In the Fullness of Time: Incarnation | Galatians 4:4-5
Brian Hedges | December 4, 2022
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Galatians 4. This is the second Sunday of Advent, and last week we began a series in Advent called “In the Fullness of Time.” Our pastor for discipleship, Brad O’Dell, preached that first sermon, and the focus was really on anticipation. He talked about the meaning of Advent and living in anticipation of Christ. He really dug into this phrase from Galatians 4, “the fullness of time,” and showed us that this means that the age to come has dawned in the advent of Jesus Christ.
In fact, you might remember if you were here last week, there was this chart that Brad put up, and I think this is helpful to orient us this morning. It’s this chart that shows that we live in the overlap of the ages. The age to come has invaded this present age, and we live in the overlap of the ages. As we live in this present time with the age to come having dawned on us in Jesus Christ, we do three things.
We remember; we look back to what Jesus Christ has done for us in his first advent. We also anticipate, as we look forward and we kind of enter into the hopes of the people of God in the Old Testament as they were hoping for the coming Savior, and now we’re hoping for the second advent, the second coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Then thirdly, we realize, as we seek to bring to reality the things that are true of us in Christ, our life and our hope that are given to us in Christ.
As I was reflecting on this this week, I thought it might be appropriate to call these the acts of saving faith: to remember, to anticipate, and to realize. These are the characteristic heart orientations or dispositions of believers. This is what believers do. Believers remember Christ and they anticipate Christ, they look forward to Christ’s coming again and they seek to live in the reality of the promises of God in the here and now.
These are the acts of faith. But Scripture both describes for us the acts of faith and also describes for us the object of our faith. It’s important for us to give attention to both of those things: the acts of faith and the object of faith.
What I want to do this morning is think about the object of our faith, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. If last week the focus was on anticipation, today the focus is really on Jesus the Son and the incarnation, and it’s this second couple of phrases or clauses in Galatians 4.
I want to read this passage, Galatians 4:4-5, and then in the course of this sermon we’ll bring in a few other passages as well to help us understand who this Jesus, the Son of God, is. Let’s read the text, Galatians 4:4-5. It says, “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.”
This is God’s word. This is a wonderful passage of Scripture where the whole gospel is really compressed into just a couple of verses. This morning we’re focusing on these phrases, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman.”
What I want to do is talk about Jesus the Son of God as the great object of our faith. I want to frame it in three exhortations, three ways that we are to relate to Jesus as Son. We might say it this way:
1. Know the Son
2. Trust the Son
3. Proclaim the Son
I want to do this by grounding each one of these exhortations in one of the three places in Galatians where Paul makes reference to Jesus as the Son of God.
1. Know the Son
First of all, know the Son. Who is this one that Paul refers to as the Son in Galatians 4? “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.” Who is this Son, and what do we mean when we use this phrase “Son of God”?
In this first point is where all of the theological heavy lifting will be. I just want to unpack for you this phrase “Son of God.” All of us are familiar with the phrase, we sing it in our Christmas songs when we speak of belief in Jesus. We speak of Jesus as the Son of God. But what does that mean? What does it mean when we think of Jesus as the Son of God?
I want to suggest three things that it means.
It means, first of all, that he is the Messianic Son
Secondly, that he is the divine Son
Thirdly, that he is the incarnate Son
(1) I think we assume those last two things are very important, but we maybe miss this, that he is the Messianic Son. There are some scholars, some theologians who have given a lot of attention to this—Graham Goldsworthy and D.A. Carson wrote whole books on this phrase “the Son of God.” These authors and others show us that we best understand this phrase in the New Testament when we understand the Old Testament background to the promise that God would send a Messiah, that he would send this anointed one, this deliverer, and that Jesus, his Son, is the one who fulfills this.
In fact, we might say that Jesus fulfills three particular Old Testament themes that are connected to this phrase “Son of God”, and those themes are creation, exodus, and kingdom. In each one of those themes there are places in Scripture that connect the phrase “Son of God” to this theme in Scripture. Let me just show you.
With creation: in the Old Testament, Adam is called the image-bearer of God, the one who was created in God’s image, but when you get into the New Testament, in Luke 3 in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, the genealogy ends in a very interesting way. In Luke 3:38 it says, “. . . the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” So Luke says that Adam is the son of God.
I think the reason he’s doing this is to show us how Jesus is going to become the second Adam, but he’s reminding us that Adam, the first human being, was created in this special relationship with God. He was the son of God on earth. He was this representative, this image-bearer of God, the head of the old creation. So the creation theme is present in that phrase.
