4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
We have already said that the teaching in this section of the epistle is true both dispensationally, in terms of the history of the Jews as the people of God, and also individually, and that the historical sequence, in which the Jews were 'shut up unto faith', by being 'shut up under sin', repeats itself also in the life of the individual, who is in the same kind of way brought to an end of himself, and thus to the place where he is ready and able to hear the word of deliverance and liberation in the gospel. There is a fullness of the time for man in that sense also. When we are brought to an end of ourselves by the work of the Law, or by other varied means - the disciplines, frustrations, disappointments of life - then is the time that God can meet us in mercy. There was a fullness of the time for the prodigal son, and it came when he came to himself; until that point was reached, nothing could happen to him in the way of a change of heart. As our forefathers would have said, the Law has its 'killing work' to do before grace can make alive. There has to be the 'shutting up' unto Christ before we can truly experience His grace. In this sense it is the poor in spirit - those who have been broken down and brought to an end of all self-trust so that there is nothing else we can do save put our trust in Christ - that are truly blessed with salvation. This is simply another way of saying that we must die in order to live (cf 2:19), and we may see here the justification for the kind of preaching that disturbs and hurts and wounds before it brings the healing balm of the gospel. These necessary preliminaries to the work of grace in the soul deserve more consideration than they have often been given, and the neglect of them may well explain why so much gospel work today seems to be abortive and non-productive. Suppose we have our times wrong?