Description
Advent Meditation: The Fullness of Time and Our Adoption as God’s Children
In today’s Advent meditation, we explore a p… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
Today’s Advent Meditation is a fantastically compressed bit of doctrine from Galatians 4, verses 4 to 5. 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.
The fullness of time, of course, came when Jesus was born. God sent his Son from woman, from the human line, born under the law, he was a Jew, but from that position, he redeems all of us away from the law. The law is fulfilled on our behalf.
And this means that we aren’t anymore going to be slaves to the law. We still should fulfil God’s moral law. He is a moral being, and we are made in his image to make moral choices. But the consequences of failing to fulfil every part of the law, those consequences fell on Jesus, so that they don’t have to fall on us.
And if that were not enough, what God did, through the birth that we’re celebrating at Advent time and through the death of Christ and resurrection that we celebrate at Easter time, beyond that, what he did was to give us this opportunity to be adopted into his family so that we become sons of God. There isn’t really any higher status that we can possibly ever attain in our lives than that, being God’s children.
And that adoption gives us an inheritance. We are now part of God’s family. The curse of the law is broken, and we are free and clear to run into the arms of our heavenly Father.
We still live in a fallen world that suffers the ongoing consequences of sin and law breaking. But for us, in eternity, there will be no more penalty for sin. That’s what Jesus came to do, and that is one of the reasons we celebrate at this time of year.
Father God, we celebrate your son today. Amen.
