Galatians 4:4 Commentary

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Galatians 4:4

Comments

For Israel, the time of childhood training under the law came to an end when God sent forth his Son into the world. ‘The fullness of the time was come.’ Paul uses this majestic phrase because the sending forth of God’s Son into the world was so much more momentous than the coming of age of any human heir. This was the time of the coming of age not merely of some nobleman’s son but of the whole of humanity, for the end of the administration of the law marked the time when the gospel of Christ would begin to be sent into all the world, and the former restriction that it should only be preached ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Matthew 10:6) was lifted. This was the fullness of time in the eternal plan of God and no event in the history of the world is more significant.The Son of God was conceived in Mary’s womb, but existed from all eternity as the Son ‘whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting’ (Micah 5:2). He was sent into the world to carry out his Father’s commandment to lay down his life for his sheep, and he was obedient even to the death of the cross. He did nothing except at the command of his Father, and spoke the words given to him by his Father. Christ might have bypassed childhood and come as an adult man created immediately and ready for his mission in the same way that he appeared as a theophany before his incarnation, but then his connection with the human race whose nature he had come to put on would have been obscured. The promise was (Genesis 3:15) that the Messiah should be the ‘seed’ or the descendent of the woman and Paul here alludes to the fulfilment of that promise. Next to each other the phrases ‘God sent forth his Son’, and ‘born of a woman’ teach us about the divine and human side of Christ’s nature. They are deliberately put side by side to show us the mystery of the person of Christ who was both God and man.

Application

For our sakes the giver of the Ten Commandments placed himself under his own law and undertook to keep it perfectly. He who freely and willingly does only what is right and good and true and holy, because his character is unchangeably holy and he can do nothing else, in an act of immeasurable condescension placed himself under an obligation to obey the commands he had given to mankind. Although he was truly a man, he was the head of a different covenant to the first Adam and was free from the obligations of the first Adam, but for our sakes he placed himself under the law. Because he had come to redeem us, he had to take on our obligations before God and to make himself fully answerable for us as our surety.

Questions

At the very hour that God had determined, not a moment too soon or too late Christ was born into our world. But why did so long a period of time pass after the fall before the Christ was sent into the world and the Gospel preached to the nations? Scripture does not answer this question directly, but we see how God filled this time. God will not give his glory to another, and mankind had to learn that the greatest struggles of the human mind for wisdom and understanding were fruitless until God revealed his salvation from heaven. All the efforts of Greek philosophy to explain the nature of reality, how we know what we know, and how we should live our lives failed to provide answers that were lasting and satisfactory. In the meantime Israel was led along a path that would instruct the entire human race.

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Galatians 4:4 Commentary and Bible Study