Christ’s Birth According to Paul - Galatians 4: 1-7

Sunday, December 27, 2020

God’s plan of salvation cannot be understood merely in static terms as a logical system of ideas: revelation, God, human nature, Christ, salvation, church. God’s redemptive work must be understood in the framework of his actions in history. God gave an irrevocable promise to Abraham; 430 years later God gave the law through Moses; at a time God had set, he sent his Son. The relationship of these acts of God in history provides the framework for understanding the redemptive work of God. Of course this does not mean that we should abandon systematic theology; we can develop logical expositions of the meaning of salvation. But we should always remember that the narrative structure of God’s work in history is the substructure of all truly biblical theology.

The confusion of the Galatian Christians was the result of their failure to understand the narrative structure of the redemptive work of God. In their attempt to inherit the blessing promised to Abraham by keeping the Mosaic law, they failed to understand that the Mosaic law had been given 430 years after the Abrahamic promise and could not change the terms of the promise or be a condition for inheriting the promised blessing. In their attempt to make progress in their spiritual life by observing the law after believing the gospel, they failed to understand that supervision under the law ended when faith in Christ came.

At the center of this narrative framework is the narrative is the narrative of the gospel story itself: God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law. Abba is an Aramaic word for “father” used by a child in intimate conversation within the home. When children addressed their father as Abba, they were expressing affection, confidence and loyalty. One of the most remarkable aspect of the life of Jesus was that he addressed God as Abba in his prayers and taught his disciples to do the same. So striking and significant was Jesus’ addressing God as Abba that even in Greek-speaking churches Jesus’ Aramaic word for Father heard as the believers called out to God in prayer. They called hearts, the control center of their emotions and thoughts, that they were children of the Father.

To know at the deepest level of our being that God is our Father and we are his sons and daughters is not the result of theological research or moral achievement, but the result of God’s sending the Spirit of his Son to speak to us and to convince us that despite all our guilt, fears and doubts, the Father of Jesus is our Father too. To know God as our Father in this way is not merely intellectual apprehension of a doctrine, not merely warm feelings about God, but a life-transforming conscious awareness of the reality of our intimate relationship with God our Father.

E. Walter Hensen, Galatians, p. 117, 121 (1994)

In God’s wisdom, the birth of Jesus, the time of His life and teaching, and the period that witnessed the early spread of Christianity took place under unusually propitious conditions. The Graeco-Roman, Mediterranean world of the first century was, in fact, primed for the message proclaimed by the apostles concerning Jesus Christ.

First, the state of Judaism in the first century created very interesting possibilities for a new “Jewish sect” with a message for the world. Because of migrations and the Roman military conquests of the interestamental period, Jews were spread widely throughout the Mediterranean basin. The diaspora of Jews meant that throughout the Roman Empire small communities of “God-fearers” existed who heeded the Ten Commandments, studied the writings of the Prophets, and learned to trust the promises of Yahweh. It was to these communities that the apostles came first and among them that some of the earliest Christian converts were won.

The movement of Jews throughout the Roman Empire also created a favorable legal environment of the spread of Christianity. Civil and military rulers were, on balance, tolerant toward the religious practices of conquered peoples - with one exception: the requirement that all peoples in the empire acknowledge periodically the divine character of Roman rule itself.

It is hard to imagine more favorable political, cultural, philosophical, and religious conditions than those in the first-century Roman empire. When Jesus was born, the empire had just entered a long period of political peace and stability.

Christian missionaries who carried the Gospel from place to place benefited from the political stability of Roman rule, but they may have benefited even more from the cultural homogeneity that Rome fostered. Under the Romans, Greek thought, literature, and language had been made into a universal intellectual currency.

When Paul later leaders of the early church wrote about a message of hope for all people, they did so in koine Greek - the “ordinary” or “common” language that almost everybody with any education at all could use.

Christianity also appeared on the scene at a favorable time in the history of philosophy.

Finally, the Roman world in the first century was desperately seeking a sure word of moral and religious certainty. It was an age torn between religious nominalism and religious fanaticism, between moral license and moral asceticism.

In that first century of the Christian church, it was the brightness of divine glory that drew men and women to Christ. God in His wisdom, however, had prepared not only the Light of the world but also the world for the Light.

Mark A. Noll, “The Fullness of Time,” Table Talk, p. 11-13 (December 1990)