Secondly, you have the exodus theme. We’ve just done a series this fall in the book of Exodus; we’ve covered the first eighteen chapters. Maybe you’ll remember that in Exodus 4, when Moses is given this commission to go to Pharaoh and to say, “Let my people go,” you have the first reference to the nation of Israel as God’s son. It goes like this, Exodus 4:22-23: “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.”’”
Isn’t that interesting? Here is a whole nation, the people of God, and yet collectively, God says, “Israel is my son.” So Israel is understood collectively to be the son of God.
Then you have another theme, the theme of kingdom. It’s kind of interesting that as you read the Old Testament, it’s very, very rare that an individual is called a son of God. That’s rare. It’s a collective title for the whole nation of Israel. But when you get to 2 Samuel 7, with Israel’s greatest king, King David, David wants to build a house for the Lord, he wants to build a temple for the Lord, and you remember that the Lord says to him, “David, you’re not going to build a house for me; I’m going to build a house for you. Instead of you building me a temple, I’m going to give you an heir, I’m going to give you a son, and this son is going to sit on the throne forever; he’s going to reign over my people forever.” He calls this heir his son.
You see it in 2 Samuel 7:12. God says, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.”
Here is an individual, a king, who will be the son of God. Of course, in the immediate context it refers to Solomon, and Israel reaches its greatest splendor as a kingdom under King Solomon. But by the end of his reign Solomon has turned to idolatry, and then the kingdom splits in two. You have a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom, often at war with one another, never really reunited again under a Davidic king, and we are left at the close of the Old Testament wondering, Who is the king who’s going to reign forever over God’s people?
You see these themes of creation, exodus, and kingdom. These are themes that are looking for a resolution in someone who will come and who will be the son of God in every one of these senses. Jesus is the resolution to each one of those themes. Jesus is the second and the last Adam; he is the one who fulfills the creation theme as he comes to be the head of a new creation. Just read Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.
Jesus is also the new and the true Israel. When you read the gospel records (this is especially true in the Gospel of Matthew), Jesus lives the story of Israel. Just as Israel went through the Red Sea, Jesus goes through the waters in his baptism. Just as Israel was tempted for 40 years in the wilderness, Jesus is led away into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. Just as Israel receives the law of God at Mount Sinai, so in Matthew 5 Jesus ascends the mountain and begins to expound the law to his disciples. He’s seen to be the new Moses, the new Israel, the true Israel, the one who lives the story of Israel, and at every point where Israel failed Jesus succeeds.
Of course, Jesus is the true Son of David. He is the one who fulfills all of the Davidic promises. In fact, when the apostle Paul begins perhaps his greatest letter, the letter to the Romans, he says initially that this letter is concerning the gospel, and he says it is “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ.” So, even in the book of Romans Paul casts the whole person and work of Jesus Christ in terms of his Davidic role as the heir of David.
Jesus fulfills all these themes as the Messianic Son. When we read the phrase “Son of God” in Scripture, all of that should kick in to our understanding.
(2) But he’s not only the Messianic Son, he’s also the divine Son. I think most of us probably assume that. This is, of course, true, and I think gloriously true. You see it nowhere more clearly than in the Gospel of John.
In the Gospel of John, when Jesus is called the Son, it’s understood that he is this one who has existed from all eternity. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Then creation itself is ascribed to him. It says, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
Then in verse 14—we’ve already read it this morning—it says that this word, the word who was in the beginning with God and was with God and was God, this word has become “flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” He is the divine Son, the word who pre-existed, the one who was with God from all eternity; and he is the Son of God, the divine Son.
In fact, it’s right here in Galatians 4. When Paul says that God “sent forth his Son,” it’s implied here that the Son already existed. He sent the Son, who had been with him from all eternity, and he sent this Son into the world.
Jesus himself, in his humanity, understood himself in this way. This is really clear, again, in the Gospel of John, in John 17, when Jesus prays that prayer the night before his crucifixion. There’s a place in that prayer where he says, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
So Jesus understands that he existed with God and was loved by God before the very creation of the world.
Of course, we could also go to Hebrews 1, where the writer to the Hebrews talks about how God “in these last days has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world, who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” He is the divine Son, the Son who shows us the very character of God.
Charles Wesley got it exactly right in that great Christmas hymn “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” when he says,
Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of the Virgin's womb:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th' incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Immanuel.
He’s veiled in flesh, but it’s Godhead veiled in flesh, because he is very God of very God. He is the divine Son; he is Jesus our Immanuel. And you remember what Immanuel means? It means God with us.
