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)