or tittle of its meaning. The oak and the cedar are now in form, in development, yea, in the colour and fibre of spray and leaf, precisely the oak and the cedar of the primal Eden woodlands. And the odours we breathe in spring-time are from the same flowers that made fair and fragrant the garden when the first man walked with his Maker. And upon our thousand hills the cattle feed upon the self-same grasses that fattened the living creatures to which Adam gave names. Around every seed, as it came from the creative hand, was bound as an iron fetter that thing we call law. All the men of the world, with all their power and skill of chemistry and magic, cannot produce a rose from a lily seed, nor a pomegranate from a fig-tree. Nor is this natural law without a mighty and merciful meaning. On its steadfastness rests the hope of creation. And from this principle in the natural, how plain the a fortiori argument for the supremacy and vindication of those laws which make up Gods moral administration. A sin committed and not punished would be, in that regard, just what the imponderous rain-drop or the growth of tares from seed-corn would be in a natural world–a demonstration of the mutable and unrighteous character, both of the universal laws and their Omnipotent Lawgiver. One evil act or word, or thought, permitted unpunished; and then all such iniquities would have Divine license and sanction. Sin, the great destroyer, would spread as a deadly pestilence throughout all worlds. Yes, my hearers, law is no insignificant thing, to be broken with impunity: it is an immutable, adamantine, omnipotent ordinance, set to guard all great and universal interests–lifting itself as an impassable barrier between the domains of sin and holiness, disloyalty and love. And therefore, so long as Jehovah reigns, is never to be relaxed in one tittle of its righteous requirements, or defrauded of its full and triumphant vindication. All things made by God, from the atom in the air to the glorious archangel, were placed, at the first, and will remain to the end, inexorably under law. And therefore the apostle, in the strong metaphor of the text, represents the condition of an ungodly man, as one around whom this immutable and everlasting law is bound as an iron fetter, and built as an adamantine prison-house, from which he cannot escape, unless by some Divine and Omnipotent deliverance. Under law! under law ! Verily language hath no more startling image than this! And this brings us to consider the other part of this apostolic figure, wherein unto the soul thus hopelessly imprisoned, Christ Jesus is represented as a deliverer, coming both with price and power to work out salvation–to redeem!–to redeem them that were under the law. And the figure illustrates strikingly the meaning of redemption. It is something more than deliverance. Our Saviour is not represented as coming in arbitrary omnipotence to open the prison-door and preach liberty to the captive. For this were an abrogation of law, and not its vindication. But He comes to redeem men. The word is redemption–i.e., a buying back–not a wresting by power, but a release by purchase. It is not the advent of an armed champion to lift up his challenge at the prison-door, and to carry the stronghold by assault; but the advent of a Mediator, to satisfy every claim, and fulfil every condition of the law which is violated, extenuating nothing of the captives guilt–disputing none of the laws demands–prepared to meet those demands in every jot and tittle; so that if it were possible to distinguish between the Divine attributes, it would be rather the justice of God than His mercy, which loosens the fetter and unbars the dungeon. Redemption! Redemption! This is the word! Such a vindication of the law in the face of the universe as strengthens the universal faith in its steadfastness! Mediation! Substitution! This is the mighty truth! Not a breaking of the law, but a fulfilling it in behalf of us! Making manifest its tremendous power even in the very act of deliverance–as in a beneficent rescue from some great natural law. Take the law of gravitation. Imagine a child, abroad on a holiday in some Alpine valley, joyously watching summer-birds, or gathering wild flowers; when suddenly, far above, some elemental agency loosens the avalanche, and downward, in awful momentum, it rushes toward the imperilled child! Now, suppose that infant could stand up in the path of that destroyer, and, putting forth its feeble hand, stop it, and roll it backward! Then, though the fond mother would exult in the deliverance, yet all human faith would be shaken in the steadfastness of the great law, and this world, and all worlds, be flung back into chaos. But instead of this, suppose at the first sound of that descending destruction, the father, thoughtful of his child, had sprung to the rescue–bounding from rock to rock, reckless of precipices and chasms–reaching the imperilled not a moment too soon, snatching it from the very jaws of death; and springing backward, bleeding, breathless, into the shelter of some adamantine cavern, had come forth when the mighty terror had gone by, bearing the beloved and saved one–then the cry of gladness filling all that stormy air, would be no more in praise of human love than of the might and majesty of that glorious thing–law! And thus is it in salvation. The claim of Gods holy law is in no sense set aside or weakened! Christ Jesus, for us, bears all its penalty–fulfils all its requirements. And the universe beholds the amazing fact of substitution, assured that the righteousness of God is absolute and immutable, and exults that, even in the deliverance of the sinner, the law is magnified in the punishment of sin. These, then, are the two truths which the texts metaphor illustrates: The law an imprisonment! Christ Jesus a Redeemer. Yet each should receive at our hands its just personal application.
1. If we are impenitent and unpardoned men, let us at least consider seriously our true estate of dark and unsheltered condemnation. You are under the law! and as the most necessary and certain of all things, that law must be vindicated. If you will not accept of redemption as offered in Christ, yours is no part in salvation. Law–law. What a fearful thing it is in its aspects towards transgression! Even human law, weak, uncertain, mutable, imperfect–yet how its violator recoils, if it hem him in to destruction! See yonder! through the dark night hurries a trembling fugitive! That mans hands are stained with blood. In silence and solitude, with no human eye to see, he struck the fatal blow, and now on swift foot turns from the face of the dead man! But, alas for him, the avenger of blood is on his track! Law! Law! that inexorable power of retribution–with an eye that gathers evidence from a footprint in earth, or a stain in water, or a whisper in air–is following his footsteps, and will find him and lay a mighty hand on him, and bind him in iron fetters which no power can break, and consign him to dungeons whence no skill can deliver. And if human law is terrible what think ye of Divine law? Gods natural laws are fearful! You see a fair child gathering flowers on the brink of a precipice; singing its glad songs and weaving its dewy garlands, it approaches the dizzy verge! Far out, in a cleft of a rock, grows a tempting violet; the child sees it, longs for it–reaches for it–reaches too far! See, its little feet slip! and you shudder, recoil, cry out with terror! Why? Is not God merciful? Are not Gods providences gracious? Yes, indeed; but even Gods merciful providences are according to immutable ordinances. That child is under law. The law, that holds the universe together, and is as inexorable as its Maker, hems it in, and presses on it, and will dash it to destruction. And do you think Gods moral laws are narrower in their play, or weaker in their pressure? O, ungodly man! be alarmed for yourself! You are pursuing your chosen courses under law–under law! You are gathering flowers of sin upon precipices, and below are unfathomed depths of indignation and anguish; and the moral law that binds into one rejoicing universe all sinless ranks of life, is over you, and around you, and pressing you down to destruction, and at the next footstep your feet may slide, and there be none to deliver! Oh, the overwhelming thought! Beings passing to immortality under law–under law.
2. Meantime, unto the believing and penitent soul the text is full of consolation. We were under the law, but Christ hath redeemed us! Redeemed! Redeemed! Oh, what a word it is! Saved! Saved! How the very thought thrills us! A child saved from a burning house! From foundation to roof swept the red surges, hemming him in unto destruction! But right through the encircling fire rushed a strong deliverer, reckless of danger, to restore it in joyous life to the mothers loving heart! Saved! Saved! A man overboard, in a night of storm, lifting one despairing cry upon the rushing wind, and sinking, in despairing anguish, in the devouring sea! But, behold! a life-boat lowered, manned, darting like a sea-bird through the blinding spray, and strong arms outstretched to snatch the victim from the very jaws of death! Saved! saved! saved! Oh, what a word it is! And yet thus, O children of God, are you saved from the unfathomed ocean and the unquenchable fire! Saved, saved for ever! Oh, what gratitude becomes us! What consecration! What deep, adoring love! (C. Wadsworth.)
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Of Christ, the only Redeemer of Gods elect
1. The season in which this freedom or redemption was brought about: When the fulness of the time was come, says the apostle.
2. We have the means of this deliverance, namely, Christs incarnation and manifestation in the flesh; God sent forth His own Son, made of a woman.
3. We have the condition in which Christ came; made under the law. Being made flesh, He subjected himself both to the precepts and to the curse of the law.
4. The freedom and deliverance itself: God sent forth His Son, thus qualified, to redeem them that were under the law; that is, to free all the elect from the curse and punishment that was due to them for the transgression of it (Gal 3:13). And hereby also was procured to believers the adoption of sons: by which we are to understand, not only the benefit of adoption itself, which was the privilege of believers under the Old Testament as well as now under the New, but also and chiefly a clearer manifestation of that privilege, and a more free use and fruition of it. They have now a more full and plentiful measure of the Spirit than believers had under the Old Testament dispensation.
I. The only redeemer of Gods elect is the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. Consider the titles and names of our Redeemer.
(1) Lord–absolute and Universal sovereign over all creatures. The government belongs to Him originally as God, and derivatively as God-Man, Mediator.
(2) Jesus. No salvation but through Him.
(3) Christ. Anointed to His office by the Father. Three sorts of persons were commonly anointed among the Jews–kings, priests, prophets. As oil strengthened and suppled the joints, and made them agile and fit for exercise, so it denoted a designation and fitness in a person for the function to which he was appointed.
(a) It implies the Fathers fitting and furnishing Him with all things necessary, that He might be a complete Redeemer to His people.
(b) It implies the Fathers giving Him a commission to redeem poor sinners from hell and wrath. He was invested with a fulness of authority and power for this very end. And therefore in Scripture He is said to be sealed, as having His commission under the great seal of Heaven.
2. Consider His office and work in general. He is called the Mediator, which properly signifies a midsman, that travels betwixt two persons who are at variance to reconcile them. Now, Christ is Mediator,
(1) In respect of His person, being a middle person betwixt God and man, participating of both natures.
(2) In respect of His office; being a middle person dealing betwixt God and man, in the offices of a Prophet, Priest, and King.
II. Our next business is to illustrate this grand truth, that Jesus Christ being the eternal Son of God, became man.
1. Christ is the eternal Son of God. As to the nature of this generation our Lord Himself in some measure explains it to us, so far as we are capable of apprehending the great mystery, when He tells us (Joh 5:26), As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.
2. The Son of God became man. It was not the Father, nor the Holy Ghost, that was incarnate, but the Son (Joh 1:14 The Word was made flesh ). He was God manifested in the flesh (1Ti 3:16).
3. Why did it behove Christ, in order to be our Redeemer, to be God and man? He could not be our Redeemer, if He had not been both.
(1) He behoved to be God, (a)
That He might be able to bear the weight of the infinite wrath of God due to the elects sins, and come out from under that heavy load (Act 2:24).
(2) That His temporary sufferings might be of infinite value, and afford full satisfaction to the law and justice of God (Heb 9:14). In these respects none other but one who was God could redeem us.
(2) He behoved to be man,
(a) That He might be capable to suffer death (Heb 2:14).
(b) That the same nature which sinned might suffer (Eze 18:4). The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
(3) That He might be a merciful High Priest (Heb 2:16-17), and that we might have comfort and boldness of access to the throne of grace, having an High Priest of our own nature as our Intercessor there.
III. I come now to prove, that Christ is God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person. Christ is God and man by a personal union of two natures. The two natures in Christ remain distinct: the Godhead was not changed into the manhood, nor the manhood into the Godhead; for the Scripture speaks of these as distinct (Rom 1:3; 1Pe 3:18 Heb 9:14), and of two wills in Christ, a human and a Divine (Luk 22:42). These natures remain still with their distinct properties, that as the Divine nature is not made finite, so neither is the human nature adorned with the Divine attributes. It is not omnipotent (2Co 13:4), nor omnipresent (Joh 11:15); nor omniscient (Mar 13:22, etc.) Yet are they not divided: nor is Christ two persons, but one; even as our soul and body, though distinct things, make but one person. This is clear from the text, which shows that the Son of God was made of a woman; which seeing it cannot be understood of His Divine nature, but of the human, it is plain that both natures make but one person. And elsewhere He is described as one person consisting of two natures (Rom 1:3; Rom 9:5). And it was necessary that the natures should be distinct; because otherwise, either the Divinity would have advanced His humanity above the capacity of suffering, or His humanity depressed His Divinity below the capacity of meriting. And it was necessary that He should be one person; because otherwise His blood had not been the blood of God (Act 20:28), nor of the Son of God (1Jn 1:7), and so not of infinite value. Wherefore Christ took on Him the human nature, but not a human person. Concluding inferences:
1. The redemption of the soul is precious. Saving sinners was a greater work than making the world.
2. See here the wonderful love and grace of God, in sending His own Son to be the Redeemer of sinful men.
3. See the matchless love of the Son of God to poor sinners.
4. All who live and die out of Christ must perish. No other Mediator.
5. How highly is our nature exalted and dignified in the person of the Lord Jesus.
6. It is impious and absurd to ascribe any part of mans redemption to any other. It is dishonourable to Christ, and dangerous for men, to join anything of their own to His righteousness, in point of justification before God. The blessed Redeemer will never endure it. It reflects upon His Mediatory undertaking. If He be the only Redeemer of Gods elect, then certainly there can be no other. If He hath finished that work, then there is no need of our additions. And if that work be not finished by Him, how can it be finished by men? It is simply impossible for any creature to finish that which Christ Himself could not. But men would fain be sharing with Him in this honour, which He will never endure. He is the only Saviour of sinners: and He will never divide the glory of it with us. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The work of the Messiah
1. The text asserts that God sent forth His Son. Who is intended to be designated by the term Son, I need scarcely pause to inform you. It is that Divine Being who is elsewhere called the Word, who was in the beginning with God, who was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom not any thing was made that was made.
2. God sent forth His Son, made of a woman. The term made of a woman intends, as I suppose, to assert that the Son appeared on earth a human being; that He took upon Himself a human, in opposition to an angelic or any other nature. If this be true, then the Messiah possessed a perfect human constitution, endowed with all the powers and faculties belonging to such a constitution, just like any one of us. He possessed an understanding, a taste, a conscience, a will, appetites, passions, senses, just like our own, save only that they were not defiled with the stain of sin. Wherefore He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
3. God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law. What is the meaning of this last phrase–made under the law? The law spoken of here must be either the ceremonial or the moral law. The word law is used twice in the sentence which forms the text. In both cases it must have the same signification. It is said, in the latter clause, Christ came to redeem those who were under the law. The word here cannot mean the ceremonial law, since this exposition would restrict the blessings flowing from the atonement of Christ to the Jews, who were the only people under this law; and would also make the salvation of the gospel nothing more than a deliverance from ceremonial observances. When we say, therefore, that Christ was made under the law, we mean the moral law, that under which the human race was created, which they are bound to obey, and by which they will all be judged in the day of final account. What, then, does the apostle mean, when he declares that Christ was under the moral law? You observe that Christ was made under the law to redeem those that are under the law. It is evident that the expression in these two places has the same signification. We cannot, then, escape the conclusion that Christ was made under the law in the same sense that we are under the law. He placed Himself under the same moral constitution as that under which the race of man was placed; or, in other words, the same as that under which Adam was originally placed in the garden of Eden. When, however, I assert this, it is proper to remark that the Messiah voluntarily placed Himself under this constitution. He was, in His Divine nature, infinitely removed from the moral law proper for human nature. The Creator cannot, from His nature, be subject to the law of the creature. He, of His own incomprehensible benevolence, placed Himself under the law which He had appointed for the creature in order to work out our redemption. After, however, the Son of God had placed Himself under the law of human nature, He became subject to it, in the same manner as that nature; that is, specially as Adam was subject to it, when he commenced his probation. He was exposed to all the consequences of disobedience, and entitled to all the rewards of obedience, just as we suppose our first parent to have been before his fall. This, however, includes several particulars, which may properly be stated somewhat more explicitly. On this part of our subject I would remark, first, He took upon himself a nature liable to sin. Were it otherwise, it would not have been a human nature, and He would neither have been under the law, nor would He have been of the seed of Abraham. Secondly. It follows, that if the Messiah had sinned, the consequences to Himself would have been the same as to any one of us. Nay, more: the plan of redemption, on which the wisdom of Omniscience had been exhausted, would have proved abortive. On this conflict, then, we may well suppose that the destinies of the universe were suspended. By the obedience of the Messiah was it to be determined whether sin or holiness should be henceforth in the ascendant.
II. Let us now survey this transaction from another point of view, and endeavour to form a conception of the life of Christ under the conditions which we have endeavoured thus imperfectly to explain.
1. Every one of us may possibly know from experience how oppressive is the weight of solemn and important responsibility. There are critical moments in the life of almost every man, when the whole colour of his destiny has been determined by a single decision. He who remembers these eras in his history needs not to be reminded of the fear and trembling with which he approached them. In the case of the Messiah, however, not temporal but eternal interests were suspended upon His decisions. It was not merely the result of His actions upon His own happiness or misery, but their result upon the happiness or misery of innumerable millions, that pressed with overwhelming anxiety upon His holy soul. It was not merely the happiness or misery of created beings, be they ever so numerous, or how largely soever susceptible of pleasure or pain; it was the honour of that holy law which, in the presence of the universe, He had undertaken to magnify, which was perilled upon the condition of His sinless obedience. And yet more: these stupendous consequences were not suspended upon a single hour, or day, or year of the Messiahs life, but upon every action, every word, every thought, every motive, throughout his whole probationary existence. Every moral bias, during His continuance under the law, was put forth under the pressure of this infinite responsibility. Again: when men are placed in circumstances of peculiar trial, they are of necessity intimately associated together. The chief actor in a momentous enterprise unites with himself others who sympathize in his motives, comprehend his plans, carry forward his designs, and who would cheerfully sacrifice their lives in behalf of the cause in which all are equally engaged. How much this tends to alleviate anxiety, and soften the pressure of otherwise intolerable care, I surely need not remind you. None of these ameliorating circumstances, however, relieved the anxieties of Jesus of Nazareth. Of all the beings who have dwelt upon our earth, none was ever so emphatically a lone man as the Messiah. (F. Wayland, D. D.)