When we say that Jesus is the Son of God, we mean that he is the Messianic Son; we mean also that he is the divine Son.
(3) And then, of course, it means that he is the incarnate Son. He not only preexisted as the divine word, the eternal Son of the Father, but he was sent, and he was born of woman. He actually came among us.
This means nothing less than that Jesus took on a complete and a full human nature, a human body, a human soul, completely like us in every way except for sin. That means that Jesus, in his humanity, without losing any of his deity, Jesus in his humanity entered into our experience. It means that he entered into suffering, it means that he experienced weakness, it means that he experienced pain, he experienced hunger and thirst. He came into the world as a child, as a baby. As a baby he had to be taken care of, just like any other baby had to be taken care of. This is the great scandal of the incarnation, that God became flesh. It’s the wonder of the whole Christmas story.
We could put these things together and say that they all come together in this phrase “Son of God.” When we speak of Jesus as the Son of God, we mean this: we mean that the divine Son became the incarnate Son in order to fulfill all the promises that were made to the Messianic Son. This is what we celebrate during Advent and at Christmas, the wonder of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Know the Son. This is the content that is behind that phrase “Son of God.”
2. Trust the Son
But it’s not enough to just know the Son; you also need to trust the Son, because frankly, you could articulate all of that that I just described for you and not be a Christian. You could have all of that knowledge, you could have all that information, you could have all that theology, and have it right, and not be a Christian; because it’s not knowing things about Jesus that makes you a Christian, it’s actually trusting in Jesus and what he’s done.
I want us to look at another passage in Galatians where Paul uses this phrase or this title for Jesus, the Son of God. It’s Galatians 2:20. Many of you will know this passage, as Paul talks about our union with Christ, being crucified with Christ and united to him. I’m not going to focus as much on that, but on the second half of the verse. The verse goes like this: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith [or trust] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Paul says, “The way I now live my life is by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” I just want to ask for a minute, what does that mean? What does it mean to trust the Son? What does it mean to live by faith in the Son of God? Again, this is language we use all the time, but have we really stopped and thought through, “What does this mean?” What does it mean to trust in Jesus as God’s Son?
(1) I think it means, first of all, to believe the gospel, to believe the gospel as we’ve been thinking about it this morning. It means to believe the good news. That’s what “gospel” means: the good news. God, because of his deep love for us, sent Jesus into the world to be incarnate among us, to live the life we should have lived, to die the death we should have died, to rescue us through his death, his burial, and his resurrection from the dead. It is to accept that apart from God’s grace given to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are hopeless and helpless. We are lost and undone, unable to rescue ourselves, unable to change ourselves apart from God’s grace given to us in Christ.
But to believe the gospel is also to believe that what Christ has done is sufficient; that Christ has actually paid the penalty for our sins, he’s actually lived the obedient life that was necessary to be lived, and he has now died as a substitute in our place, and that what Jesus has done is completely satisfactory to deal with every debt that we owe.
Not only that, it’s to believe that God out of his love sent Jesus to do this for us, and that God wants to save us, because of his mercy and his grace and his great love for people.
To believe the gospel is not only to believe all of this, but it is to believe that this is for you, that it’s for me, and that I can embrace this.
(2) That really leads to the next thing; it is to entrust ourselves to Christ, to trust the Son. It’s to believe the content of the gospel, but it’s not just believing that content, it’s actually entrusting ourselves to him. That word “faith” carries this idea of entrusting something to someone. If we had time I could show you in other passages in Galatians that show this that it means to be entrusted, like a stewardship.
When we come to believe in Jesus Christ and trust him, it’s not just that we believe information, but it’s also that we put our case into his hands. We put ourselves into his hands. We rest on him, we rely on him, we depend on him. We enter into a relationship with him where we are not looking to ourselves, but we’re looking to him.
You see, it’s the difference between knowing something and trusting something. It’s the difference between, say, knowing that the water is fine and actually jumping into the pool. It’s the difference between knowing that someone has offered you a gift and actually receiving the gift and opening up the package and making it your own. It’s the difference between knowing that here’s a door and actually taking out a key and unlocking the door and then walking through it.
Faith, trusting in Christ, is the jump into the pool. And faith, trusting in Christ, is the unwrapping of the gift. Trusting in Christ is taking the key out of your pocket, unlocking the door, and walking through. To trust in Christ, to live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, is then to make this personal for me, so that I am taking my place among the disciples, the followers of Christ, and I am trusting in him. I am saying to him, “Lord, apart from your mercy, I’m hopeless. I’m helpless. Save me by your grace. I’m trusting what you did for me, and without your help I am lost.”
