14th June 2023 – Galatians 4:4

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,


Paul has been speaking of the 'coming' of faith, and now he refers to that coming as being in 'the fullness of the time'. This is a tremendous word, in the conception it gives of a divine strategy in the gospel. There was nothing haphazard in the sending forth of the Son of God to be our Saviour. He came at the strategic moment, and that in several ways. It was the fullness of the time in relation to the Jewish people, after the Law had done its work of preparation in them, as Paul has already pointed out, both in the education of the people in the knowledge of sin, and in the preparation of the promised Seed. But it was also a strategic moment in an even wider sense. There was a preparation for the revelation of Christ in the ancient world as a whole, for that world had been opened up for communications and travel by Roman civilisation and law, and there were no language barriers. Never was the problem of communication more completely under control. Not only so: the ancient world was ready for the word of the gospel, for it was a world of despair and frustrated hopes, a lost world. One of its philosophers said of it, 'The best thing of all is not to be born, and the next best thing is to die'. It was a time of utter pessimism. The vision of the man from Macedonia, and the existence of the altar in Athens with the inscription 'To the unknown God' are eloquent symbols of its dark agony, and of the truth penned by Paul to the Corinthians, 'the world by wisdom knew not God'. From the world point of view, God's time was indeed the fullness of the time.