Nature of the deliverance resulting from the Incarnation
What is it that the Incarnation should deliver us from?
1. It delivers us from false views of the world and of life. It divides all history into two portions for the Christian–that which precedes and that which follows it. It divides the human race into two portions–that which is within the kingdom of the Incarnate Son, and that which is without it. It divides the interests of life, of thought, of work, for a downright, genuine Christian into two portions–that which bears upon and advances Gods work of love in the Incarnation of His Son, and that which does not do so. When a man has once learnt really what it means–this stupendous event, the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, up to which all history leads, down from which all true human interests worthy of the name will ultimately be found to radiate–then life, work, the world, death, the future, all wear another aspect.
2. It delivers us from base and desponding views of this our human nature. Often enough we are weighed down to the very dust by a sense of weakness, of defilement, of distance from the source of sanctity and peace; and yet what must be the worth, the capacities, of these poor human powers, when retouched, when regenerated by God–this nature upon which the Eternal Son has put such high honour that He has robed Himself in it that it might become to us a channel of sanctification and grace.
3. And the Incarnation delivers us from bondage. In every Christian in whom the life of Christ really exists–in whose heart it beats, however intermittently–there is a knowledge that by union with Christ he is free. He knows he is not a slave, but a son. He knows that this filial freedom is a possession of which nothing without him can deprive him, although he may forfeit it himself–a possession of which every prayer, every act of sacrifice, every true conquest of self, enhances the value. (Canon Liddon.)
Redemption and adoption
I. Redemption makes us servants, but it is but servants; adoption makes us, who are thus made servants by redemption, sons.
II. Adoption.
1. He that adopted another must be a man who had no children of his own. We were children of wrath, not Gods children.
2. He must be a man who had had children, or naturally might have had; for a man under years or naturally disabled could not adopt. This was Gods case, for by our creation we were His sons, till we died, and lost all right and means of regaining our privilege but by the way of adoption in Jesus.
3. No man might adopt an elder man than himself. God is from the beginning.
4. No man might adopt a man of better quality than himself, and here we are so far from comparing, that we cannot comprehend Gods greatness and goodness.
5. No man might be adopted into any other degree of kindred, but into the name and right of a son: he could not be an adopted brother, cousin, or nephew, and this is especially our dignity. We have the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. (J. Donne.)
Redemption
is a second buying, a buying back of a thing alienated or sold. A kind of alienation had formerly been, whereby we had made away ourselves, for a sale I cannot call it, it was for such a trifle; our nature alienated in Adam for the forbidden fruit–our persons likewise; daily we ourselves alien for some trifling pleasure or profit, and when we have thus passed ourselves away, by this selling of ourselves under sin, the law seizeth on us, and under it we are locked up as it were in a dungeon (Gal 3:23), tied fast with the cords of our sins (Pro 5:22); the sentence passed on us, and we waiting but for execution. Christ got us rid from this estate. He did it, not by way of entreaty) step in and beg our pardon; that would not serve. Sold we were, and bought we must be; and it cost Him dear to pay the price. He put Himself in the place of the condemned malefactors, and died Himself to set us free. But He leaves us not here as prisoners enlarged. He brings us to the same estate as Himself, and makes us sons of God and joint heirs. (Bishop Andrewes.)
Redemption and adoption
Kennett says: There was no custom more prevalent at Rome than adoption. The adopted person was to hold the place of a son, and to enjoy all its privileges. When a man had a mind to adopt another into his family it formed a public process in law. There was also a private ceremony, which consisted in buying the person to be adopted.
Gods redeeming love
An ancient historian tells us that, at the siege of Babylon, Darius condemned to the cross three thousand captives. Another relates how, when Alexander inflicted long-threatened vengeance on Tyre, he crucified two thousand prisoners, and that crosses stood on her bloody shores thicker than ship masts in her crowded harbour. And when the Roman let fly his eagles against Jerusalem, Titus, measuring out to the Jews the measure they had meted to Jesus, gave them crosses enough, good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running ever. A spectator of the scenes, the dreadful tragic scenes, amid which Judahs sun set in blood for ever, tells that wood was wanting for crosses, and crosses were wanting for bodies. Yet had Babylons, Tyres, Jerusalems, all these crosses been raised to save you, and on each cross of that forest, not a man, but a dying angel hung, had all heaven been crucified, here is greater love, a greater spectacle. God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Dr. Guthrie.)
Jesus paid the debt
I, Alexander. This was what the late Emperor of Russia wrote in answer to the question, Who is to pay all these? One of His Majestys aides-de-camp, who owed a great deal more than he could pay, had drawn up a list of his debts, and having in despair dashed off the above question at the foot of the paper, had fallen asleep in his chair. The Emperor, happening to pass through the room, and seeing the document, generously took up a pen and wrote, I, Alexander, and left the room without disturbing the sleeper. When the latter awoke he found himself all at once freely released from his obligations. Unconverted reader, this is the way God freely releases you. There is no condemnation to those who accept pardon in the name of Jesus Christ, who, by His death on the cross, paid the debt we owed to justice, and now we are released debtors.
Christ redeemed us
A gentleman was once passing through the auction mart of a Southern Slave State, when he noticed the tears of a little girl who was just going to be put up for sale. The other slaves of the same group did not seem to care about it, while each knock of the hammer made her shake. The kind man stopped to inquire why she alone wept. He was told that the others were used to such things, and might be glad of a change from hard, harsh homes, but that she had been brought up with much care by a good owner, and she was terrified to think who might buy her. The stranger asked her price. It was a great sum, but he paid it down. The tears fell fast on the signed parchment which her deliverer brought to prove to her her freedom. She only looked at him with fear. She had been born a slave and knew not what freedom meant. When the gentleman was gone, it began to dawn upon her what her freedom was. With the first breath she said, I will follow him! I will follow him! I will serve him all my days, and when reasoned with against it, she only cried, He redeemed me! He redeemed me! He redeemed me! And so let it be with you. Serve Jesus as sinners bought back with blood, and when men notice the way you serve Him–the joy that is in your looks–the love that is in your tone, the freedom of your service, have one answer to give them: He redeemed me!
The atonement: Scripture doctrine and current theories
Most of the leading topics to be attended to, in a survey of the great doctrine of the atonement, are more or less fully stated or indicated in the text. They are these: First, the connection between the Person and the work of Christ, or between His proper Divinity and His vicarious atonement. Second, the necessity of an atonement or satisfaction, in order to the forgiveness of sin. Third, the reality and the true nature of an atonement or satisfaction as effected by the sufferings and death of Christ. And, fourth, the extent of the atonement. The first of these topics is brought before us by the ascription of the whole scheme of the salvation of fallen men to God, who sent His Son to accomplish this great object, and by the description given of Him who was sent, as being at once Gods own Son and also made of a woman, having thus the Divine and human nature united. The reality of an atonement, and its true nature, and immediate object and effect, are brought out in the statement that Gods Son was made under the law, and was sent to redeem those who were under the law; while the last clause, viz., that we might receive the adoption of sons, bears, though not very formally or explicitly, upon the subject of the extent of the atonement. (Bishop Andrewes, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 4. When the fulness of the time was come] The time which God in his infinite wisdom counted best; in which all his counsels were filled up; and the time which his Spirit, by the prophets, had specified; and the time to which he intended the Mosaic institutions should extend, and beyond which they should be of no avail.
God sent forth his Son] Him who came immediately from God himself, made of a woman, according to the promise, Ge 3:15; produced by the power of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary without any intervention of man; hence he was called the Son of God. See Luke, Lu 1:35, and the note there.
Made under the law] In subjection to it, that in him all its designs might be fulfilled, and by his death the whole might be abolished; the law dying when the Son of God expired upon the cross.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
But when the fulness of the time was come; the time, which answered the time appointed of the earthly father, mentioned Gal 4:2; when that time came in which God had designed to bring his people into the most perfect state of liberty, which in this life they are capable of.
God sent forth his Son, who was existent before, (being brought forth before the mountains or hills were settled, Pro 8:25), but not
sent forth until this fulness of time came. And then
made of a woman, conceived in the womb of the virgin, by the power of the Holy Ghost overshadowing her.
Made under the law; to which, as God, he was not subject, (being himself the lawmaker), but he subjected himself. He was born in a nation, and of a parent, under the law; he was circumcised, and submitted to the ceremonial law; he in all things conformed his life to the rule of the law, and subjected himself to the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Nothing of this is questioned, except the last; which yet appears also to have been necessary by what followeth in the next verse, for how else could he have redeemed those who were under the law; and this agreeth with what we had, Gal 3:13.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. the fulness of the timenamely,”the time appointed by the Father” (Ga4:2). Compare Note, see on Eph1:10; Luk 1:57; Act 2:1;Eze 5:2. “The Church has itsown ages” [BENGEL].God does nothing prematurely, but, foreseeing the end from thebeginning, waits till all is ripe for the execution of His purpose.Had Christ come directly after the fall, the enormity and deadlyfruits of sin would not have been realized fully by man, so as tofeel his desperate state and need of a Saviour. Sin was fullydeveloped. Man’s inability to save himself by obedience to the law,whether that of Moses, or that of conscience, was completelymanifested; all the prophecies of various ages found their commoncenter in this particular time: and Providence, by variousarrangements in the social and political, as well as the moral world,had fully prepared the way for the coming Redeemer. God often permitsphysical evil long before he teaches the remedy. The smallpox had forlong committed its ravages before inoculation, and then vaccination,was discovered. It was essential to the honor of God’s law to permitevil long before He revealed the full remedy. Compare “the settime” (Ps 102:13).
was comeGreek,“came.”
sent forthGreek,“sent forth out of heaven from Himself”[ALFORD and BENGEL].The same verb is used of the Father’s sending forth the Spirit (Ga4:6). So in Ac 7:12.Compare with this verse, Joh 8:42;Isa 48:16.
hisemphatical. “Hisown Son.” Not by adoption, as we are (Ga4:5): nor merely His Son by the anointing of the Spirit which Godsends into the heart (Gal 4:6;Joh 1:18).
made of a woman“made”is used as in 1Co 15:45, “Thefirst man, Adam, was made a living soul,” Greek,“made to be (born) of a woman.” The expressionimplies a special interposition of God in His birth as man, namely,causing Him to be conceived by the Holy Ghost. So ESTIUS.
made under the law“madeto be under the law.” Not merely as GROTIUSand ALFORD explain, “Bornsubject to the law as a Jew.” But “made” by HisFather’s appointment, and His own free will, “subject to thelaw,” to keep it all, ceremonial and moral, perfectly for us, asthe Representative Man, and to suffer and exhaust the full penalty ofour whole race’s violation of it. This constitutes the significanceof His circumcision, His being presented in the temple (Luk 2:21;Luk 2:22; Luk 2:27;compare Mt 5:17), and Hisbaptism by John, when He said (Mt3:15), “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.“
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But when the fulness of time was come,…. The time agreed and fixed upon between God and his Son from all eternity, in the council and covenant of peace, when the Son of God should assume human nature; which time was diligently searched into by the prophets, was revealed unto them, and predicted by them; as more generally that it should be before the civil government ceased from Judah, and before the destruction of the second temple; and more particularly by Daniel in his prophecy of the “seventy weeks”, towards and about the close of which there was a general expectation among the Jews of the Messiah’s coming; and was the fulness of time here referred to, and what is sometimes called the dispensation of the fulness of time, the end of the Mosaic dispensation and Jewish church state, the last days of that state, and the end of the Jewish world, as to their ecclesiastical and civil polity. The Jews themselves own that the time of the Messiah’s coming is fixed, and that at that time he shall come, whether they are worthy or not, for so it is asserted in their Talmud d;
“says R. Jochanan, the son of David does not come, but in an age which is all worthy, or all wicked; in a generation which is all worthy, as it is written, Isa 60:21 in a generation that is all wicked, as it is written, Isa 66:5 and it is written, “for my name’s sake will I do it”; says R. Alexander, R. Joshua ben Levi objects what is written,
Isa 60:22 “in its time”; and it is written, “I will hasten it”; if they are worthy I will hasten it, if they are not worthy it shall be , “in its time”.”
And accordingly a more modern writer of theirs says e,
“our redemption upon all accounts shall be, , “in its time”, whether worthy or, wicked; but if worthy its time will be hastened;”
it must be owned they do not always say so: this phrase, “the fulness of time”, is an Hebraism, and is the same with , in Eze 5:2 which the Septuagint render , “the fulness of days”, and we, “when the days were fulfilled”, when the time was up; and the same sense it has here, and it is also the same with , “the appointed time”, Hab 2:3 and answers to , “the time appointed of the Father”, Ga 4:2.
God sent forth his Son; God not absolutely and essentially, but personally and relatively considered, is here meant, namely, God the Father, as appears from the relation the person sent stands in to him, “his Son”; not by creation, as angels, Adam, and all men are the sons of God; nor by adoption, as saints are; or by office, as magistrates be; or on account of his incarnation or resurrection from the dead, for he was the Son of God before either; but by divine generation, being the only begotten of the Father, of his divine nature and essence, equal to him, and one with him: and who was “sent” by him, not out of disrespect to him, but love to us; nor without his consent or against his will, he readily and heartily agreeing to it; nor does it imply any local motion or change of place, but only designs the assumption of human nature; nor does it suppose any superiority and inferiority, for though Christ, as man, and in his office capacity, as Mediator, is inferior to the Father, yet not as to his divine nature, or as the Son of God; but it suggests, that he existed before he was sent, and that as a person, and as a distinct person from the Father, otherwise he could not with any propriety be said to be sent by him; and also that there was an entire harmony and agreement between them in this matter, the Father agreed to send his Son, and the Son agreed to be sent; and that as to his taking upon him the office of Mediator, and his assumption of human nature in order to obtain eternal redemption: all this was not of himself, but done in concert with his Father, from whom as Mediator he had his mission and commission;
made of a woman; “made”, not created as Adam was; nor begotten by man, as men in common are; nor is he said to be born, though he truly was, but “made”; which word the Holy Ghost chooses, to express the mighty power of God, in his mysterious incarnation, wonderful conception, and birth; though some copies read, “born of a woman”; and so the Arabic and Ethiopic version: “of a woman”; whose seed he was from the beginning said to be; of a woman, without a man; of a woman, a virgin, as was foretold; and not only made and formed in her, but of her, of her flesh and blood, of which he took part; and which denotes the low estate and great humiliation of Christ, and shows that as sin came into the world by the woman, the Saviour from sin came also the same way:
made under the law; under the civil and judicial law as a Jew, to which he was subject, paying tribute to the collectors of it; and which was necessary; that it might appear he sprung from that nation, to whom he was promised; and that he came before the civil government of that people was at an end; and to teach us subjection to the civil magistrate: and as a son of Abraham he was made under the ceremonial law, was circumcised the eighth day, kept the several feasts of tabernacles, passover, c. and which was proper, since he was the principal end of it, in whom it centres, and for whose sake it was made and that he might completely fulfil it, and by so doing put a period to it: and he was made under the moral law, both as a man and the surety of his people, and was subject to all the precepts of it, and bore the penalty of it, death, in their room and stead, and thereby fulfilled it, and delivered them from its curse and condemnation. So the Targumist f, joins the incarnation of the Messiah and his subjection to the law together, as the apostle here does;
“the prophet saith to the house of David, because a child is born unto us, and a son is given to us,
, “and he hath took upon him the law to keep it, and his name shall be called”, &c.”
d T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 98. 1. Vid. Jarchi & Kinachi in Isa. lx. 22. e Kimchi in Psal. cviii. 4. f In Isa. ix. 6.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The fulness of the time ( ). Old word from , to fill. Here the complement of the preceding time as in Eph 1:10. Some examples in the papyri in the sense of complement, to accompany. God sent forth his preexisting Son (Php 2:6) when the time for his purpose had come like the of verse 2.
Born of a woman ( ). As all men are and so true humanity, “coming from a woman.” There is, of course, no direct reference here to the Virgin Birth of Jesus, but his deity had just been affirmed by the words “his Son” ( ), so that both his deity and humanity are here stated as in Ro 1:3. Whatever view one holds about Paul’s knowledge of the Virgin Birth of Christ one must admit that Paul believed in his actual personal preexistence with God (2Cor 8:9; Phil 2:5-11), not a mere existence in idea. The fact of the Virgin Birth agrees perfectly with the language here.