To live by faith is also to keep on trusting him in everyday life. It’s not just that you trust Jesus once to get saved and then go on with the rest of your life not even thinking about Jesus; it’s that you enter into a relationship with Jesus, and you trust him in your day to day, everyday life. This includes coming to Christ and trusting in him for spiritual needs and material needs and psychological and emotional needs. Whatever needs you have, you’re bringing them into the realm of this relationship with Jesus Christ.
Think of examples of this. You want to live a good life, a holy life; you want to live a life of purity and righteousness and justice. The only way you can do that is by coming to Christ. You trust in Christ. You ask him for the grace to obey, and for the help and the strength to do that. You ask him for the work of his Spirit in your heart to make you more and more like Christ, so that you’re trusting him to be not just your justification, but your sanctification as well.
You think about prayer. We all know that we need this ongoing relationship with God in prayer, but we find it hard to pray. How do you pray? You pray in and through Jesus. You look to Jesus, who is your high priest and your intercessor, your mediator, your advocate, the one who brings you into relationship with the Father, and you pray in Jesus’ name. That’s not just a formula you put at the end of the prayer, it’s actually something that in our hearts and our minds we are consciously depending on Jesus Christ for our relationship with God.
Think about times of suffering, trial, and difficulty in your life. When you need hope, when you need endurance, when you need perspective—when you need something to hang onto so that you don’t feel like you are completely engulfed in the darkness of whatever that situation is—living by faith, trusting in Christ means that you are relying on the promises of God, all the promises of God that are yes and amen in and through Jesus Christ. It means that you believe that he will never leave you or forsake you. You believe that he will work all things together for your good; that he’ll take even the dark threads in your life and weave them into this tapestry of grace that will be beautiful in the end. It’s believing that he will give you grace that is sufficient for your trials and for your needs; that he will walk with you through the fire and through the water, through whatever you go through, the valley of the shadow of death. He is with you in that! It’s to believe that he will not allow you to be tempted or to suffer more than you’re able to bear, but he will strengthen you all the way.
Maybe you’re needing wisdom for transitions in your life. Maybe you’re going through a period of life where there are major decisions to make, life-changing decisions to make, and you don’t know what to do. What do you do? How do you walk by faith in those situations? You do it as you ask the Lord for wisdom and you trust his promise that if anyone asks for wisdom, he will give generously.
It means that you believe the promise that if you ask you will receive, and if you seek you will find, and if you knock the door will be opened. It means that you trust the clarity of the word of God, so that you walk within the parameters of what God has said: “This is the way; walk in it. This is what’s right. This is off limits, this is forbidden, but here’s a good path. Here are choices that you can make that fit within the realm of God’s will.”
It means that you trust in his wise providence to guide you and to guard you and to protect you. It means that you trust in God’s Holy Spirit to work in your heart, to direct your heart in the right way, your thoughts and your desires, to lead you in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake.
You see, we need a kind of faith that’s not just a one-time decision, and we need a kind of faith that’s not just for Sundays. We need a kind of faith that will see us through all of the decisions and all of the variable things that happen in our lives on a Monday-Saturday. It’s day by day walking with God.
Then listen: to live by faith is also to continue in the faith. It’s to keep on growing in your faith. Paul exhorts us to “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel.” Jude exhorts us to “be building yourselves up in your most holy faith.” So your faith is like a muscle, and you exercise that muscle, and as you exercise the muscle it grows, it gets stronger, so that your faith can be a stronger faith, stronger than it was last year, stronger than the year before that; so that your faith year by year grows stronger and stronger and stronger as you trust in the Lord.
Then, to live by faith (this is the last thing) is—get this—to be more focused on Christ, the object of our faith, than on ourselves. Be more focused on him.
It’s good and it’s right for us to be thinking about the acts of faith. We did that last week, we’re doing that a little bit now. It’s good to do that. But especially what we need to see is Christ as the object of our faith, because what really carries us through is not the strength of our faith, but it’s the strength of that which we place our faith in.
Let me give you a simple illustration. Many people have used this in the past. Maybe you’ve heard it before. But think about a bridge. Let me show you a picture of two different bridges.
This is a rope bridge that looks like it’s about to fall apart. How many of you would feel comfortable walking on this bridge? Not too many hands. (There are a few of you that are completely lacking in common sense!) I don’t want to walk on that bridge, because that bridge does not look like it has the strength to support me, right?
