Galatians 3: 22-4: 5
Theme: Christmas
THE FULNESS OF TIME
Rebecca Willoughby called this week and she said she had an experience she wanted to share. There was a lady in a store buying her husband’s medicine. She was in line to pay and asked if she could buy half of it because they could not afford the bill. The pharmacist said that she could not, the medicines have to be taken together and at full dosage. She started to cry and did not know what to do. The man behind her, asked how much the bill was. She said, some like $165.00. The man said, "I will pay it." Of course the woman was surprised. She started shaking and crying. He said that he was a Christian and he was doing it in the name of Christ. Rebecca said she had to tell someone and wanted me to know that not everyone was trying to pervert Christmas.
Such stories often move us to tears. If such a story is that powerful, how much more is the story of the coming of our Lord to rescue us from our darkness? Should we not be moved to great emotion by what God has done? Christmas is about joy and celebration. The world celebrates and does not know why. We do! We were condemned in our sin and God chose the most dramatic way to redeem us. God entered a scandal ridden world and became as one of us.
Paul summed it up in Galatians 4:4 "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons." It was no accident that Jesus was born into a scandalous world. It was at the right time, the exact moment in history when it was most effective, God Himself sent forth his Son, born of a woman and born under the law. It was God's full intentions that Jesus should be born under the burdens and trials that we are under. The purpose was redemption.
We are born under the oppression of the Law. The Law is God’s precepts and rules that he gave fallen man to live by. You know, the rules that say, do this and don’t do that. God set forth his Law to guide us. If you want to know what pleases God, see his Law. The purpose of the Law is to tell us what God requires of us to be righteous. But for sinful humanity, the Law became our enemy, our accuser, our judge, our jury. The reason is, as sinners it is impossible for us to keep God’s Laws. We just can’t do it. We cannot earn our salvation by keeping the rules, we break them every time. You know how it works. If you have ever been caught speeding, it really does not matter why, the law is the law and you are guilty and you pay the fine. It is the same with God’s Law. Any sin, any violation of the Law and we are guilty.
So, the Law which was to be our guide, has become our enemy. Ever since Adam and Eve fell in the garden, it has been that way. We do not possess our own righteousness. We can think we are good, we can dream of our good deeds and how they impress God. But, the fact remains, we are sinners.
If you have not come to terms with being a sinner, then you are blind and deceived. What modern humanity needs is not another plan to alleviate suffering, not another set of values. We don't need new leaders to optimistically point the way. We need to come to terms with our sinfulness. We cannot stand up to God. Neither can we work our way to him because, in our fallenness, we are like a broken machine, we just can't function. And we feel it. It manifests itself in depression and in tension and in anxiety and darkness and in so many other ways. We all feel it. But some of us have not named it, it is called sin. We who are under the Law, whose original purpose was to tell righteous men what God requires, now we find ourselves condemned by the Law.
That is not what we want to hear at Christmas. But, if we don’t hear the truth about our sin, then we cannot understand the really Good News of Christmas. God Himself, at the right time, at the exact moment according to his plan, entered human history in order to redeem us. To redeem means to buy out of slavery. Jesus born under the same conditions as we are and he faced the same darkness as we do. He knows our suffering. Yet, He is God in the flesh. Incarnation means that he became flesh and blood like us.
The great mystery is that this is how God chose to redeem us, to redeem us from slavery to sin and destruction. It seems to me that God could have dealt with us in any number of ways, but he chose to be personally involved. And His personal involvement gives him the unique right to be our Lord, our boss. He called us out of our darkness and shame and he made us his own possession. We cannot cry out to God, you don't understand, You are not like me, I am just a man or just a woman. God answers back, but I do know, I do understand, I became one of you.
Jesus was born to redeem us. He came that he might be our salvation. But there is more, he also adopted us, he made us his children. The Bible says that we are heirs of God, his estate belongs to us. In the genealogy of Jesus in the Book of Luke, Luke begins with Jesus and ends with Adam and this is how he puts it, "Adam, the son of God." God fully intended for us to live as sons and daughters of God. He fully intended that we live life in an intimate relationship with the creator of the universe. Sin marred that intention, but salvation restores it. Paul says that we have received the adoptions as sons and as sons, God has sent forth His Spirit to fill us and give us the right to cry Abba, Father. Paul is describing intimate prayer. We do not address God as some cold and distant god. Those who have been redeemed call him Abba, the Aramaic diminutive, the word a child would call his father, something like papa. Redemption restores us. We are no longer slaves to sin, but sons and daughters, heirs of God.
Whatever darkness life has to offer no longer belongs to us because we have been redeemed, if we have come to Christ by faith. God makes us a part of his family. We have a place where we belong. We have a guaranteed future in Christ. We no longer have to be held captive by the depression of our sin or anxiety of not belonging because we now belong to God.
In the fulness of time, God became flesh and dwelt among us. He was immersed into the poverty of humanity. He was born in a barn and laid in a manger. And even then, the shadow of the cross was cast across his makeshift crib. Christmas is tied to the Cross. In our joy and celebration, we need to remember the baby in the manger is Jesus whose body was broken and blood was shed for our sin.