Born under the law ( ). He not only became a man, but a Jew. The purpose () of God thus was plainly to redeem (, as in 3:13) those under the law, and so under the curse. The further purpose () was that we (Jew and Gentile) might receive (, second aorist active subjunctive of ), not get back (Lu 15:27), but get from () God the adoption ( ). Late word common in the inscriptions (Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 239) and occurs in the papyri also and in Diogenes Laertes, though not in LXX. Paul adopts this current term to express his idea (he alone in the N.T.) as to how God takes into his spiritual family both Jews and Gentiles who believe. See also Rom 8:15; Rom 8:23; Rom 9:4; Eph 1:5. The Vulgate uses adoptio filiorum. It is a metaphor like the others above, but a very expressive one.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Fullness of the time [ ] . The moment by which the whole pre – messianic period was completed. Comp. Eph 1:10. It answers to the time appointed of the Father (verse 2). For plhrwma see on Joh 1:16. The meaning of the word is habitually passive – that which is completed, full complement. There are frequent instances of its use with the genitive, as “fullness of the earth, blessing, time, the sea, Christ,” in all which it denotes the plenitude or completeness which characterizes the nouns. 69 Sent forth [] . From himself : from his heavenly glory. This does not mean that God then, for the first time, embodied what had previously been a mere ideal, but that he sent forth a preexisting person. See Phi 2:6. 7 0 Made of a woman [] . Or born. Repeated, and expressing the fact that Christ became a man, as distinguished from his prehistoric form of being.
Under the law. The earthly being of Christ began under the law. He was not only of human birth, but of Jewish birth; subjected to all the ordinances of the law, as circumcision for instance, like any other Jewish boy.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
REDEMPTION TO HEIRSETTING THRU CHRIST V. 4,5
1) “But when the fulness of the time was come,” (hote de elthen to pleroma tou chronou) “But when the fulness of the running, fulfilling time came;” when the chronological order of time events became fulfilled, the prophecied events of his coming, Gen 49:10; Isa 7:14; Isa 9:6; Isa 53:1-12; Isa 61:1-2; Luk 4:16-18; Mal 3:1.
2) “God sent forth his Son,” (eksapisteilen ho theon ton huion autou) “The God sent forth (by his own commission) his Son;” Joh 3:17; Joh 3:34; Joh 20:9; Joh 3:26; 1Jn 4:9-10. From His throne God sent His Son Jesus as His representative to show His love and care for mankind.
3) “Made of a woman,” (genomenon ek gunaikos) “becoming of a Woman,” not of a man (Gk. aner), in prophetic fulfillment by which He assumed human nature, Gen 3:15; Isa 7:14; Heb 2:14, by the Will of God through the Virgin birth, Joh 1:14.
4) “Made under the law,” (genomenon hupo nomon) “Becoming under law,” not only under the Jewish law, but also under Roman Law, and under the law of sin and death that reigned in the world and in the flesh, Heb 9:27; Ecc 3:20; Ecc 9:5; Luk 2:21-27; Mat 3:13-15; Mat 3:17.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
4. When the fullness of the time was come. He proceeds with the comparison which he had adduced, and applies to his purpose the expression which has already occurred, “the time appointed by the Father,” — but still shewing that the time which had been ordained by the providence of God was proper and seasonable. That season is the most fit, and that mode of acting is the most proper, which the providence of God directs. At what time it was expedient that the Son of God should be revealed to the world, it belonged to God alone to judge and determine. This consideration ought to restrain all curiosity. Let no man presume to be dissatisfied with the secret purpose of God, and raise a dispute why Christ did not appear sooner. If the reader desires more full information on this subject, he may consult what I have written on the conclusion of the Epistle to the Romans.
God sent forth his Son. These few words contain much instruction. The Son, who was sent, must have existed before he was sent; and this proves his eternal Godhead. Christ therefore is the Son of God, sent from heaven. Yet this same person was made of a woman, because he assumed our nature, which shews that he has two natures. Some copies read natum instead of filium; but the latter reading is more generally followed, and, in my opinion, is preferable. But the language was also expressly intended to distinguish Christ from other men, as having been formed of the substance of his mother, and not by ordinary generation. In any other sense, it would have been trifling, and foreign to the subject. The word woman is here put generally for the female sex.
Subjected under the law. The literal rendering is, Made under the law; but in my version I have preferred another word, which expresses more plainly the fact that he was placed in subjection to the law. Christ the Son of God, who might have claimed to be exempt from every kind of subjection, became subject to the law. Why? He did so in our room, that he might obtain freedom for us. A man who was free, by constituting himself a surety, redeems a slave: by putting on himself the chains, he takes them off from the other. So Christ chose to become liable to keep the law, that exemption from it might be obtained for us; otherwise it would have been to no purpose that he should come under the yoke of the law, for it certainly was not on his own account that he did so.
To redeem them that were under the law (66) We must here observe, the exemption from the law which Christ has procured for us does not imply that we no longer owe any obedience to the doctrine of the law, and may do whatever we please; for the law is the everlasting rule of a good and holy life. But Paul speaks of the law with all its appendages. From subjection to that law we are redeemed, because it is no longer what it once was. “The vail being rent,” (Mat 27:51,) freedom is openly proclaimed, and this is what he immediately adds.
(66) “So far was he from subjecting to the yoke of the law those to whom the law had not been given, that he came in order to emancipate even the Jews themselves.” — Wetstein.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(4) The fulness of the time.That which was predetermined in the counsels of God as the right and proper time when the whole course of previous preparation both for Jew and Gentile was complete. Here we have a very clear expression of the conception of religion as progressive, divided into periods, and finding its culmination in Christianity. The phrase fulness of the time corresponds to the time appointed of the father in Gal. 4:2.
Sent forthi.e., from Himself; from that station which is described in Joh. 1:1 : The Word was with God. The pre-existence of the Son is distinctly recognised by St. Paul.
Made of a woman.Perhaps better translated, born of a woman. There is no allusion here to the miraculous conception. The phrase born of a woman was of common use. Comp. Mat. 11:11 : Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist. So here the expression is intended to bring out, not the divinity, but the true humanity of Christ.
Made under the law.Born under lawi.e., born into a state of things where the whole world was subject to lawborn under the legal dispensation, though Himself destined to put an end to that dispensation.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. Fulness time Parallel to the time appointed, Gal 4:2, at which the minor became major in age. The fulness of the time is, therefore, the completion of the maturing period, in which the nations are ready for the advent of Christ and Christianity. The historic process is going on until “ the wheels of time” have completed their revolution, and the clock of time points to the second and strikes the hour. God is prompt to the instant.
Sent forth his Son For the purpose of emancipating the heir from his tutors and governors. Roman law had its processes for this purpose; the divine law has a method of its own. The divine Father sends an elder brother to assume subjection and emancipate us, the child, with himself.
Made of a woman That he might be our brother.
Under the law Rather, under law, the article not being in the Greek. Made of a woman is parallel to child, Gal 4:1; made under law is parallel to under tutors and governors, Gal 4:2.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But when the fullness of the time came God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.’
But the God Who made the covenant, when the time allotted had fully run its course, sent forth His Own Son. He became truly human (born of a woman), and restricted Himself under the Law, satisfying its requirements to the full. And His purpose in coming was to deliver men and women from under the Law which imprisoned them and kept them under restraint, so that they might be adopted as full grown sons, free from all restraints.
Only those who have felt the burden and oppression of a Law they strive to fulfil and cannot, who have felt themselves overwhelmed by forces that they felt were dragging them down and restricting them, who have seen themselves under the inexorable control of fate, or have felt themselves controlled by heavenly influences such as the zodiac, can fully appreciate the freedom that was now on offer. All restrictions would be removed and they would be responsible only to God and influenced only by God. They could throw off all restraints except the direct restraint of the Father. The burden of the ages could fall from their shoulders.
‘The fullness of the time came.’ This was no accident of chance but chosen by God from the beginning. The promise that was made to Abraham was fulfilled in the time appointed. Thus is expressed the total sovereignty of God over all things. It was neither before nor after God’s allotted time.
‘God sent forth His Son.’ Notice the implication that He was there to be sent. He was pre-existent with the Father ‘in the beginning’ (Joh 1:1). And God sent Him forth to be, and to live as, a human being in this world under restraint. What a price was this. He laid aside His Godhead and became a servant, He humbled Himself by becoming man, and it was for us (Php 2:6-8). For God ‘spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all’ that He might ‘freely give us all things’ (Rom 8:32).
‘Born of a woman.’ His humanity was genuine. He endured genuine human birth. There may even be a hint here of the virgin birth (he could have said ‘begotten by man’ or ‘born of human parents’).
‘Born under the Law.’ From birth He was subject to all the stipulations of the Law, both ceremonial and moral, and to all the other restrictions that affect mankind. Even the stricter Pharisees could find nothing to point the finger at in His life and behaviour except in points where He soon revealed them to be wrong. And He perfectly fulfilled all that the Law required, for only so could He be the Redeemer. He ‘knew no sin’ (2Co 5:21). He ‘did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth’ (1Pe 2:22). He was ‘tempted in all points like we are and yet without sin’ (Heb 4:15).
‘That He might redeem those who were under the Law.’ And His purpose in coming was in order to ‘redeem’. His deliverance is regularly seen in terms of redemption, of ransom (Mar 10:45), of the payment of a price (1Pe 1:18), but includes also the thought of redemption by power (Tit 2:14). Here the thought is of being released from the bondage of the Law and Gal 3:13 demonstrates that substitution is involved, the taking by One of what should be borne by another. However it must not be seen just in terms of a straight swap. The substitute also summed up in Himself the ones substituted. The Creator was dying for His creation.
Redemption is an Old Testament concept. God redeemingly delivers by the expenditure of His power, depicted in terms of being at great expense to Himself or with great power (Gen 48:16 with Gen 32:24-30; Exo 6:6; Deu 7:8; Deu 9:26; Deu 15:15 ; 2Sa 7:23; Neh 1:10; etc.) Something can also be redeemed by being replaced by a substitute (Exo 13:13-15; Exo 34:20) or by the payment of a price (Exo 21:8; Lev 25:25-26; Lev 25:29-31; Lev 25:48-49; Lev 27:13-33; Num 3:46-49; Num 18:15-16; Rth 4:4-7; Neh 5:8), and some sacrifices also contain this idea.
Often when God ‘redeems’, a regular Old Testament concept, no price is mentioned, but there is always some kind of price to be paid because God must exert Himself on their behalf. In one case the idea of price is specifically excluded (Isa 52:3), although the idea then is rather of being without price to the recipients. It does, however, confirm the general principle that it usually involves a price. So here the main thought is of His active intervention in power, seen against the above background of a price for redemption. It is God active in getting back what is ‘lost’ to Him by the exercise of power. But the term itself assumes a cost.
So the overall idea of redemption is of the deliverance of something or someone who is lost to the redeemer, or is enslaved, or is doomed to die, either by the exercise of power, by God giving of Himself, or by the payment of a price, or by providing a substitute.
In the New Testament era the redemption of slaves by the payment of a price was common and this idea is regularly used in the New Testament while also having the above background in mind. We are redeemed, not with silver and gold, with something more valuable, by the precious blood of Christ (1Pe 1:18-19; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14; Heb 9:12; Heb 9:15). We have been bought with a price (1Co 6:20; 1Co 7:23. 2Pe 2:1). As here in Galatians the death of Christ was necessary for our redemption (compare Mar 10:45 – the ‘ransom for many’). But that that redemption includes the exercise of the power of God is clear from Tit 2:14, and the close connection of the reception of the Holy Spirit with redemption is patent (Gal 3:13-14), while 1Pe 1:18 is also found in the midst of such ideas. There is no thought of redemption without genuine deliverance.
‘That we might receive the adoption as sons.’ The heirs are now to become fully grown sons. The purpose in His coming was to deliver us from the restrictions of religion and the world as we become adopted by God as His full grown sons, and thus are no longer under the Law or any other restraint, other than that of the Father Himself in Christ. But we become responsible sons. And that is why we will do what we should. We do it now because of what we are. We would disdain doing anything else.
It is elsewhere made clear that this is not an invitation to licence. It does not free us from our obligations to the world and to society. For as His grown up sons we are responsible to the Father of all things. But as Paul says, it is so that Christ might live out His life in us. So what it does mean is that from now on our response to these things is made as a response to the Father. We fulfil them gladly because we do it for Him. And we treasure the Law as something which shows us how we can please Him. In the words of the Psalmist, ‘O how I love your Law (Instruction)’ (Psa 119:97).
‘Adoption as sons.’ This indicates the action whereby a child is established as a grown up son able to handle his own affairs. He comes of age.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Gal 4:4-5. God sent forth his son, These verses should be read and understood thus: God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, (made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law) that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Gal 4:4 . ] corresponds to the . . (Gal 4:2 ). The time appointed by God, which was to elapse until the appearance of Christ ( ) consequently the pre-Messianic period is conceived as a measure which was not yet full, so long as this period had not wholly elapsed (comp. Gen 29:21 ; Mar 1:15 ; Luk 21:24 ; Joh 7:8 ; Joseph. Antt . vi. 4. 1, et al .). Hence is: that moment of time, through which the measure of time just mentioned became full . Comp. on Eph 1:10 , and Fritzsche ad Rom . II. p. 473.
On what historical conditions Paul conceived that counsel as to the fulness of time to depend (Theophylact: . Baur: “when mankind was ripe for it;” de Wette: “conditioned by the need of certain preparations, or by the necessity of the religious development of mankind which had reached a certain point”), cannot, after his view of the destination of the law which intervened between the promise and its fulfilment (Gal 3:19 ; Gal 3:24 ; Rom 5:20 ), remain doubtful Theophylact takes in substance the right view. The need had reached its height. Comp. Chrysostom, ad Eph . i. 10: , . Without due ground Baur perceives here (see his neut. Theol . p. 173) the idea that Christianity proceeded from a principle inherent in humanity , namely, from the advance of the mind to the freedom of self-consciousness.
] He sent forth from Himself . Gal 4:6 ; Act 7:12 ; Act 11:22 ; Act 17:14 , et al.; Dem. 251. 5; Polyb. iii. 11. 1, iv. 26. 2, iv. 30. 1, and frequently. The expression presupposes the idea of the personal pre-existence of Christ (see Rbiger, Christol. Paul . p. 16; Lechler, apost. Zeit . p. 50 Weiss, bibl. Theol . p. 316 ff.), and therewith at the same time His personal divine nature (Rom 8:3 ; Rom 8:32 ; Phi 2:6 ; 2Co 8:9 ); so that in reality the apostle’s idea coincides with the Johannean . and , but is not to be reduced to the notion of “the ideal first man” (Hilgenfeld), whose human birth, on account of His pre-existence, is conceived by Paul as not without a certain Docetism. [180] This remark also applies against the view of Beyschlag referring it to the pre-existent prototype of man ( Christol. d. N.T. p. 220 ff.), in connection with which the Messianic name of Son is supposed to be carried back from the historical to the pre-historical sphere. This is at variance with the express designation as (Col 1:15 ), which likewise forbids us to say, with Hofmann: “By the very fact , that God has sent Him forth from Himself into the world, He is the Son of God .” According to Col 1:15 , He is, even before the creation, in the relation of Son to the Father, as begotten by Him, a relation, therefore, which could not be dependent on the subsequent sending forth, or given for the first time along with the latter.
] so that He was born of a woman; the relation of the aorist participle is the same as in Phi 2:7 f. The reading attested only by min., and otherwise feebly, although recommended by Erasmus, adopted by Matthias, and defended by Rinck is a correct interpretation (as to the meaning, but not as to the tense; see Phot. Qu. Amphil . 90), which also occurs at Rom 1:3 , in Codd. mentioned by Augustine. Who this was, every reader knew; we must not, however, say with Schott, following many of the older expositors, “de virgine sponsa dicitur” (comp. Augustine, Serm . 16 de temp. ; Jerome, and others); but comp. Job 14:1 ; Mat 11:11 . Nor is anything peculiar to be found in (“ ex semine matris non viri et mulieris coitu,” Calvin; comp. Cornelius a Lapide, Estius, Calovius, and others; Theophylact, following Basil, Jerome, and others: ); on the contrary, is quite the usual preposition to express the being born (Joh 3:6 ; Mat 1:16 ; 1Pe 1:22 , et al.; 3 Esr. Gal 4:16 ; 4Ma 14:14 ; frequently used also in classical authors with ). This very fact, that Christ, although the Son of God, whom God had sent forth from Himself, entered into this life as man ( Rom 5:15 ; 1Co 15:21 ; Act 17:31 ) and just as an ordinary man enters into temporal life as one born of woman , Paul wishes to bring into prominence as the mode of carrying out the divine counsel. Comp. Rom 8:3 ; Phi 2:7 . The supernatural generation which preceded the natural birth was not here in question; its mention would even have been at variance with the connection which points to Christ’s humiliation: it is not, however, anywhere else expressly mentioned by the apostle, or certainly indicated as a consequence involved in his system (Weiss). Comp. on Rom 1:3 . Nor is it to be inferred from , in connection with the designation of Him who was sent forth as the Son (Hofmann, comp. also his Schriftbew . II. 1, p. 84); because, while it is assumed that as the Son of God He was already, before His incarnation, with God ( ), the mode of His incarnation how He was born (Rom 1:3 ; comp. Rom 9:5 ; 2Ti 2:8 ; Act 2:30 ) is not defined.
