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But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. In the name of Jesus.
Dear Saints, the Apostle Paul gives us a marvelous Christmas text in Galatians today. Now we’ve spent the last couple of weeks reflecting on and hearing how the birth of Christ, the Son of God made flesh, is for us and how even from the manger he was looking to and preparing for the cross. And Paul packs so much depth into a single sentence on the incarnation. He says, the fullness of time had come. To say this, that the Lord came and the fullness of time is to say that God had planned and promised His coming from of old.
To say that God sent forth his son is to confess that the son is pre-existent, because one cannot be sent without existing. To say that he was born of woman is to know and confess that our Lord possesses a fully and truly human nature from his mother Mary. Now these truths in the gospel are themselves worthy of an eternity of contemplation and wonder, but Paul doesn’t stop here. Instead, the apostle wants to ensure that we don’t leave out a critical part of the salvation story, which is Jesus’ life.
Now, it’s usually the case that much of our attention is spent on one of these three things: Christ’s birth, his death, and his resurrection. And this is great. This is a good thing because it’s always good for Christian thought to be rightly ordered around these gospel-shaping events. But we should never forget that Jesus’ life is truly a critical part of salvation for us. St. Paul says that Jesus was born under the law to redeem those who were under the law. So the same Lord who gave the law on Sinai now lives as one who is bound by it.
But why does that matter and what does it look like? Now, the most basic answer we can give is that Christ was without sin. And that’s very important, but the difference between our sinfulness and Jesus’ perfection isn’t that he somehow just tried harder than we do, but rather that his human nature and will are perfectly aligned with the divine. See, our human natures are all warped and twisted by sin. And we are unclean, just like we confess every Sunday and we did just moments ago. Because original sin clings to our God-given human nature like a cancer, and it corrupts every one of us.
And as such, our wills, which are bound up with that human nature, corrupted by sin, our wills now desire sinful things that are contrary to God’s will. And so no person after the fall can please God or live a life that even remotely resembles righteousness. Because we are, after the fall, by nature, sinful and unclean. And sinful people idolize themselves and pray to themselves, my will be done. For this reason, God, in his wisdom, has used the law to curb sinful behavior, threatening punishments to those who break his commandments.
And this function of the law, while it does indeed turn us away from some sins, it does not make us love God or His law. In fact, it makes sinners hate it. When the law keeps sinful flesh from its desires by means of making threats, well then sinful flesh is not grateful but rather it’s indignant. Anything done according to the law in this way is done unwillingly and with a grudging spirit.
But not so with our Lord. The human nature and will in Christ are entirely faultless and perfectly in line with the divine will, so that he who gave the law, according to his divinity, could also now live as though under it, according to his humanity. And since this humanity in Jesus is perfect, he loved God’s law and did it without deliberation. Without having to sit and think about, is this the right thing or not?
Consider how Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. They acted in harmony with God’s will, having been given only a single command to not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil from the tree. And before the fall, in that perfection in the Garden, these first parents did not consider. They didn’t even think about the threats of the law, but rather they voluntarily lived according to God’s will and they delighted in it. All their thoughts, words, and deeds were of their own free will in accord with the will of God before the fall. In other words, it was very good.
And that is the humanity that our Lord took up. Fully human by virtue of his blessed mother, the Virgin Mary, and yet blemishless in nature and will because he came not from a human father who is affected by sin but from the Holy Spirit. And so we have our second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born under the law alongside the rest of us in order to redeem us who are under the law.
See, God desires so much that you live with him, that he has covered all the costs and brought you to him freely. Because in order to live with him in eternal paradise, mankind has to love the law and do the law, and thus be faultless before him. Just like he says in Leviticus to Moses, he says, you shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. And then again he says, you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.
Now, from the scriptures especially, but also just from our daily observation, we know that we have profoundly failed in this. So what did God do? Well, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son. And this son, our Lord Jesus, did live out the law. Loving God and serving his neighbor in exact accord with the will of God, doing so not out of obligation or with a grudging spirit, but rather purely out of love.
And in today’s gospel, we see the beginning of this. When Jesus was only eight days old, Mary and Joseph bring him to the temple to be circumcised according to the law. And it’s there that the first drops of blood of Jesus were shed for sinners. And even then, Jesus caused the dimming eyes of an old man to twinkle with new life and joy as he sang of God’s salvation. In fact, four times in our reading, we hear the words according to the law or as it is said in the law, characterizing our Lord’s life, even at the beginning.
