Behold What Wondrous Grace

Galatians 4:4-5

We’ve had many adoptions here at Grace Bible Fellowship, and it is always a joy to see a family embrace a new loved one and a church embrace a new child in her midst.

But as we have seen, adoption is not a simple process. Of course there’s nothing simple about bringing a new person into your family be it by natural means or legal means. Adoption often takes months if not years, loads of paperwork, money, tears.

As I was considering our passage this morning I was thinking about the terminology that God used to describe the timing of our adoption. It too was a long awaited arrival for God’s people. The scripture says it was in “the fullness of time.”

That’s what we’re going to look at this morning and next week as we consider the coming of our Lord. This fullness of time when God sent forth his Son, God the Son, to become, God the man, to redeem us from under the Law and adopt us as his own children.

I found this old hymn by Isaac Watts, I don’t even know if anyone sings it anymore, but the first verse says:

Behold what wondrous grace The Father hath bestowed On sinners of a mortal race, To call them sons of God!

Let us consider this wondrous grace this morning.

Fullness of Time

Have you considered this phrase fullness of time? There is quite a weight of implication in this. This means that time itself has a purpose. For something to be full or filled out, means that it had finally reached its intended point.

My children ask me the craziest question when they don’t like their dinner. “Can I be full?” What does this even mean? Is your belly about to burst?

There’s a sense in which the prophets, the people of God in the Old Testament were constantly saying this phrase every time the new person didn’t turn out to be their blessed hope or long awaited savior. Can this be the fullness of time? No it’s not ready yet.

God had perfectly orchestrated history for this intended purpose: That Christ would come at this exact moment so that he could redeem his people and have us be sons of God.

You know God doesn’t do things too late or too early. As Gandalf says, God’s timing happens “precisely when he means it to.” There is something, I think in our thinking about the incarnation and the cross that should remind us of this fact. God does everything well and perfectly timed.

Incarnation

Paul explains two points about the birth of Jesus. We do not have salvation if we don’t have both of these points.

He says that Jesus was born of woman. Now there’s a lot wrapped up in this. Notice he says that God sent forth his Son born of a woman. Now answer me this. How is someone sent and born? It doesn’t work that way does it? You are either sent, or you are born. You might say “I was given to my mother and father for a reason,” but that’s different than being sent.

Being sent means that you existed prior. Scripture here is telling us that the divine Son of God, the second person of the trinity became human. Jesus is both God and Man. So this is telling something about his nature, who he is.

Now why do we need to know about his nature. Because knowing his nature tells us about what he can do. As God he is holy and righteous. Infinite, perfect. He is equal with the Father. As such he is able to to accomplish an immeasurable salvation.

But also as man he is able to stand in our place. It wasn’t a spirit who was born and went to the cross, it was a man like you and me. One who suffered and died.

He says he was born under the Law.

What does it mean for someone to be born under the Law. It means that a person is subjected to it, to its blessings and its curses. For us, since we are law breakers, we have the curse of the Law on our shoulders when we are born into this world.

There is a holy, righteous standard of God that is based in his perfections that we are measured by. We fell in Adam, and the curse of the Law is over us. That curse is death.

Do you see what this means for Jesus to be born under the Law? He placed himself, as man, in our same condition.

Paul explains earlier in Galatians that the Law acted as a school master before Christ to teach us about the holiness and righteousness of God until the fullness of time came. Christ came under this same school master, not to be taught about God, but to fulfill its purpose.

Redemption

Paul says that there were two purposes for the sending forth of God’s Son. The first of these purposes was to accomplish our redemption.

See he came under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law.

Romans 6 teaches that death has dominion over those who are under the Law. That’s the same message in Galatians. Being under the law, the only way out from it is through death.

Redemption is the language of purchase and transaction. See try as you might there is no price you can pay to redeem yourself from under the Law. You don’t even have the right currency.

We might think of our good works as the proper currency to pay our way out from under the Law, but it’s not. The issue isn’t that we are lacking in funds, we don’t have any of the funds.

This is why God sent forth his Son, it was to pay the redemption price to remove us from under the Law.

The only currency accepted is death. See that’s the wages of sin, it’s death. Jesus came for this reason, to die, and to die on behalf of sinners.

He paid the redemption price by his blood. But his was an infinite, perfect payment. An acceptable sacrifice.

And death could not hold him because he was blameless according to the Law, and by his death he substituted himself for us.

Adoption

You see as difficult and expensive the adoption process is in the United States, it is nothing compared to this. God paid the price of his own son. He looked at the paperwork and handed over the redemption price of his own son that he could receive us as sons and daughters.

This is the second purpose of the coming of our Lord. That we might receive adoption as sons.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this before, but Christian if this doesn’t melt your heart I don’t know what will.

At the resurrection, right after the accomplishment of this fullness of time redemption. Right when God’s people were no longer slaves but sons… The women go to check out the tomb on sunday morning.

They find Jesus alive and worship him and in Matthew 28:10 Jesus says “10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.””

We are no longer slaves. but sons of the Father. We have a perfectly ordained prepared position as full sons, fully citizens in his kingdom and household.

1 John 3:1 “1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.