] Luther: “made under the law;” and so most expositors: legi subjectum . But it is arbitrary to take . here in another sense than before; [181] and the vivid emphasis of the twice-used . is thus lost. Hence Michaelis, Koppe, Matthies, Schott, de Wette, Lechler, rightly understand . as natum . Thus also, in fact, “the beginning of an ” (Hofmann) is expressed, and expressed indeed more definitely . Paul desires to represent the birth of the Son of God not merely as an ordinary human birth, but also as an ordinary Jewish birth (comp. Heb 2:14-17 ); and he therefore says: “ born of a woman, born under the law ,” so that He was subjected to circumcision and to all other ordinances of the law, like any other Jewish child. But God caused His Son to be born as an ordinary man and as an ordinary Israelite, because otherwise He could not have undergone death either at all, or as One cursed by the law (Gal 3:13 ), which did not apply to those who were not Jews (Rom 1:12 ) and could not have rendered the curse of the law of none effect as regards those who were its subjects. Comp. Rom 8:3 f.; Heb 3:14 f. For this reason , and not merely on account of the contrast to (Schott), Paul has added . ., . ., as a characteristic description of the humiliation into which God allowed His Son to enter. See the sequel.
With respect, moreover, to the perfect obedience of Christ to the, law , it was a preliminary condition necessary for the redeeming power of His death (because otherwise the curse of the law would have affected Him even on his own account ); but it is not that which is imputed for righteousness: on the contrary, this is purely faith in the of His death . See on Gal 3:13 ; Rom 4:5 ; Rom 4:24 ; Rom 5:6 ff., et al . The doctrine of the Formula Concordiae as to the imputation of the obedientia Christi activa (p. 685) is not borne out by the exegetical proof, of which our passage is alleged to form part; but the atoning death of Christ is the culminating point of His obedience towards God (Rom 5:19 ; Phi 2:8 ; 2Co 5:21 ), without the perfection of which He could not have accomplished the atonement; and the form which this obedience assumed in Him, in so far as He was subject to the law , must have been that of legal obedience (comp. Hofmann, Schriftbew . II. 1, p. 130).
[180] See, on the contrary, Rom 1:3 ; indeed, Paul throughout is the very opposite of Docetism.
[181] Viewed by itself, with the accusative , in the sense to be subject to , is, in a linguistic point of view, quite as correct ( 1Ma 10:38 ; Thuc. i. 110. 1; Lucian. Abdic . 23) as with the dative (Herod. vii. 11; Xen. Anab . vii. 2. 3, vii. 7. 32; Thuc. vii. 64. 2).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 2070
THE TIME AND MANNER OF CHRISTS INCARNATION
Gal 4:4-5. When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem, them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
THE advantages which we as Christians enjoy above the Jews are exceeding great. The Jewish Church was like an heir to a large estate during the years of his minority: he has indeed bright prospects before him; but at present he receives no more than what his guardians judge necessary for his use, and suited to his condition. He, in fact, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all: for he is altogether under the controul of tutors and governors, till the time appointed by his father, whose possessions he is to inherit. We, on the contrary, are like the same person when arrived at full age, having perfect liberty from servile restraints, and entering into the complete enjoyment of the inheritance, to which by our Fathers will we are entitled. In this view St. Paul himself has illustrated the subject in the chapter before us. Having in the preceding verses described the state of the Jewish Church, he declares, in the words of our text, the superior privileges which, through the incarnation of the Son of God, we enjoy.
To bring the whole subject under your consideration, it will be proper to notice the time, the manner, and the end of our Saviours incarnation.
I.
The time
It may seem strange that, when God had promised to send his Son into the world, he should delay the execution of that promise four thousand years. But it does not become us to sit in judgment upon Gods proceedings; it is sufficient for us to know that he cannot err. But, in relation to the point before us, we may observe, that the time when our Lord came into the world, was,
1.
The time fixed in the Divine counsels
[When the promise of a Saviour was given to our first parents, nothing was specified respecting the time. Hence Eve (as it should seem) imagined that her first-born child was he: for she named him Cain (which signifies getting); intimating, that she had gotten a man from the Lord, or rather, that she had gotten the man, the Lord [Note: Gen 3:1.]. Nothing seems to have been declared concerning the time of the Messiahs arrival, till it was revealed to Jacob, that the sceptre should not depart from Judah, till Shiloh should came [Note: Gen 49:10.]: and it is remarkable, that a separate jurisdiction did depart from all the other tribes several hundred years before Christs advent; but that Judah retained it, in a measure, even during the captivity in Babylon; and never completely lost it, till Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and the whole Jewish polity was dissolved.
After the restoration of the Jews from Babylon, it was revealed to the Prophet Haggai, that the Messiah should come while that temple was standing; and by his presence in it should add greater glory to it, than the former temple, with all its magnificence and peculiar appendages, possessed [Note: Hag 2:7; Hag 2:9.].
But that which marked the period with most precision, was the prophecy of Daniel, which declared, that in seventy weeks (of years), or four hundred and ninety years, from the command given by Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem, the Messiah should be cut off [Note: Dan 9:24-25.]. This determined the time with such accuracy, that the expectation of the Messiahs advent was very general among the Jews, when our Lord made his appearance upon earth.
Thus the fulness of the time was come, because it was the time ordained by God in his eternal counsels, and made known to the world by his holy prophets.]
2.
The fittest time
[If our Lord had come into the world at an earlier period, several valuable purposes would either not have been answered, or not in so eminent a degree. By the delay, there was abundant proof given, how little could be done by reason, with all its improvements; or by the law, with all its sanctions; or by the most signal judgments and mercies.
Reason had attained its summit. The learning of Greece and Rome had left nothing to be added for the perfecting of the human intellect. Yet what did all their boasted philosophy effect? Were the habits and dispositions of men meliorated? Was the dominion of sin broken, or virtue made more generally prevalent throughout the world? Read the account which St. Paul gives of the heathen world; and judge [Note: Rom 1:22-32.].
God has been pleased to republish his law, in a way calculated to awe his people, and secure their obedience to it. He had enforced it with the most solemn sanctions; and had himself written it on tables of stone, in order that it might not any more be mutilated and forgotten, as it had been when left to the uncertainty of oral tradition. And did this succeed? No. The Jew had nothing to boast of above the Gentiles. St. Paul draws their character also, and shews that they, with all their advantages, were as far from God and righteousness as the heathen themselves [Note: Rom 2:17-29.].
The interposition of the Deity had also been displayed in a visible series of mercies and judgments, correspondent to the moral conduct of his people. Not only had thousands and tens of thousands been struck dead at a time for some great offence, but even the whole nation were sent into a miserable captivity for seventy years. On the other hand, their restoration from captivity had been so miraculous, as evidently to bear the stamp of Omnipotence upon it. These things did lead the Jews to renounce idolatry: but how far they prevailed to introduce general habits of piety and virtue, may be seen in the awful unanimity which obtained among them in rejecting and crucifying the Son of God.
No fitter time therefore could have been chosen for the sending of this last remedy, than when all other remedies had been fully tried, and their inefficacy had incontrovertibly appeared.]
The next thing to be noticed respecting the incarnation of Christ, is,
II.
The manner
Though Christ was God equal with the Father, yet in his mediatorial capacity he acted as the Fathers Messenger or Servant. The Father sent his Son,
1.
Made of a woman
[This expression would have been superfluous if applied to any mere man; but, as applied to the Lord Jesus, it is peculiarly important. Our adorable Saviour was not born like other men; but was formed in the womb of a pure virgin by the operation of the Holy Ghost: and this was necessary on many accounts.
If Christ had been born in the ordinary way of generation, he would have been comprehended in Adams natural posterity, and would therefore have been involved in the same curse as all others are on account of the first transgression: for in Adam all died; and through his disobedience many were made sinners, even all who were represented by him as their covenant-head. Moreover, he would have been corrupt, as all others are; for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? But, not deriving his existence from man, he could not be ranked among the sons of Adam; and, being formed by the immediate agency of the Holy Ghost, he was perfectly immaculate.
This miraculous mode of conception and birth was farther necessary, in order to fulfil the prophecies: for in the very first promise that announced Gods gracious intentions to the world, it was said, that the Seed of the woman (not of the man, but of the woman) should bruise the serpents head [Note: Gen 3:15.]. It had afterwards been more plainly declared, that a virgin should conceive, and bear a Son, whose name should be called Emmanuel, God with us [Note: Isa 7:14. Mat 1:23.].
Hence the expression in the text marks at once, that Christ was fitted for his mediatorial office; and that he is the very person fore-ordained from the foundation of the world to sustain and execute it.]
2.
Made under the law
[Not being represented by Adam, and not inheriting his defilement, Christ was not under the curse of the law; but, being born of a Jewish parent, he was under the authority of the law, as well the ceremonial as the moral. The law was to him, as it was to Adam in Paradise, a covenant of life and death. The covenant made with Adam was for himself and all his natural posterity: that which was made with Christ, was for himself and all his spiritual seed. Now, Adam, by violating the covenant, had entailed a curse on all his descendants. To remedy this evil, two things were to be done: the curse due to us was to be endured; and a new claim to heaven was to be established for us. For these two purposes Christ was fitted, when he was sent into the world: He was sent made of a woman only, that, not being himself obnoxious to the curse of the law, he might bear the curse for us; and that, fulfilling all the demands of the law, he might bring in an everlasting righteousness, which should be imputed to us, and placed to our account [Note: Dan 9:24. Rom 3:21-22.].
If we attend to the various circumstances of his life and death, we shall find that he actually fulfilled the law in every particular. He fulfilled the ceremonial law both actively and passively: actively, by submitting to circumcision, by attending the stated feasts, and by complying with the Mosaic ritual in all its parts: he fulfilled it also passively, by accomplishing every thing which was there prefigured, and by exhibiting in himself the substance of every thing which the Mosaic ritual had shadowed forth [Note: Col 2:17.]. He fulfilled also the moral law, obeying it in its utmost extent, insomuch that not a spot or blemish could be found in him. In short, as it became him to fulfil all righteousness, so he did fulfil it; and, being made under the law, he resigned not his breath till he could say in reference to all that the law required of him, It is finished [Note: Joh 19:30.].]
The incarnation of our blessed Lord remains yet further to be considered, as it respects,
III.
The end
We may say in general terms that he was sent,
1.
To redeem us from guilt and misery
[The Jews alone were under the ceremonial law, and therefore they alone can be said to have been delivered from the yoke which that law imposed upon them. But the whole human race are under the moral law: they are under it as a covenant, which, having been once violated, denounces only its curses against them, without affording them the smallest hope of mercy [Note: Rom 3:19. Gal 3:10.]. Now the Lord Jesus Christ came to redeem us from the law; and to establish a new covenant for us, by embracing which we are released from the covenant of works, and brought into a perfectly new state. This new covenant offers us life upon totally different terms from those which were proposed under the old covenant: the old covenant said, Do this and thou shalt live: the new covenant says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved [Note: Rom 10:5-9. with Act 16:31.]. The very instant we lay hold on the new covenant, the old covenant is cancelled with respect to us: It cannot condemn us, because its penalties have been inflicted on our Surety: It cannot command us, because we are not under its jurisdiction. As a rule of duty, it retains its authority; but, as a covenant, it is altogether abrogated and annulled [Note: Gal 2:19. Rom 7:1-4.]. Thus through the incarnation and death of Christ we are redeemed from the condemnation we have merited by our past transgression of the law, and from all obligation to stand or fall by the terms which that law prescribes.]
2.
To exalt us to happiness and glory
[Our blessed Lord had yet higher ends in view when he became incarnate. He came to restore us to all the blessedness from which we had fallen. By creation we were children of God: but, when sin entered, that relation ceased; and we became children of the devil. This being our state, Christ came, that through him we might again return to the family of God. Though we are by nature strangers and aliens, we may receive through him the adoption of sons, and be regarded by God as dear children. We are expressly assured that this privilege is given to all without exception who believe in Christ [Note: Joh 1:12.]. What is implied in this privilege, the Apostle states in the two verses following the text. He specifies both the present and future benefits of this adoption. In this world, instead of having any occasion to dread the wrath of God, we may look up with filial confidence to him, crying, Abba, Father; and may expect from him all that care, and love, and mercy which are suited to the relation of a father. In the eternal world, we shall be raised to such dignity and glory as no words can express, no imagination can conceive. Being sons, we are heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: and whatever God or Christ possess either of happiness or glory, shall be possessed by us, according to the degree of our meetness for it, and the measure of our capacity to enjoy it.
This honour have all the saints; and that they might enjoy it in its fullest extent, was the design of God in sending his dear Son into the world.]
Infer
1.
The folly of adhering to the law
[Men, in seeking salvation by the works of the law, have no idea what folly they are guilty of. What should we think of a man, who, when offered an estate which had been purchased for him at an immense price, should decline accepting it as a gift, and should prefer the making a stipulation to earn it, and that too by labours which a thousand men were not able to perform? Yet that were wisdom when compared with a rejection of the Gospel, and a seeking of salvation by the works of the law; because it is impossible for fallen man to be saved by the covenant of works: and, if Christ had not redeemed us from that covenant, we must all have perished together. Will any of you then be so mad as to adhere to that covenant, now that God has sent his own Son to redeem you from it? You think indeed by this to shew your zeal for good works; but it is a zeal which is not according to knowledge [Note: Rom 10:2-3.]; and a zeal which will only leave you, as it left the self-righteous Jews, destitute of any part in the salvation of Christ [Note: Rom 9:30-32.]. We would not discourage your zeal for good works: we only wish to give it a right direction. Obey the law; but obey it with proper views. Renounce your dependence upon it as a covenant of works, and seek salvation by faith in Christ. Then shall you receive that spirit of adoption, which will make the service of God to be perfect freedom, and afford you ample scope for your most active exertions.]
2.
The blessedness of receiving the Gospel
[What an astonishing transition does that soul experience, which is delivered from the terrors of Mount Sinai, and brought into the liberty of the children of God! From being harassed with the dread of Gods wrath, and impelled by servile fears to irksome, unsatisfying, ineffectual labours, how delightful to behold the face of a reconciled God and Father, to feel a holy boldness and confidence before him, and to anticipate the joys of heaven! This is not a picture which is drawn by a warm imagination: it is a reality; it is the experience of thousands; it is in a greater or less degree known to all who believe in Christ. Seek then, my brethren, this happiness. You can easily conceive the difference between the labours of a slave under the lash of the whip, and the services which an affectionate child renders to an indulgent parent: you can see that even at present their states are exceeding different. Such is the difference between those who are under the law, and those who embrace the Gospel. But what will be the difference hereafter? Now, believers are the sons of God: but it doth not yet appear what they shall be: but we know that, when they shall see Christ in glory, they shall be like him, for they shall see him as he is [Note: 1Jn 3:2.]. Let all of us then believe in Christ, that we may see the good of his chosen, and rejoice in the gladness of his nation, and give thanks with his inheritance [Note: Psa 106:5.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
(4) But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, (5) To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (6) And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
It is among the precious testimonies of divine teaching, that there is a set time to favor Zion. Psa 102:13 . And every child of God would do well, through grace, if he had the consciousness of it, always: in remembrance. In the ancient settlements of eternity, the coming of Christ, with the time when, the manner how, and every minute event connected with the vast administration, was arranged, with such infinite wisdom, as left no one circumstance to be added to, or taken from. The whole formed an everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things and sure. And how sweet is the assurance also, that to the whole Church, and every individual of Christ’s mystical body, everything is equally settled, which relates to the present time-state of the Lord’s people, from the first call of grace, until grace is finished in glory. It is here said, that when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son. And when the fullness of time is come, for the recovery of each child of God from the Adam-nature of the fall, God sends forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, whereby they are led to discover their high relationship in Christ, and to cry Abba Father!
There is an uncommon degree of beauty in the expression the fullness of time. No doubt a depth of wisdom in the appointment, wherefore at that period rather than any other. But, as in the meridian of the sun’s fullness in the heavens, the glorious luminary of the day, throws his light, and warmth, with equal strength, to the Eastern and Western hemisphere: so Christ the Sun of righteousness, in the fullness of time, sheds all the blessed influences of his rising to his Church, in every direction, to comprehend the whole of his people, as well before as after his manifestation among men. And the merits and efficacy of his redemption, reacheth from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. His blood, as from the high altar of his own divine nature descending, washeth away the sins of all his people. Reader! who shall calculate the infinite greatness of the work? Who shall form conceptions of the wisdom displayed in the arrangement of what is called the fullness of time?
But while I beg the Reader duly to ponder these things, I request him at the same time not to overlook the cause assigned, for which God is said to have sent forth the Spirit of his Son into the hearts of his people. Because ye are sons. Not to make them sons: but because they are so: being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Not to give them a relationship by which they might become children, for this they had before. But being children, they might now have the grace to know it, and to act accordingly. Eph 1:4-5 ; Rom 8:29-30 . Reader! do not forget to mark this distinction in suited characters!
Men, untaught of the Holy Ghost, who know nothing of God’s having chosen the Church in Christ; neither of Christ having married that Church, from the beginning; are easily led to invert the order of Scripture, and put that down as a cause, which is wholly an effect. Hence also, persons of this description are easily led to conclude, that the children of God were once children of the devil, and, as the phrase is, were heirs of hell, before they were called, by grace. But all this is, because they know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God. Blessed be God things are totally the reverse. God’s children were always his children, and never heirs of hell, or children of the devil: being chosen in Christ, and given to Christ, before the foundation of the world. 2Ti 1:9 ; Joh 17:23Joh 17:23 . But in the present time-state of their being, born in the Adam-nature of a fallen race, they are all found when Christ comes to gather them, in the service of the devil, wearing his livery, doing his drudgery, and delighted in his work. All this totally differs from all relationship. For notwithstanding these things, when God, sends forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts; and that revelation teacheth them they are sons of God; instantly they run out of Satan’s kingdom; and cry unto God, Abba Father.