Then at the end of our reading, listen to what God says. The favor of God was upon him. And dear saints, that favor of God has been counted to you on account of Christ fulfilling the law, which he has given to you. Out of pure grace, God has counted our sin to Jesus, and he has counted Jesus’ righteous law-abiding life to us. And thus, God looks upon you with favor on account of Christ. In fact, everything Jesus ever did is directly related to our justification.
And for this reason, Paul can write to the Corinthians, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So the requirement of doing and loving the law has been satisfied for us by Christ, who gave up perfection so that we might have it. And on the cross, he took all of our sin and made it nothing so that the wrath of God might be satisfied. Thus we are counted righteous on account of Christ’s life and sinless on account of Christ’s death.
And because of these, we now have the sure hope of eternal resurrected life with God because of Jesus’ own resurrection. Jesus has done all the work needed for you to be righteous and holy in the eyes of God and be an inheritor of eternal life. And that is promised to you in your baptism, in the Word of God.
So what now becomes of our relationship with the law? Because Jesus came to fulfill the law on our behalf, but not to abolish it. Now St. Paul shows us what this means with a practical metaphor. He says, when a child is to inherit an estate that is willed to him by his parents, he cannot simply go and take possession of it and do whatever he wants. Instead, he is guided and tutored and disciplined by servants who are set over him until a time that was set by his father.
Because through the training of these servants and these guardians, the son would learn restraint. And he would learn proper management of the estate so as to not just waste all of the wealth and the whims of careless youth. And in this way, the son is actually much like the servants, who are guided by a set of imposed rules and really have very little control over the estate. Though in fact, the son does own all of it. And it’s only when he comes of age that he finally gets to enjoy a newfound freedom to possess this inheritance, though it was his all along.
Now in the same way, Paul says, before Christ, believers in the Old Testament were under the guardianship of the law, burdened by its works. But yet it’s still true that they had faith in Jesus. The Savior promised in Genesis 3, right after the fall, the seed of Abraham who will bless the nations and the eternal king from David’s line was the very lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And our fathers and mothers in the faith looked to him for our salvation, for their salvation.
And they were all counted righteous on account of their faith in the promises of God and the coming Messiah. Thus the inheritance of forgiveness and eternal life, it always belonged to them. They always had it. But they lived as servants to the law because the fullness of time had not yet come for God to send his son into the world. They were unable to appropriate the New Testament freedom for themselves, and yet they were always and without question heirs to eternal life through Christ.
And when he did come, ushering in the inheritance promised in the testament concerning the Messiah, all those believers were finally vindicated as sons of God by grace through faith, just as we are. So Christians are freed from the coercion of the law and enjoy unrestricted ownership of the benefits of Christ by faith in him.
And as sons of God and co-heirs with Christ, we have the high privilege of calling God our Heavenly Father. Because as a father loves and provides for his children, so does our heavenly father love us dearly and give to us every good and perfect gift from above, having adopted us as legitimate heirs of grace and eternal life.
And because you are sons, Paul explains, you are no longer slaves to the law, but rather you are free to love and serve him and your neighbor of your own will for the sake of Christ who has given you life. As St. John writes, we love because he first loved us. Now this, all of this from Paul, is just a beautiful picture of our life and our freedom in Jesus, who himself taught us the very same thing when he says in John chapter 15, no longer do I call you servants. For the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you.
Dear saints, Jesus calls you friends. And in doing so, he elevates you to the status of fellow heirs according to the promises of God. Jesus has chosen you. He loves you. And he has purchased you from all sin, death, and the power of the devil so that you will live with him in eternal glory.
So what Galatians 4 is a Christmas. And how? Well, it tells us that this Jesus who was born in a manger, he was born to die, but he was also born to live. It tells us that his life matters. And it matters because only through Jesus’ perfect obedience to the law are we counted righteous before God, because he counted his own righteousness under that law as our own.
So we are no longer grudging and groveling servants of the law, but rather we are sons of the gospel, inheritors of the promised seed of Abraham by faith, and the one whose life is our righteousness and whose death is our salvation. Therefore rejoice, dear Christians, because you are called sons of God. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. In the name of Jesus.