And moreover, it is this sonship, and this everlasting relationship with Christ, for which all the blessings bestowed upon them during the whole of their time-state upon earth are given. Their redemption by Christ is not to make them sons, but they are redeemed because they are sons. Their regeneration by the Holy Ghost is not to make them children; but because they are children. This blessed scripture saith, and saith it with an emphasis not to be mistaken; because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father. And the consequence of all this is, their covenant they had made with death is disannulled; and their agreement with hell cannot stand. They are no more servants; but discovered to be sons: they are no longer willing drudges to hell; but are found to be children of God, and as such, heirs of God through Christ. Isa 28:18 . Reader! if the Lord the Holy Ghost be your teacher, you will see the preciousness of these things, and prize them accordingly. It may be you have heard the common phrase, of, children of the devil, and heirs of hell, when men have been speaking of God’s children, and have been persuading in their way such to flee from the wrath to come. And so have I too, until I have trembled both at their ignorance and presumption. But had the Lord the Spirit been their Teacher, before they stood up in his service, they would have learnt this distinction, God’s children, however rebellious children, were always, his children, and never for a moment heirs of hell. And those that are not God’s children, but indeed heirs of hell, such they might have learnt from Christ himself, can never receive the truth, because they are so. For speaking of such, and to such, Jesus said, Why do ye not understand my speech? even, because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He that is of God heareth God’s words. Ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Joh 8:43-47 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
Ver. 4. But when the fulness of the time ] This answers to that time appointed of the Father, Gal 4:2 . Plato said that God doth always , he doth all things in number, weight, and measure; he never comes too soon, neither stays he too long.
God sent forth his Son ] Out of his own bosom. May not we say as they did, Joh 11:36 , Lo! how he loved us. This was a hyperbole of love. Should we not say again, as they did, Jdg 8:22 ; “Rule thou over us, &c., for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian.”
Made of a woman ] Of the sanctified substance of the holy Virgin. Note this against Marcionites and Anabaptists.
Made under the law ] Circumcised the eighth day, and so made a debtor to do the whole law; which he perfectly fulfilled, and yet (for us) suffered the curse.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4 .] . (‘that whereby the time was filled up:’ see note on Eph 1:23 , Fritzsche’s note on Rom 11:12 , and Stier’s, Eph 1 . p. 199 ff. for a discussion of the meanings of ) answers to the . , Gal 4:2 ; see reff. The Apostle uses this term with regard not only to the absolute will of God, but to the preparations which were made for the Redeemer on this earth: partly as Thl., , partly as Bengel, ‘suas etiam ecclesia tates habet.’ The manifestation of man’s guilt was complete: and the way of the Lord was prepared, by various courses of action which He had brought about by men as his instruments.
. cannot, however little, for the purposes of the present argument, the divine side of our Lord’s mission is to be pressed, mean any thing less than sent forth from Himself (reff.).
. . will not bear being pressed, as Calv., Grot., Estius, al., have done (“discernere Christum a reliquis voluit hominibus: quia ex semine matris creatus sit, non viri et mulieris coitu,” Calv.): it is Christ’s HUMANITY which is the point insisted on, not His being born of a virgin. On the other hand, the words cannot for an instant be adduced as inconsistent with such birth: they state generically, what all Christians are able, from the Gospel record, to fill up specifically.
. ] ‘ born of a woman ,’ identified Him with all mankind: born under (the idea of motion conveyed by the accusative after is accounted for by the transition implied in ) the law , introduces another condition, in virtue of which He became the Redeemer of those who were under a special revelation and covenant. A Gentile could not (humanly speaking, as far as God has conditioned His own proceedings) have saved the world: for the Jews were the representative nation, to which the representative man must belong. . is both times emphatic, and therefore not to be here rendered ‘legi subjectum,’ as Luther, ‘ unter das Gesess gethan .’
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Gal 4:4 . When God saw that the world was ripe for the Advent, He sent forth His Son. Until generations of mankind had learnt through years of social training to control some of the animal instincts of their lower nature, to rebel against its brutal passions, and cherish a desire to live in obedience to their higher nature, until they had developed some sense of sin and some craving after a holiness beyond their reach, they were not ready to welcome a Redeemer. . The incarnate Son of God took upon Him our nature and our duties. He was (1) born of woman, (2) made subject to Law. His subjection to Law is so expressly associated with the subjection of the world in general to Law that the term cannot be limited (as our versions limit it) to the Law of Moses. Christ was in fact subjected also to Roman Law, and died by its sentence.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Galatians
THE SON SENT
Gal 4:4-5 R.V..
It is generally supposed that by the ‘fulness of time’ Paul means to indicate that Christ came at the moment when the world was especially prepared to receive Him, and no doubt that is a true thought. The Jews had been trained by law to the conviction of sin; heathenism had tried its utmost, had reached the full height of its possible development, and was decaying. Rome had politically prepared the way for the spread of the Gospel. Vague expectations of coming change found utterance even from the lips of Roman courtier poets, and a feeling of unrest and anticipation pervaded society; but while no doubt all this is true and becomes more certain the more we know of the state of things into which Christ came, it is to be noted that Paul is not thinking of the fulness of time primarily in reference to the world which received Him, but to the Father who sent Him. Our text immediately follows words in which the air is described as being ‘under guardians and stewards’ until the time appointed of His Father, and the fulness of time is therefore the moment which God had ordained from the beginning for His coming. He, from of old, had willed that at that moment this Son should be born, and it is to the punctual accomplishment of His eternal purpose that Paul here directs our thoughts. No doubt the world’s preparedness is part of the reason for the divine determination of the time, but it is that divine determination rather than the world’s preparedness to which the first words of our text must be taken to refer.
The remaining portion of our text is so full of meaning that one shrinks from attempting to deal with it in our narrow space, but though it opens up depths beyond our fathoming, and gathers into one concentrated brightness lights on which our dim eyes can hardly look, we may venture to attempt some imperfect consideration even of these great words. Following their course of thought we may deal with
I. The mystery of love that sent.
The most frequent form under which the great fact of the incarnation is represented in Scripture is that of our text–’God sent His Son.’ It is familiar on the lips of Jesus, but He also says that ‘God gave His Son.’ One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of expression. The former bringing rather to our thoughts the representative character of the Son as Messenger, and the latter going still deeper into the mystery of Godhead and bringing into view the love of the Father who spared not His Son but freely bestowed Him on men. Yet another word is used by Jesus Himself when He says, ‘I came forth from God,’ and that expression brings into view the perfect willingness with which the Son accepted the mission and gave Himself, as well as was given by God. All three phases express harmonious, though slightly differing aspects of the same fact, as the facets of a diamond might flash into different colours, and all must be held fast if we would understand the unspeakable gift of God. Jesus was sent; Jesus was given; Jesus came. The mission from the Father, the love of the Father, the glad obedience of the Son, must ever be recognised as interpenetrating, and all present in that supreme act.
There have been many men specially sent forth from God, whose personal existence began with their birth, and so far as the words are concerned, Jesus might have been one of these. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, and all through the ages he has had many companions in his mission, but there has been only one who ‘came’ as well as ‘was sent,’ and He is the true light which lighteth every man. To speak in theological language of the pre-existence of the Son is cold, and may obscure the truth which it formulates in so abstract a fashion, and may rob it of power to awe and impress. But there can be no question that in our text, as is shown by the juxtaposition of ‘sent’ and ‘born,’ and in all the New Testament references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is not regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son. The one lies far back in the depths of eternity and the mystery of the divine nature, the other is a historical fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in the Father, and ‘in the beginning was the word and the word was with God,’ and He who in respect of His expression of the Father’s mind and will was the Word, was the Son in respect of the love that bound the Father and Him in one. Into the mysteries of that love and union no eyes can penetrate, but unless our faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus has declared to us. The mysteries of that divine union and communion lie beyond our reach, but well within the grasp of our faith and the work of the Son in the world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand. For He has through all ages been the active energy of the divine power, or as the Old Testament words it, ‘The Arm of the Lord,’ the Agent of creation, the Revealer of God, the Light of the world and the Director of Providence. ‘He was in the world and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.’
Now all this teaching that the Son was long before Jesus was born is no mere mysterious dogma without bearing on daily needs, but stands in the closest connection with Christ’s work and our faith in it. It is the guarantee of His representative character; on it depends the reliableness of His revelation of God. Unless He is the Son in a unique sense, how could God have spoken unto us in Him, and how could we rely on His words? Unless He was ‘the effulgence of His glory and the express image of His person’: how could we be sure that the light of His countenance was light from God and that in His person God was so presented as that he who had seen Him had seen the Father? The completeness and veracity of His revelation, the authoritative fulness of His law, the efficacy of His sacrifice and the prevalence of His intercession all depend on the fact of His divine life with God long before His human life with men. It is a plain historical fact that a Christianity which has no place for a pre-existent Son in the bosom of the Father has only a maimed Christ in reference to the needs of sinful men. If our Christ were not the eternal Son of God, He will not be the universal Saviour of men.
Nor is this truth less needful in its bearing on modern theories which will have nothing to say to the supernatural, and in a fatalistic fashion regard history as all the result of an orderly evolution in which the importance of personal agents is minimised. To it Jesus, like all other great men, is a product of His age, and the immediate result of the conditions under which He appeared. But when we look far beyond the manger of Bethlehem into the depths of Eternity and see God so loving the world as to give His Son, we cannot but recognise that He has intervened in the course of human history and that the mightiest force in the development of man is the eternal Son whom He sent to save the world.
II. The miracle of lowliness that came.
The Apostle goes on from describing the great fact which took place in heaven to set forth the great fact which completed it on earth. The sending of the Son took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle puts it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed to present Christ’s manhood as His full identification of Himself with us. The Son of God became the son of a woman; from His mother He drew a true and complete humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He received was sufficiently kindred with the divinity which received it to make it possible that the one should dwell in the other and be one person. As born of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all human experiences, became capable of sharing our pure emotions, wept our tears, partook in our joys, hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes, grew as we grow, and in everything but sin, was a man amongst men.
But the Son of God could not be as the sons of men. Him the Father heard always. Even when He came down from Heaven and became the Son of Man, He continued to be ‘The Son of Man which is in Heaven.’ Amid all the distractions and limitations of His earthly life, the continuity and depth of His communion with the Father were unbroken and the completeness of His obedience undiminished. He was a Man, but He was also the Man, the one realised ideal of humanity that has ever walked the earth, to whom all others, even the most complete, are fragments, the fairest foul, the most gracious harsh. In Him and in Him only has been ‘given the world assurance of a man.’
The other condition which is here introduced is ‘born under the law,’ by which it may be noted that the Apostle does not mean the Jewish law, inasmuch as he does not use the definite article with the word. No doubt our Lord was born as a Jew and subject to the Jewish law, but the thought here and in the subsequent clause is extended to the general notion of law. The very heart of our Lord’s human identification is that He too had duties imperative upon Him, and the language of one of the Messianic psalms was the voice of His filial will during all His earthly life; ‘Lo! I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will and Thy law is within My heart.’ The very secret of His human life was discovered by the heathen centurion, at whose faith He marvelled, who said, ‘I also am a man under authority’; so was Jesus. The Son had ever been obedient in the sweet communion of Heaven, but the obedience of Jesus was not less perfect, continual and unstained. It was the man Jesus who summed up His earthly life in ‘I do always the things that please Him’; it was the man Jesus who, under the olives in Gethsemane, made the great surrender and yielded up His own will to the will of the Father who sent Him.
He was under law in that the will of God dominated His life, but He was not so under it as we are on whom its precepts often press as an unwelcome obligation, and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation. If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous than another it is the absence in Him of any consciousness of deficiency in His obedience to law, and yet that absence does not in the smallest degree infringe on His claim to be ‘meek and lowly in heart.’ ‘Which of you convinceth Me of sin?’ would have been from any other man a defiance that would have provoked a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a proof of hopeless ignorance of self, but when Christ asks the question, the world is silent. The silence has been all but unbroken for nineteen hundred years, and of all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have been occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been eager to say something new about Him, none have discovered a flaw, or dared to ‘hint a fault.’ That character has stamped its own impression of perfectness on all eyes even the most unfriendly or indifferent. In Him there is seen the perfect union and balance of opposite characteristics; the rest of us, at the best, are but broken arcs; Jesus is the completed round. He is under law as fully, continuously and joyfully obedient; but for Him it had no accusing voice, and it laid on Him no burden of broken commandments. He was born of a woman, born under law, but he lived separate from sinners though identified with them.
III. The marvel of exaltation that results.
Our Lord’s lowliness is described in the two clauses which we have just been considering. They express His identification with us from a double point of view, and that double point of view is continued in the final clauses of our text which state the double purpose of God in sending His Son. He became one with us that we might become one with Him. The two elements of this double purpose are stated in the reverse order to the two elements of Christ’s lowliness. The redemption of them that were under law is presented as the reason for His being born under law, and our reception of the ‘adoption of sons’ is the purpose of the Son’s being sent and born of a woman. The order in which Paul here deals with the two parts of the divine purpose is not to be put down to mere rhetorical ornament, but corresponds to the order in which these two elements are realised by men. For there must be redemption from law before there is the adoption of sons.
We have already had occasion to point out that ‘law’ here must be taken in the wide sense and not restricted to the Jewish law. It is a world-wide redemption which the Father’s love had in view in sending His Son, but that all-comprehending, fatherly love could not reach its aim by the mere forth-putting of its own energy. A process was needed if the divine heart was to accomplish its desire, and the majestic stages in that process are set forth here by Paul. The world was under law in a very sad fashion, and though Jesus has come to redeem them that are under law, the crushing weight of commandments flouted, of duties neglected, of sins done, presses heavily upon many of us. And yet how many of us there are who do not know the burden that we carry and have had no personal experience like that of Bunyan’s Christian with the pack on his back all but weighing him down? Jesus Christ has become one of us, and in His sinless life has ‘magnified the law and made it honourable,’ and in His sinless death He endures the consequences of sin, not as due to Himself, but because they are man’s. But we must carefully keep in view, that as we have already pointed out, we are to think of Christ’s mission as His coming as well as the Father’s sending, and that therefore we do not grasp the full idea of our Lord’s enduring the consequences of sin unless we take it as meaning His voluntary identification of Himself in love with us sinful men. His obedience was perfect all His life long, and His last and highest act of obedience was when He became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
This is the only means by which the burden of law in any of its forms can be taken away from us. For a law which is not loved will be heavy and hard however holy and just and good it may be, and a law which we have broken will become sooner or later its own avenger. Faithful in Pilgrim’s Progress tells how ‘So soon as a man overtook me he was but a word and a blow, for down he knocked me and laid me for dead. . . . He struck me another deadly blow on the breast and beat me down backward, so I lay at his foot as dead as before, so when I came to myself again I cried him “Mercy,” but he said, “I know not how to show mercy,” and with that knocked me down again; he had doubtless made an end of me but that one came by and bid him forbear. . . . I did not know him at first, but as he went by I perceived the holes in his hands and in his sides.’ He was born under law that He might redeem them that were under law.
The slaves bought into freedom are received into the great family. The Son has become flesh that they who dwell in the flesh may rise to be sons, but the Son stands alone even in the midst of His identification with us, and of the great results which follow for us from it. He is the Son by nature; we are sons by adoption. He became man that we might share in the possession of God. When the burden of law is lifted off it is possible to bestow the further blessing of sonship, but that blessing is only possible through Him in whom, and from whom, we derive a life which is divine life. There is a profound truth in the prophetic sentence, ‘Behold I and the children which God hath given me!’ for, in one aspect, believers are the children of Christ, and in another, they are sons of God.
We have been speaking of the Son’s identification with us in His mission, and our identification with Him, but that identification depends on ourselves and is only an accomplished fact through our faith. When we trust in Him it is true that all His–His righteousness, His Sonship, His union with the Father–is ours, and that all ours–our sins, our guilt, our alienation from God and our dwelling in the far-off land of rags and vice–is His. In His voluntary identification with us, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. It is for us to determine whether we will lay on Him our iniquities, as the Father has already laid the iniquities of us all. Are we by faith in Him who was born of a woman, born under law, making our very own the redemption from the law which He has wrought and the adoption of sons which He bestows?
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
fulness. Greek. pleroma. ‘ First occurance: Mat 9:16.
was come = came.
God. App-98.
sent forth. Greek. exapostello App-174.
Son. Greek. huios App-108.
made. See Joh 1:14
of. Greek. ek. App-104.
the. Omit.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
4.] . (that whereby the time was filled up: see note on Eph 1:23,-Fritzsches note on Rom 11:12, and Stiers, Ephesians 1. p. 199 ff. for a discussion of the meanings of ) answers to the . , Gal 4:2; see reff. The Apostle uses this term with regard not only to the absolute will of God, but to the preparations which were made for the Redeemer on this earth: partly as Thl., , partly as Bengel, suas etiam ecclesia tates habet. The manifestation of mans guilt was complete:-and the way of the Lord was prepared, by various courses of action which He had brought about by men as his instruments.
. cannot,-however little, for the purposes of the present argument, the divine side of our Lords mission is to be pressed,-mean any thing less than sent forth from Himself (reff.).
. . will not bear being pressed, as Calv., Grot., Estius, al., have done (discernere Christum a reliquis voluit hominibus: quia ex semine matris creatus sit, non viri et mulieris coitu, Calv.): it is Christs HUMANITY which is the point insisted on, not His being born of a virgin. On the other hand, the words cannot for an instant be adduced as inconsistent with such birth: they state generically, what all Christians are able, from the Gospel record, to fill up specifically.
. ] born of a woman, identified Him with all mankind: born under (the idea of motion conveyed by the accusative after is accounted for by the transition implied in ) the law, introduces another condition, in virtue of which He became the Redeemer of those who were under a special revelation and covenant. A Gentile could not (humanly speaking, as far as God has conditioned His own proceedings) have saved the world: for the Jews were the representative nation, to which the representative man must belong. . is both times emphatic, and therefore not to be here rendered legi subjectum, as Luther, unter das Gesess gethan.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Gal 4:4. , the fulness of the time) This has reference to as long as, and to the time appointed, Gal 4:1 [as long as he is]; 2, [until the time appointed]: for the Church also has its own ages.-, sent forth) Out of heaven, from Himself, as He had promised. The same verb is repeated, Gal 4:6, concerning the Holy Spirit. [The infinite love of the Father!-V. g.] Comp. Isa 48:16, where Castellio and others give this interpretation: The Lord Jehovah sent me and His Spirit. Before this visitation men did not seem to be so much the object of Gods care; Heb 8:9 : afterwards a new appearance of things was presented.- , His (own) Son) The Author of liberty, , in a reciprocal sense, His own. What that means is evident from the train of thought in this passage, for we have received first adoption, then the Spirit of adoption. Therefore Christ Himself is not the Son of God, merely because He was sent and anointed by the Father.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Gal 4:4
Gal 4:4
but when the fulness of the time came,-When the time came that they could walk by faith in God and look to the future rewards and punishments. [This period was fixed in the counsel of God with reference to the development of the race. The words fulness of the time express the whole philosophy of history before Christ, and the central position of the birth of Christ. The ancient history of Jews and Gentiles was a preparation for the coming of Christ, and Christ is the turning point of history, the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. Jesus himself began his preaching with the declaration: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. (Mar 1:15). The Savior could not appear in any other country, nor at any other time, nor in any other nation, according to the order of the divine government, and prearranged history.]
God sent forth his Son,-He certainly existed before his birth in Bethlehem, in heavenly glory, with the Father.
born of a woman,-He was born of a woman that he might sympathize with humanity. [This expresses the realness of the humanity of Jesus Christ.]
born under the law,-That he might fulfill the law, take it out of the way, and deliver his people from the bondage of the law. [These words bring the Lord Jesus into relation with the Jewish nation, (cp. Rom 15:8; Heb 2:14-18). He thus took upon himself the obligations imposed by God upon the Jews in the law given at Sinai. The fulfillment of this law by the Lord was the outward and evident token of his acceptance with God, and of his competence for the work he had undertaken to do.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The Mission of the Son
When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.Gal 4:4-5.
1. It is not wonderful that God should love us and care for us, for, though we are so far from Him and so unworthy, He made us: and we know that God is love. But though it is natural that God should love the world that He madethough we might be quite sure that He would love itthe manner in which He showed His love to us, and the length to which He carried His love, is indeed past wonder. It is not merely His love, but the way in which His love took the world by surprise, that makes us rejoice.
This is the great wonder of the love of Godnot that He loved mankind, but that He loved them beyond this world; not that He redeemed them, but that He came Himself to redeem them by becoming one of them. This was the awful surprise which burst upon the world when first it was told among men that their God and Maker had come down to earth, and had been born of a woman, and had lived a poor mans life, and had died the death of a slave. No wonder that it startled Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarianstartled some to love and adoration, startled others to unbelief and mockery. Some were drawn to repentance and a holy life, while others were driven away in shuddering fear at so awful a surprise, at so near a God. No wonder that those who did not receive it counted it as foolishness. It must be so unless one sees in it the inconceivable and infinite love of God. It must be a stumbling-block to every one who thinks what it is, that God should be made Man to give everlasting life to men, unless it is to him the spring and source of all that is deepest in his thankfulness, most serious in his faith, most transporting in his joy.
2. The most frequent form under which the great fact of the Incarnation is represented in Scripture is that of our textGod sent his Son. It is familiar on the lips of Jesus, but He also says that God gave his Son. One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of expressionthe former bringing rather to our thoughts the representative character of the Son as Messenger, and the latter going still deeper into the mystery of Godhead and bringing into view the love of the Father who spared not His Son but freely bestowed Him on men. Yet another word is used by Jesus Himself when He says, I came forth from God, and that expression brings into view the perfect willingness with which the Son accepted the mission, giving Himself, as well as being given by God. All three phrases express harmonious, though slightly differing, aspects of the same fact, as the facets of a diamond might flash into different colours; and all must be held fast if we would understand the unspeakable gift of God. Jesus was sent; Jesus was given; Jesus came. The mission from the Father, the love of the Father, the glad obedience of the Son, must ever be recognized as interpenetrating and all present in that supreme act.
Our text tells us:
I.The Time at Which Christ Came into the World.
II.The Manner in Which Christ Came.
III.The End for Which Christ Came.
I
The Time When Christ Came
When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son.
No one can study any of the great movements which have made history without observing that it had two conditionsthere was the man, and he came at the time. Certain ideas had long been simmering in the popular mind, a train of circumstances had been laid, a multitude was ready to rise; but those were only forerunners, anticipations, auxiliaries. Nothing would have come to pass, and the morning glow would have faded into darkness, had not the secret yearning in many hearts taken shape in a single man. No one could have foretold his origin; no one can take credit for training him; no one can boast afterwards of having been his colleague. From behind the veil he comesfrom a palace, or from a cottage, or from a college, or from a desert. Upon him is laid one burden, and he rests not till it is fulfilled; he is incalculable, concentrated, forceful, autocratic. Now he is the idol of the people; now he is their victim; he is ever independent of them, and ever their champion. They may not understand him, yet he expresses them; they may put him to death, yet he accomplishes their desire. These are the makers of the race through whom God intervenes in human history; in Jesus, the chief of them all, God became incarnate.
Between the man and his time there must be a certain correspondence, else he cannot have full course. Nothing is more pathetic than the experience of one who has arrived too soon, delivering a message which will be understood to-morrow, but winch to-day is a dream; attempting a work which to-morrow the world will welcome but which to-day it considers madness. He dies of a broken heart an hour before sunrise. Nothing is more ironical than the effort of one who has arrived too late, for whom there was an audience yesterday, for whose cause there was an opportunity; but now the audience has dispersed, and the field is taken; he has missed his tide, and for him another will not come. It may be said that Jesus was independent of time and environment. As a person, yes! who never could have been hid or altogether have failed. As a worker, no! for this were to ask an endless miracle. Had Jesus come in Samuels day, no one would have understood His Kingdom; had He come in the second century, there had been no opening for His Kingdom. There was a brief space when the life seed of Hebrew thought was ready for the sower, and the Roman Empire still remained a quiet field for the sowing. This was the fulness of the time, and Jesus appeared.
1. The fulness of the time.This remarkable expression, the fulness of the time, is, with a slight variation, once used by St. Paul elsewhere: he calls the gospel, when writing to the Ephesians, the dispensation of the fulness of times. In both cases he means by fulness that which fulfils or brings to completion; the arrival of a given moment which completes an epoch; the hour which fills up its appointed measure and brings it to a close. It was in a like sense that our Lord and His Apostles used the word hour as marking a particular point in His life, determined in the counsels of God.
Such language is fully understood only when we bear in mind that that succession of events which, looking at it from our human point of view, we call time, is distributed upon a plan eternally present to the Divine Mind; and that particular persons or particular characters are assigned, in heaven, their predestinated place in this succession. To everything, says the Wise Man, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven. All the lesser incidents of our lives are really arranged in a preconcerted order. There is a fulness of the time at which, and not before, we can understand particular truths or undertake particular duties, because for these truths or duties all that has preceded has been a preparation.
Now, our Lords arrival on the scene of human history corresponds with the general law so far as this, that He came when a course of preparation, conducted through previous ages, was complete. But He was not the product of His own or of any preceding age. What is true of great men who are only great men is not true of Him. They receive from their age as much as they give it; they embody and reflect its spirit; they seize upon the ideas which are in circulation, and, whether by speech or action, express them more vividly than do others; their generation does a great deal for them; it is pleased with them because it sees itself reflected in them; and their power with it is often in an inverse ratio to their real originality. With our Lord it was otherwise. He owed nothing to the time or to the country which witnessed His Advent; He had no contact with the world of Greek thought, or of Roman politics and administration. He borrowed Rabbinical language enough to make Himself intelligible; but no Rabbi could have said, or could have omitted to say, what He did. The preceding ages only prepared His way before Him, by forming the circumstances, the convictions, the moral experience of His countrymen and others; and thus a preceding period, marked in the counsels of God, had to be run out. At last its final hour had struck, and that hour was the fulness of the time; it was the moment of the Advent.
2. The historical preparation.There can be no doubt what St. Paul had in his mind when he wrote of the fulness of the time. He was a Jew, and the story of his race, with all its vicissitudes, was ever present to him. He was a Roman, and all around were the evidences of the political supremacy of his nation. He was an educated mana moralist, a logician, a philosopherand could measure the intellectual strivings which had marked the closing years of the pre-Christian era.
Palestine, where the Saviour of Mankind was born, lay at the very centre of the then known world, and it has been picturesquely put that the City of God is built at the confluence of three civilizations. Each of these civilizationsJewish, Greek, Romanhelped to complete what the Apostle called the fulness of the time. The Jews contribution was religious. Idolatry among them had, it is true, died out, but legalism and ceremonialism were in the ascendant, and, as always happens when we offer mens souls husks, there was a demand among some of them for rich spiritual food. Devout minds were weary of the hair-splitting of the Rabbinical schools, of the mere mechanism of piety, of the aimless circle of complicated rules, and there were pious hearts that longed for purity and peace and a loftier revelation of the Divine. Above all, there was the expectation, throbbing intensely in the heart of every good Jew, of a Deliverer, an Emancipator, a Messiah, who, like another and a greater Judas Maccabus, should at least free their race from the Roman dominion.
The exquisite literature and profound thought of the Greeks were eminently calculated to prepare the way for the diffusion of Christianity: for the ancient faiths could not survive the pitiless criticism of Greek philosophy. This criticism, though seldom made with the express intention of destroying the popular religion, necessarily exposed its crudities and immoralities; and gradually filtered through to the very lowest strata of society; but, like modern Rationalism, Greek philosophy failed to satisfy the higher aspirations of mankind. The Greeks provided a language which became the medium for the propaganda of the new religion; for, after the conquests of Alexander, Greek thought and the Greek language became the standard and medium of art, of commerce and literature, throughout three-fourths of the known world. Every Greek colony was a centre of Greek thought and influence, and diffused Greek ideas among the neighbouring peoples, and brought them into contact with the distinctive Hellenic conceptions. These coloniesespecially through the Dispersion, or foreign colonies of the Jewsexerted a profound influence on the Jewish nation. Influenced by the literary activity of the Greek peoples and the surrounding courts, and impelled by their religious necessities, the Jewish settlers of Alexandria translated the Old Testament into Greek; and by the partial assimilation of the Greek philosophies and adaptation of their philosophical terminology to religious and theological use, prepared a suitable terminology for the accurate expression of the revelation of God in Christ in a form intelligible to the ancient world.
The expansion of the Roman Empire, whereby the whole civilized world passed under one government, provided the necessary political conditions for the diffusion of the religion of the Christ and the extension of the Kingdom of God. The Roman peace secured freedom of intercommunication; the Roman roads, by enabling rapid transit from one part of the Empire to another, provided the means of a rapid missionary propaganda, so that Ethiopia and Gaul, if not Britain, Babylon, and Spain, heard the first gentle whisperings of the gospel of the grace of God before the crucifixion of Christ was a thirty years old event.
Christ came to die for us. If He had come a hundred years earlier, the Roman State would have had no authority in Juda, the world-power would have had no part in His condemnation, and the manner of His death would not have been that foretold. If He had come a hundred years later, the consenting of the Jewish religious authorities to His death would have been impossible; for their Temple was then destroyed and their nation exiled from the land of promise. The conditions of redemption, therefore, would not have been fulfilled. At the one point and I moment in history where the favourable religious, intellectual, and political conditions met, the Son of Man was born at Bethlehem.
3. Darkness before the dawn.The Saviour of the world did not come a day too soon, for the decay and death of mens religious beliefs had been accompanied by the destruction of morality, and at the birth of Christ the state of the world was deplorable in the extreme. In that enlightened age the moral sense of man had become completely blunted, and the national conscience was a thing of naught. Immorality, sensuousness, grossness, gluttony, cruelty, bestiality, sordidness, sycophancy, untruthfulness, were, says Professor Wenley, never so rife at one time; and as if to render the situation even more gloomy, acts such as we should regard with utter revulsion amounting even to physical sickness, were perpetrated not in secret, but in the light of common day, and this without arousing anything in the nature of serious or unanimous protest.
When Jesus came
The world was all at peace in utter wickedness.
Doubtless, the testimony borne by Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, Persius, and Martial, to the abounding and shameless iniquity of their time, may be held as referring in the first place and for the most part to life in Rome and in those pleasure cities of the Empire which imitated or taught the capital. Among Romes hundred million subjects there would be, at all events in country districts, many whose lives were fair and worthy. And even in Rome itself there would be some of whom it could not be said that they loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. But the facts would seem to show that such were the exception which goes to prove the rule. Speaking broadly and generally, men and women had fallen away from the eternal laws of righteousness and were walking in the vanity of their minds, according to the whims of evil hearts, the promptings of sinful passions, or the suggestions of depraved and degrading inclinations.
The Incarnation is thus a predestined event in the furtherance of the redemption and education of humanity. It occurs in the fulness of the time. That is the primary fact. It is not an accident. It is part of, and fits into, a fully articulated plan of world-redemption. It closes an epoch. It opens a new era. It is not a separable accident, cut off from the rest of the life of the race; it is an integral part of it, with vital relations to its earliest manifestations, and to its latest, and to each and every experience of man between the first and the last. It is no alter-thought. It happens just when it ought to happen, when it was meant to happen, when it could take its place and do its work most effectively. The time receptacle, into which the centuries and millenniums had been poured, was full up to the precise moment when this great event should be added; and it was added just then.
Earth was waiting, spent and restless,
With a mingled hope and fear;
And the faithful few were sighing,
Surely, Lord, the day is near;
The desire of all the nations,
It is time He should appear.
Still the gods were in their temples,
But the ancient faith had fled;
And the priests stood by their altars
Only for a piece of bread;
And the Oracles were silent,
And the Prophets all were dead.
In the sacred courts of Zion,
Where the Lord had His abode,
There the money-changers trafficked,
And the sheep and oxen trod;
And the world, because of wisdom,
Knew not either Lord or God.
Then the spirit of the Highest
On a virgin meek came down,
And He burdened her with blessing,
And He pained her with renown;
For she bare the Lords Anointed
For His cross and for His crown.
Earth for Him had groaned and travailed,
Since the ages first began;
For in Him was hid the secret
That through all the ages ran
Son of Mary, Son of David,
Son of God, and Son of Man 1:1 [Note: Walter C. Smith, Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life.]
II
The Manner in Which Christ Came
Born of a woman, born under the law.
There can be no question that in the text, as is shown by the juxtaposition of sent and born, and in all the New Testament references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is not regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son. The one lies far back in the depths of eternity and the mystery of the Divine nature, the other is a historical fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in the Father, and, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and He who in respect of His expression of the Fathers mind and will was the Word, was the Son in respect of the love that bound the Father and Him in one. Into the mysteries of that love and union no eyes can penetrate, but unless our faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus has declared to us. The mysteries of that Divine union and communion lie beyond our reach, but well within the grasp of our faith, and the work of the Son in the world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand.
1. The Divine and the human.The sending of the Son took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle puts it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed to present Christs manhood as His full identification of Himself with us. The Son of God became the son of a woman; from His mother He drew a true and complete humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He received was sufficiently kindred with the Divinity which received it to make it possible that the one should dwell in the other and be one person. As born of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all human experiences, became capable of sharing our pure emotions, wept our tears, partook of our joys, hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes, grew as we grew, and in everything but sin was a man amongst men.
What does this mean but that, when God gave His supreme revelation of His own essential nature in its relation to humanity, He came not as an alien to our planet but as a native? Not in angelic form, robed in the brightness of a far-away mystery, lifted high in His templenot so did He come; but as a Man, as a definite individual, along a recognized line of descent, with the marks of the village on His face and form, one of the common people, a Hebrew of the first century. That, to St. Paul, was the outstanding and amazing mystery of the Incarnationthat there should be so little outward mystery about it; and the outstanding wonder of it was that through its common everyday human aspect there shone forth from the heart of it an inner mystery of quickening light and power which made life glorious for all who accepted it as Gods truth for them.
2. Born under law.The Incarnation is the revelation of the binding force of natural law, to the necessities of which God Himself yields up His Son. It is the loud proclamation of the deference God pays to that Nature which is His own creation. Where, indeed, can we learn more emphatically than from the cross of Christ the validity, the sanctity of those natural conditions which God, of His own will, obeyed, even to the death of His Son, rather than break?
Christ was under law in that the will of God dominated His life, but He was not so under it as we are on whom its precepts often press as an unwelcome obligation, and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation. If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous than another it is the absence in Him of any consciousness of deficiency in His obedience to law, and yet that absence does not in the smallest degree infringe on His claim to be meek and lowly in heart. Which of you convinceth me of sin? would have been from any other man a defiance that would have provoked a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a proof of hopeless ignorance of self; but when Christ asks the question, the world is silent. The silence has been all but unbroken for nineteen hundred years, and of all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have been occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been eager to say something new about Him, none has discovered a flaw, or dared to hint a fault.
That which is really startling in the birth and life of Christ is not the extent of its miraculous display, but its strange and severe limitation; not in the degree to which He exercised His Godhead, but in the degree to which He emptied Himself of it. That is what bewilders and astounds us far more than any miracle. Men talk as if we Christians were brimming with a childish and reckless exuberance of supernaturalism. How distorted a misconception! Is not the wonder all the other way? Is it not amazing that a creed which starts with such tremendous assertions about the Person of its Founder should keep itself so well in hand, so rigidly under control, that its main force is spent in exhibiting the loyalty with which this only-begotten Son of God submitted to every ordinance of man and of nature, how He bent Himself down to the hard and narrow frontiers of His natural lot? For one man who is disturbed by the miracles we preach, there are twenty who are upset by the rigorous absence of miracle from our account of salvation. Why this slow and painful dealing with sin and with sorrow? they ask impatiently. Why does not God act with greater freedom? Why does He not lay bare His holy arm? Why this roundabout method of redemption? Why this cruel insistence on His Sons suffering and death? Why give Him over to the hour of darkness? Why not take away the bitter cup? Why not rend the heavens and come down? We know but too well the appeal, the passion, the misery of those questions!1 [Note: H. Scott Holland.]
3. The veiled glory.Christ was the revelation of God in the sphere of time and sense. The splendour of Jehovah was veiled by the seamless robe; under the mechanism of frail flesh throbbed the energy which built the world; the gentle tones of the voice unheard in the streets disguised the accents of the thunder; and beneath the weakness which slept, fainted, and expired was hidden the might of Omnipotence. That Christ was God, that He became man, possessing a true human body and a true human soul, is the distinct teaching of the evangelic narrative. God manifests Himself in nature, history, and conscience; but here is a supreme, personal, and unique revelation of Himselfthe Divine clothing Himself with the human that He might redeem the human.
Is it possible for the Infinite God to become expressed in human form? Is not the idea self-contradictory? Certainly it is if we think of the Infinite as physical or as quantitative. But if we think of it as spiritual and qualitativeof the ethical Infinite, which God isof perfect righteousness and love, and believe that the human personality is in the image of the Divine, we can see that the essential life of God can be as fully expressed in a human as in any conceivable form.
If there is nothing derogatory to the honour of God in His dwelling within the physical universe, and in manifesting Himself through suns and stars, hills and seas, forests and flowers, there cannot be anything contrary to the Divine glory in assuming that He should take up His special abode in a human body, and reveal Himself through its marvellous organs. There seems, indeed, no shrine so fitting for the Divine indwelling and manifestation as a pure human body. The human face divine can express more than a sun, the rounded forehead speak more than arched skies, the eyes shine out deeper things than stars, the lip reveal secrets which winds and waves can never utter, and the actions of human life are rich in suggestion hidden from the foundations of the world. The human body is less bright than the heavens, less large than the earth, but, to utter things deep and high, a finer organ than either.
After referring to man being fearfully and wonderfully madethe body the tent-like habitation in which he journeyed through the wilderness which lay between the two eternities,Dr. Robertson pointed out the fitness of the comparison of the human body to a house or temple; spoke of its flesh-built walls being covered with skin, richly tapestried; he described it as colonnaded with bones, fitted with a frame-work, vault-like, marble white, that bore up, and over-arched the chambers of the hidden life within, and with conduits that sent forth red streams which ebbed and flowed from the hearts cistern, and conduits of the subtle nerves, strung from side to side, from wall to wall, from the lowest basement to the loftiest pinnacle, along which telegraphic messages were sent with more than lightning speed. It was, too, a house in motion, and, pertaining to it, what dignity, what majesty! how exquisite in form and symmetry! so delicate and tender, like Davids harp of many strings, like the olian lyre, vibrating to the winds slightest breath.1 [Note: A. Guthrie, Robertson of Irvine, 321.]
Thou inmost, ultimate
Council of judgment, palace of decrees,
Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,
Sued by earths embassies,
And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;
Createthy senses close
With the worlds pleas. The random odours reach
Their sweetness in the place of thy repose,
Upon thy tongue the peach,
And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.
To thee, secluded one,
The dark vibrations of the sightless skies,
The lovely inexplicit colours run;
The light gropes for those eyes.
O thou august! thou dost command the sun.
Music, all dumb, hath trod
Into thine ear her one effectual way;
And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod,
Where thou callst up the day,
Where thou awaitest the appeal of God.1 [Note: Alice Meynell, Poems, 111.]
III
The End for Which Christ Came
That he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
In how sharp a contrast the Divine method of reform, of revolution, stands to the declaration of the greatest of the idealists in the days before Christ. Plato, as he sorrowfully reviewed the actual Athens with which he found himself encircled, pronounced, in his prophetic work on human society, that its true reformer and saviour would be known by this markthat he would demand for himself a clean canvas before he consented to begin. He could do nothing unless he were allowed to remove from out of the influence and tradition of their home a whole generation of children; only thus could he obtain the clean canvas he needed. If only the weary burden of our inherited complication could be thus freely cast off! If only we could lay hands, in the violence of love, on the little children, and sweep them off into some new Garden of Eden! If only we could run a sharp dividing knife between us and the rueful past! Surely there is in that demand a deep and touching pathos which stirs us into tender admiration of the noble-hearted genius who made it. But its pathos must not disguise from us that it is a confession of failure, of impotence, of despair. The reformer who asks first for a clean canvas to begin upon is a reformer who refuses to grapple with his task, refuses to face his facts. He condemns himself by making the demand; for what is asked of him is that he should help us to better the life that now is, the situation in which he and we find ourselves. We do not need him to tell us how well he could construct another form of life under changed conditions. No; it is the very note of all the old failure to redeem the world by philosophy which is struck in the sad Platonic phrase, Give me but the childrengive me a clean canvas!
How different is the view of the possibilities of human nature presented by St. Paul, who tells how the Son of God assumes our human nature, takes to Himself perfect manhood, which He exalts and glorifies, through which He manifests the life of God, showing that Divine works may be wrought in it, that God can be perfectly pleased by the service which it renders, and in His own exaltation to the right hand of God, lifting up that nature to the same place for evermore. And thus He not merely affirms such a union to be possible, but in His own Person realizes it to the uttermost, that so it may in its measure be realized in all whom He had made His brethrenthe Son of God becoming also Son of man, that the sons of men might in their turn become sons of God.
Not only is Christ the Ideal Man, not only is He the great Redeemer from sin, but in Him the gift of sonship is communicated to Gods elect, since He is the one in whom we are born unto God. And it is this gift of sonship that is the highest of the gifts of grace communicated to us in Christ Jesus. It is more than the gift of redemption. God who looks on us, creatures born of Adam and sunk in sin, might have restored to us Adams forfeited position through the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. That were to redeem us; but He adds something more, Havingredeemed, He gives to us the adoption of sons, and so in this gift of sonship the hunger of humanity is satisfied as it is brought home to God.
1. Adoption of sons.Adoption was essentially a Roman and not a Jewish custom. The law of Moses nowhere recognizes it, and the Jews had no word to express it. But with the Romans it was an everyday occurrence for a person having no children of his own to adopt as his son one born of other parents. Adoption was a formal act, effected either by the process named adrogatio, when the person to be adopted was independent of his parent, or by adoptio, specifically so called, when in the power of his parent. The effect of it was that the adopted child was entitled to the name and sacra privata of his new father, and ranked as his heir-at-law; while the father on his part was entitled to the property of the son, and exercised towards him all the rights and privileges of a father. In short, the relationship was to all intents and purposes the same as existed between a natural father and son.
It is this that was in the Apostles mind when he spoke of enjoyed by Christians. The word occurs nowhere in the LXX., nor is it used by any writer of the New Testament except St. Paul, who has actually been supposed to have first framed the word for his own use. We need not perhaps go quite so far as to assert this, although it appears to be a fact that the word is not found in any earlier Greek writer whose works still exist. It is, however, likely to have been employed as the nearest equivalent to adoptio by those Greek teachers from whom we suppose the Apostle to have learnt the elements of law; and whatever we may think of the history of the word, there can be little doubt that it was the Roman custom that supplied the Apostle with the illustration which he develops most fully in his Epistle to the Roman Christians.
That we might receive the adoption of sons, really embraces everything else. All the benefits of redemption are here contained. If we have the adoption of sons, we have everything. What can a child in a fathers house have more than his full place there? His position, his privileges, his prospects are as high as they can be. If a father who is good and rich and influential gives his children a happy home under his roof-tree and treats them as children in all respects, there can be no more that he can do for themthere is no more that would be good for them to receive. If this be so in the human relationship must it not be yet more so as between God and His people? If He is the Father, and I am the child, then there is nothing between me and infinite wealth and goodness and blessedness. If He is my Father, He can give me everything I need. If I am His child, I can receive His benefaction, up to the limits of my nature and circumstances.
2. A mystery of light.The Son had become flesh that they who dwell in the flesh might rise to be sons, but the Son stands alone even in the midst of His identification with us, and of the great results which follow for us from it. He is the Son by nature; we are sons by adoption. He became man that we might share in the possession of God.
There are many mysteriesdeep, unsolved mysteriesbehind the word Incarnation. There are mysteries of darkness, and there are mysteries of light, and this is a mystery of light, for it has light at its core. And we must not lose the mystery in the light, nor the light in the mystery. As Browning:
I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Acccpted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth or out of it.
That is to say, if this is true then is life a great thing, with a Divine meaning in it and a Divine end for it. The horizon of our nature lifts, and spreads out and takes in heaven itself within its scope. Forgiveness becomes a mighty fact and a mighty power. Duty takes on a warmer look; trouble ceases to be a real calamity; death loses its ultimate terror; immortality becomes a sure hope. The Incarnation transfigures the universe for all who can really accept it in its fullest implications. And therefore let us live in the light of this great factthat in Jesus Christ God has come to us, and spoken with us, and offered Himself for us and to us, that we may offer ourselves to Him, and so be filled with His fulness. Let its light shine on our daily path. Let its glory pierce our darkest moments. Let its grace meet all our need. Let its hope brighten all our shadows. Great is the mystery of religion, that God should become human; but greater its inspiration, for its end is that man might become Divine.
She was within a very little of the end, we thought, even then while it was still possible to carry her into the garden and lay her in the shelter of her tree, where, the last time but one that she was out, she wrote the second paper of this part. She thought so herself, as her meditation shows. I feel not so much desire for the beauty to come, she says, as a great longing to open my eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me in this beautiful world of Gods making where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment of the mystery of God. There are, I take it, two master keys to the secrets of the universe, viewed sub specie ternitatis, the Incarnation of God, and the Personality of Man: with these it is true for us as for the pantheistic little man of contemptible speech, that all things are ours, yea, even unto the third heaven.1 [Note: Michael Fairless: Her Life and Writings, 84.]
The world is a bubble, and Death shall die:
Love shines longer than lights in the sky.
The moon is a cinder; the sun grows old:
Loves fire only shall never wax cold.
The stars burn out, but the lamp of Love
Illumines for ever the Blessed above.
Love is the soul of the song they sing
Through the day that fears not an evening.
The song of their love shall for ever resound
In the ears of the Love whom their God hath crowned.
Crowned in heaven is the Love who came
For love of the loveless to sorrow and shame.
Deathless in heaven is the Love who died;
Adored, whom Caiaphas crucified.
Here by His love is His Church led forth
From the east and west, from the south and north,
Ever a pilgrim, through snow, through heat,
Through life, through death, till she kiss Loves feet
Yea, my God, till her glad eyes see
Love, the Lord of Eternity!1 [Note: G. A. Chadwick, Poems Chiefly Sacred, 8.]
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
the fulness: Gen 49:10, Dan 9:24-26, Mal 3:1, Mar 1:15, Act 1:7, Eph 1:10, Heb 9:10
God: Isa 48:16, Zec 2:8-11, Joh 3:16, Joh 6:38, Joh 8:42, Joh 10:36, 1Jo 4:9, 1Jo 4:10, 1Jo 4:14
made: Isa 9:6, Isa 9:7, Mic 5:2, Zec 6:12, Luk 2:10, Luk 2:11, Joh 1:14, Rom 1:3, Rom 9:5, Phi 2:6-8, 1Ti 3:16, Heb 2:14, Heb 10:5-7, 1Jo 4:2
of a: Gen 3:15, Isa 7:14, Jer 31:22, Mic 5:3, Mat 1:23, Luk 1:31, Luk 1:35, Luk 2:7
made under: Mat 3:15, Mat 5:17, Luk 2:21-27, Rom 15:8, Col 2:14
Reciprocal: Exo 37:6 – General Exo 40:12 – General Exo 40:18 – reared Lev 3:6 – a sacrifice Lev 4:28 – a kid Lev 15:28 – General Lev 25:48 – General Psa 102:13 – the set Ecc 3:2 – time to be born Isa 40:2 – warfare Mat 1:18 – of the Mar 14:12 – Where Luk 2:39 – performed Luk 12:56 – that Luk 20:13 – I will Luk 20:44 – how Luk 22:8 – Go Joh 1:11 – came Joh 5:1 – General Joh 6:32 – the true Joh 6:42 – Is not Joh 7:10 – then Joh 8:35 – but Joh 9:7 – Sent Joh 11:42 – that thou Joh 11:51 – that Jesus Joh 16:27 – and have Act 3:22 – of your Act 26:6 – the promise Rom 5:6 – in due time Rom 6:14 – for ye Rom 7:6 – But Rom 8:3 – God Gal 3:23 – under Phi 2:7 – in the Col 2:11 – by 1Ti 2:6 – in 1Ti 2:15 – she Tit 1:3 – in Heb 1:2 – these Heb 2:9 – Jesus Heb 2:11 – all Heb 5:7 – the 1Pe 1:20 – in 1Jo 1:2 – which was
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
CHRISTS MISSION
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Gal 4:4-5
I. The fact of Christs mission into the world implies three things, as here stated:
(a) His pre-existence as the Son.
(b) The Divine origin of His Gospel.
(c) The infinite preciousness of His salvation.
II. The time of His mission, as here described, implies:
(a) That God had fixed a definite time for it, which had to be reached by the filling-up of the period between the formation and the execution of the Divine decree.
(b) Until the fullness of the time came Christ could not come, and the world was not ready for Him. Mans inability to save himself had to be amply and variously shown. Time had to be given to bring out the depths of depravity into which man could plunge. Gods long-suffering had to be manifested. The world had to be providentially prepared.
III. The condition under which His mission took place:
(a) He was made, or born, of a woman. Not created, like the first Adam, but born.
(b) Born under the law. A true member of the Jewish race; an Israelite indeed. The representative man belongs to the representative nation. The greatness of His condescension. His pledge to fulfil all righteousness for us.
IV. The object of His mission was:
(a) To redeem them that were under the law. His primary purpose was to save the Jews, who were Abrahams seed, and who were under those obligations which He willingly took on Himself. They were in bondage (Gal 4:3). He redeemed, delivered by ransom; gave Himself.
(b) To give us the adoption of sons.
Illustration
We are told it is superfluous to preach about these things; that they have been preached about for nearly nineteen hundred years, that every one knows them who cares to know them, and for the rest they have no interest; that it is time to attend to the real subjects of the dayto the calls of justice, to the redress of wrongs, to the wants and sufferings of the poor. But what if we are right in believing them to be true? And doubtless it will be a bad day for Christian preaching when it is not moved by wrong, or forgets the comfortless troubles sake of the needy and the deep sighing of the poor, and the patient abiding of the meek. It is always the time to do thisit is eminently the time to do it now. Who taught us this sympathy with suffering? Who but He Who came to make us the sons of God? He came also first of all to seek the lost. When for nearly nineteen hundred years men have done without Christ, and have risen to a higher morality and a more disinterested benevolence, it may be time to tell us to do without Him; but that time is not yet.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE CENTRAL FACT OF THE WORLDS HISTORY
The coming of Christ into the world is the central event of its history. The event is here presented in three aspects.
I. The period at which Christ came.The fullness of the time. Christ came at the very period originally decreed by Godnot a day later or earlier. Hence it is called the fullness, or filling up, of the time.
(a) It was the fullness of prophecy.
(b) It was the fullness of preparation. Christ was ever ready to come, but man was not prepared to receive Him.
(c) It was also the fulness of expectation.
II. The manner in which Christ came.He came:
(a) By Divine commission. God sent forth His Son.
(b) In human nature. He was made of a woman. By this we are to understand His assumption of our nature, His profession of true humanity.
(c) Under legal subjection. He was made under the law that He might endure its penalty and obey it for us, and fully satisfy all its claims.
III. The end for which Christ came.
(a) Redemption. To redeem them that were under the law.
(b) Adoption. He came also to secure for us adoption, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Illustration
Man was made to know and to love the living God, and the living God, Who had made man, meant Himself to be known and loved by His creatures. Man was lifted up from being the head of the visible creation here, from being the noblest and most richly endowed with gifts and powers of all living beings on earth, to feel that he belonged to a world beyond the bounds of mortality and sight, that he had to do with the righteousness and the love of the Everlasting and the All-Merciful, that he might hope, in spite of sin and pain and death, to be of the family of the Holiest in the land of the living. Long before our Lord came the formation of mans ideal was laid in the first and great Commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Gal 4:4. -But when the fulness of the time was come; introducing the opposite condition. For , see under Eph 1:23. It is the time regarded as having filled up the allotted space, or itself filled up with the inflow of all the periods contained in the of the father. The one clause is parallel to the other. The of the heir lasts till the of the father arrives; our spiritual bondage expires with the advent of the fulness of the time-God’s set time. The nonage of the church was the duration of the Mosaic covenant. But not till the last moment of its existence, when its time was filled like a reservoir with the last drop, was it set aside, and the ripe or full age of the church commenced- , Mar 1:15. The fulness of the time was also the fittest time in the world’s history. See under Eph 1:10.
-God sent forth His Son, that is, from Himself. Many passages of Scripture assert this truth of the mission of Christ from the Father. The verb is a double compound. He sent forth His Son, so named here with a reference to the subsequent : through His Son they pass from servants into sons. Christ came not without a commission: the Father sent Him; and He undertook the mission, came in love, did His Father’s will, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He was with the Father as His Son prior to His mission-His pre-existence at least is clearly implied, but not impersonal, as Baur (Paulus, p. 628), or only ideal, according to the representation of Philo (Leg. Allegor. p. 139, Opera, vol. i. ed. Pfeiffer).
-born of a woman. The reading , defended by Rinck, has only a very slender support, and is found in no uncial MS. (Reiche). The preposition indicates origin: Mat 1:18; Joh 3:6; Winer, 47. No specialty is expressed in , for the reference is not to the virgin birth of our Lord. The meaning is not de virgine sponsa (Schott). Nor are Theophylact and OEcumenius justified in regarding the phrase as formally directed against Docetism- .
The clause, while it contains the profound mystery of the miraculous conception, does not give it prominence. It says nothing of the supernatural, save the fact of the divine mission and the incarnation, for it had no immediate connection with the apostle’s argument. It is the phrase employed to describe human birth in Hebrew: Job 14:1, Mat 11:11; as Augustine says, Mulieris nomine non virgineum decus negatur, sed femineus sexus ostenditur. But there is an implied exclusion of human fatherhood, though not a formal expression of it as Calvin maintains; but he adopted the reading factum ex muliere of the Vulgate,-factum being by many of the Latin fathers, as Tertullian (De Carne Christi xv.), regarded as in contrast with natum, and ex with per. So Estius, Calovius, Perkins. But the phrase born of a woman (, not ), though not intended for the purpose, furnished a fair argument against Docetism,-the implying , as Basil says, De Spiritu Sancto 5.12, p. 13, Opera, tom. iii., Gaume, Paris. While the previous clause assumes His pre-existence, this asserts His genuine humanity. But Hegel’s philosophy ventures a transcendental commentary: God sent His Son-Das heisst nicht Anderes als, das Selbst-bewusstseyn hatte sich zu denjenigen Momenten erhoben, welche zum Begriff des Geistes gehren, und zum Bedrfniss, diese Momente auf eine absolute Weise zu fassen. See Mansel’s Bampton Lectures, v. Schelling philosophizes away the fulness of the time thus: Die Menschenwerdung Gottes ist also eine Menschenwerdung von Ewigkeit; apparently identifying the incarnation with what divines call the eternal generation.
-born under the law. 1Ma 10:38. The phrase is more common with the simple verb of existence-ch. Gal 3:25, Gal 4:21, Gal 5:18. In classic usage a dative is often employed. Rost u. Palm, sub voce. It would be forced to change the meaning of this second , and render it with Scholefield, made subject to the law; or with Luther, unter das Gesetz gethan. So also Calvin, Winer, Usteri, Wieseler. For to change the meaning would lose the emphasis involved in the repetition. Christ was not only born a man, but He was born a Jew-one of the seed of Abraham. He was a member of the Hebrew commonwealth by birth, and by the fact of that birth was under the law; so that He was circumcised, presented in the temple by Mary, and baptized by John; and He worshipped in the synagogue, kept the Sabbath, regarded ceremonial distinctions, observed the great feasts, and paid the tax of the half-shekel. The apostle does not mean that after becoming man He did, by a distinct and additional voluntary act, place Himself under the law, but that by His very birth He became subject to the law whose claims upon Him He willingly allowed.
According to promise and prophecy, salvation was to be of the Jews. The woman’s Seed was to be specially the Seed of Abraham, through the line of Isaac and Jacob, of the tribe of Judah, and the family of David. He was a minister of the circumcision, being sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And the purpose is then described-
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Verse 4. Fulness of the time means the time designated by the Father when his minor children (the Jews under the Mosaic Dispensation and the Gentiles under the Patriarchal Dispensation) were to be considered “of age” and ready to receive the full enjoyment of His provision for his children. That event was to be accomplished by the ushering into the world of His “only begotten Son” (see the comments at Luk 1:35 in volume 1 of the New Testament Commentary). Made is from GINOMAI, which has a wide range of meanings in the New Testament. As it applies to an intelligent creature, the proper one of Thayer’s definitions is, “to become, i. e., to come into existence, begin to be, receive being.” In this verse it means that the Son was brought into being in this world through the use of a woman. (Again see the comments cited in the parentheses above.) Under the law. Jesus was born, lived and died while the law was in force, for it was not entirely replaced until Pentecost in Acts second chapter.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Gal 4:4. When the fulness of the time came, i.e., when the period appointed by the Father (Gal 4:2) till the coming of Christ and the age of manhood was filled up or completed. This period was fixed in the eternal counsel of God with reference to the development of the race. The words fulness of the time express, as in a nutshell, the whole philosophy of history before Christ, and the central position of the incarnation. The ancient history of Jews and Gentiles was a preparation either direct or indirect, positive or negative, divine or human, for the coming of Christ, and Christ is the turning point of history, the end of the old, and the beginning of a new world. Hence we begin our era with His birth. He himself commenced his preaching with the declaration, Mar 1:15 : The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. The Saviour could not appear in any other country, nor at any other time, either sooner or later, nor in any other nation, according to the order of divine government and the preordained harmony of history.
Sent forth his Son, who, therefore, must have existed before the incarnation in heavenly glory with the Father. Comp. Col 1:15-19; Joh 1:1.
Born of a woman, is no allusion to the mystery of the supernatural conception (=of a virgin), but expresses simply the realness of the incarnation or Christs true humanity. Comp.
Job 14:1, man that is born of a woman; and Mat 11:11, among them that are born of women. Every reader knew, of course, who the woman was. The absence of any further allusion to Mary in the Epistles of Paul, who never even mentions her name, goes to show that the excessive veneration of the holy Virgin, as it obtains in the Greek and Roman churches, arose after the Apostolic age. We meet it first in the apocryphal Gospels and then among the fathers of the fourth or fifth centuries, when the term mother of God came into general use.
Born under the law (the accus. in Gr. implies the motion or transition from the preexistent state into the state of human subjection to the law) is more specific, and defines the humanity of Christ as to its national and religious aspect. He was not only born of a woman, i.e., a true man, like all others, but a full member of a particular nation and the Jewish theocracy, and hence subject to all its religious ordinances and obligations, in order to redeem those who were under the legal covenant. A Gentile could not have saved the world from the curse of the law; in Israel alone all the historical conditions were at hand; and hence, salvation is of the Jews (Joh 4:22), that from them it might pass over in proper order to the whole race.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
That is, “When the fulness of time was come, which God the Father had appointed for the finishing of the legal dispensation, and for the abolishing the ceremonial rites, God sent forth from himself the Son of himself, his only begotten Son, made, that is, born of a woman, made under and obedient to the law, subjecting himself both to its precepts and its curse, to redeem them who were under the law, and discharge them from the curse and malediction of it; that we believers, we the members of the Christian church, might receive the adoption of sons, without any observance of circumcision, or other ceremonial rites.”
Observe here, 1. That Christ was God’s Son, his own Son, the Son of himself, as the original calls him, Rom 8:3, his Son, not barely in regard of his miraculous conception, or in regard of his sanctification and mission, or in regard of his resurrection and exaltation, or in regard of that endeared affection which the Father bare unto him, but in regard of his essence and nature, as begotten by him; his Son, by eternal and ineffable generation; being for nature co-essential, for dignity co-equal, and for duration co-eternal with the Father.
Observe, 2. That Christ, God’s own Son, was sent forth by God the Father: God sent forth his Son.
This sending of the Son doth,
1. Pre-suppose his pre-existence before his incarnation; for if he had not had a being, he could not have been sent: It supposes also his personality, and that he was a person; not an operation or manifestation only, for that could not be sent; and that he was a person really distinct from the Father; for how else could one send the other?
2. God’s sending of Christ doth imply his ordaining, constituting, and appointing Christ from all eternity to come into the world; also his fitting and qualifying of him from his incarnation, and his authorizing and commissionating of Christ to take our nature upon him, and in that nature to do and suffer for us, as our pattern, and as our surety.
Observe, 3. That Christ, God’s own Son, sent forth by God the Father, was made of a woman, did really assume and take upon him our flesh, and was made manifest in our nature: It was not an undigested unshapen mass, or lump of flesh, that Christ assumed, but that flesh was organized and formed into a perfect body, having the same parts, members, lineaments and proportions which ours have; St. Paul calls it, the body of his flesh Col 1:22; a body, to shew the organization of it; and a body of flesh, to shew the reality of it.
Observe, 4. That the season in which Christ was sent forth, was not in the beginning of time, nor at the end of time, but in the fulness of time. He came not in the beginning of time, to excite his people’s affections and longing desires for his coming, and to teach them to prize him the more when come. He stayed not till the end of time, lest the faith of his church and people should have failed; the patriarchs believed in Christ to come, the apostles believed in Christ then present among them, and we believe in Christ as come, and gone again to heaven. Thus, in all differences of times past, present, and to come, faith had, has, and will have its suitable work, and proper employment.
Observe, 5. That the great end of God in sending Christ unto us, and the gracious design of Christ in his undertaking for us, was our redemption from the bondage and curse of the law, and our adoption into the number of God’s children: To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Gal 4:4-7. But when the fulness of time Appointed by the Father, (Gal 4:2,) and marked out by the predictions of the prophets for the accomplishment of this great event; was come And we were arrived at the age proper for our entering on our adult state, and being put in possession of the promises, by the introduction of the gospel dispensation; God sent forth From heaven into our world; his Son Miraculously made, or rather, born, as the word may, with equal propriety, be translated; because, although Christ, as to his body, or his human nature in general, might be said to have been made of a woman, and of the seed of David, (Rom 1:3,) yet as he was the Son of God, sent forth from the Father, he was not made at all, much less of a woman. See on Heb 1:3-6; Heb 7:3. Or the clause may be read, made flesh of a woman, namely, of a virgin, without the concurrence of a man. Made under the law Under its discipline, in all its rigour; subject not only to the precepts, but to the curse of the law, even the Mosaic law; to redeem them that were under the law From the curse of it, which he bore in their stead, and from that low, servile state in which they were before; and that he might bring them into a happy liberty from any future obligation to observe its ceremonial institutions. It must be observed, however, that the apostle had not only the Jews in his view here, but the Gentiles also, as is evident from Gal 4:8, where they are addressed in particular. The law from which all are redeemed, or bought off, was not the law of Moses alone, but the law of nature, as a rule of justification: see note on Gal 3:13. From both these laws, with the religious institutions attached to them, Christ hath redeemed mankind by his death, that he might place them under the gracious dispensation of his gospel. That we Whether Jews or Gentiles, who believe; might receive the adoption of sons Might stand related to God, not only as his people, his true and spiritual worshippers, his subjects and his servants, but also as his sons and daughters; might be peculiarly near and dear to him; made partakers of his nature, favoured with his special guidance, protection, and care; might have continual liberty of access to him and intercourse with him; might have all our wants, ghostly and bodily, supplied by him here, and might be constituted joint heirs with his beloved Son of the heavenly inheritance hereafter. See on Joh 1:12; Rom 8:14-17. Observe, reader, it is the privilege of true believers in the present life to have the assurance of Gods love, peace of conscience, protection from their spiritual enemies, assistance in times of trial and temptation, and the certain hope of eternal life. And because ye are thus made his sons By adoption and regeneration; God hath sent forth From heaven, as he sent forth his Son from thence; the Spirit of his Son The very same Spirit of truth, holiness, and consolation, which dwelt in his Son; into your hearts To take up his abode there; crying, Abba, Father Enabling you to call God your reconciled Father in truth and with assurance, and to call upon him both with the confidence and temper of dutiful children. The Hebrew and Greek word signifying father are here joined together, to express the joint cry of Jews and Gentiles. Wherefore thou Who believest in Christ, and art a true member of the gospel church, whether born a Jew or a Gentile; art no more No longer; a servant As formerly, in a state of bondage, whether to the legal dispensation of Moses, or to the law of nature, and the ceremonial institutions attached to it, by custom or divine appointment; but a son Of mature age; and if a son, an heir of God Entitled to the everlasting inheritance, and even to the enjoyment of the all-sufficient God himself; through Christ Through his sacrifice and intercession, and my interest therein by faith.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
but when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Verse 4
The fulness of the time; the full time predicted.–Made under the law; born a. Jew, and consequently under the Mosaic institutions.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
In God’s time all came to pass. The “fulness” of time relates to the completeness of time. In God’s timing – His perfect timing the cross occurred. Not a moment sooner than planned and not a moment later than planned. The term is used of a ship that is full of not only its load, but loaded with its crew, soldiers and all that is needed for sailing – a full compliment.
In God’s full time table, He had His son present Himself to the Romans for crucifixion.
In Bible College a professor took an entire class period to present the fact that Christ came at the most opportune time in history. He presented from history the climate, the geographics, and the politics of the time, and it was obvious that the timing was perfect, the setting was the most advantageous, the Christ was on time. (No, I don’t have the notes on the class to share with you, sad to say.)
See also Rom 8:15; Eph 1:5 for further study.
I would wonder of the significance of Paul adding the phrases “made of a woman, made under the law,” to this verse. Why would he add this information at this point? I have to wonder if there weren’t some aspects of the Judaizers teachings that were defective in the humanity of Christ and possibly in the thought of how Christ related to the law. I see no other reason for him to include this information.
It may be to emphasize the fact that in the fullness of God’s time He made Christ of a woman, and He made Christ under the law – the fact that God determined all of this, that nothing was accidental or by chance.
Verse five (“To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”) seems to add to the thought that we have considered which teaches that the Old Testament saints were not fully “vested” in their salvation. They still needed redemption and adoption for Paul places them with himself as needing these things. Christ in the fullness of time accomplished these things for the Old Testament saints so that they could finally be that complete “part of God’s family.”
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
4:4 {2} But when the {c} fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a {d} woman, made under the law,
(2) He utters and declares many things at once, that is, that this tutorship was ended at his time, in order that curious men may stop asking why the schoolmastership lasted so long. And moreover, that we are not sons by nature, but by adoption, and that in the Son of God, who therefore took upon him our flesh, that we might be made his brethren.
(c) The time is said to be full when all parts of it are past and ended, and therefore Christ could not have come either sooner or later.
(d) He calls Mary a woman in respect of the sex, and not as the word is used in a contrary sense to a virgin, for she remained a virgin still.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
God, the father of the child in the illustration, sent forth Christ when He determined the time was right.
"It would seem that ’when the time had fully come’ (RSV, NIV) does not mean that a certain divinely appointed period had elapsed (so NEB?), or that certain divinely ordained events had to transpire (cf. 2Th 2:3 ff.), or that God sent his Son into the world when all the conditions were ripe for his appearance. In view of the fact that the word ’came’ denotes in the context (cf. Gal 3:23; Gal 3:25) the eschatological event of the coming of Christ and of the principle of justifying faith, the thought is rather that the appearance of the Son brought the ’fulness [sic] of the time,’ marking the end of the present aeon (cf. Gal 1:4) and ushering in the future aeon." [Note: Fung, p. 184.]
Redemption has a double aspect: it delivers from bondage to the law, and it delivers to sonship. God sent His Son to free those children whom the Law held in bondage and to elevate them to the status of full sons. In Roman culture the father determined the proper time to conduct the ceremony of passage. He took his child out from under the tutelage of his professional guardians and made him a free son. Normally he did this when his child turned 14. [Note: For more information about the Jewish, Greek, and Roman customs involving a son’s rite of passage, see Boice, p. 471.]
Paul referred to both Christ’s divine nature ("His Son") and human nature ("born of a woman"). The Messiah was born under the Mosaic Law that He alone fulfilled by keeping it perfectly (cf. Mat 5:17).
"Verses 4-5 contain one of the most compressed and highly charged passages in the entire letter because they present the objective basis, the Christological and soteriological foundation, for the doctrine of justification by faith." [Note: George, pp. 299-300.]