But here’s another bridge. Everybody knows this bridge, the Golden Gate bridge. How many of you would feel comfortable driving across this bridge? Let me see your hand. Every hand should be up now, okay!? This bridge is sturdy; this bridge is steadfast; this bridge is able to support your weight.
Just think about it for a minute. It is possible that someone could convince themselves—they could talk themselves into believing that this rope bridge is going to support their weight, and they might even be foolish enough to convince themselves that it’s going to support the weight of a car or something like that. They venture on with the strength of faith onto the rope bridge, driving a car. You know what’s going to happen? That bridge is going to collapse beneath him, because the bridge itself is not strong enough to hold him.
On the other hand, a really anxious, fearful kind of person might have a panic attack as they’re driving across the Golden Gate bridge, because their faith is not very strong. But is that going to affect whether the Golden Gate bridge is going to hold them up or not? It’s not going to affect it at all, because it’s not the strength of their confidence in the bridge that supports them, it’s the bridge that supports them.
This is what I want you to get this morning. This is the big takeaway. It is not the strength of your faith in Jesus Christ that saves you, it is Jesus Christ, the object of your faith, who is strong, who saves you. What you need is not so much to look to your faith as to look to Jesus, the object of your faith.
If I could just get in my token Spurgeon quote for today; nobody says it better than Spurgeon. That’s why I’m using the quote. Here’s a Spurgeon, a little bit updated; I took the “thees” and “thous” out for this one. Listen to what he said. This is so good.
Spurgeon said, “But remember, sinner, it is not your hold of Christ that saves you, it is Christ. It is not your joy in Christ that saves you, it is Christ. It is not even faith in Christ, though that is the instrument; it is Christ’s blood and merit. Therefore, look not so much to your hand with which you are grasping Christ as to Christ. Look not to your hope, but to Christ, the source of your hope. Look not to your faith, but to Christ, the author and finisher of your faith. If you do that, ten thousand devils cannot throw you down.”
Trust the Son, because he is strong, because he is able to save.
3. Proclaim the Son
We know the Son, we trust the Son, and then the third thing (this one’s short): proclaim the Son.
To know him, to really know him, is to trust him; and to really trust him is to want to share him with others. You see it in one more passage in Galatians. This is the last one I’ll read, Galatians 1:15-16. This is just part of a sentence, but Paul here is relating both his conversion (how he came to Christ) and his calling to be an apostle. I love the way he says this. He says, “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son [in] me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles,” and he goes on to say he did not confer with flesh and blood. He didn’t go to the apostles to get his message; he got it directly from Jesus.
But notice how he describes both his salvation and his commission. His salvation—he says three things. He says, “God set me apart before I was born.” That’s election; that’s God’s sovereign choice. He says, “He called me by his grace.” That is God’s effectual summons, a call to come to Christ. He says, “God was pleased to reveal his Son in me.” Not “to me,” as some translations have it. The word is “in.” It’s the preposition that means “in.” The idea here is that Christ was revealed in Paul in such a way that it was transforming for his life.
Paul says that when this happened, “when he set me apart and he called me by his grace and the Son was revealed in me, it led me to preach Christ to others,” to proclaim the Son.
It just shows us the pattern that we see over and over again in Scripture, that transformation leads to mission. Knowing him leads to proclaiming him. This should be true, just as it was true in Paul’s life, so for us, not as apostles, but still as ambassadors for Christ, as followers of Jesus, we should not only know him and trust him for ourselves, but we should share that message with others.
Listen, if you had a transforming, personal encounter with Jesus Christ, so that you know and you can say, just as Paul said, “He loved me and he gave himself for me and the Son was revealed in me, so that my life was changed,” how could you not want to go share that with others?
We love to talk about what we’re excited about, right? You see a great new movie, you want to tell all your friends about the movie you saw. You went to a wonderful restaurant, and you want to share that with your friends and go with somebody else, take them to the restaurant. Those of you who have grandchildren, you like to show pictures of your grandkids. Why? Because you love your grandkids, and you want to share that love with others. This is the nature of joy in something, is to share that joy with others. That’s the impulse behind evangelism and mission. It’s having come to know him and trust him, love him for ourselves. We now want to proclaim him to others.
Here’s the summary. Know the Son: he is the Messianic, divine, incarnate Son of God. He is the one through whom all of God’s purposes are fulfilled. Know him.
But don’t just know him; trust him. Trust yourself to him. He loved you and gave his life for you. So walk by faith, live by faith in him.
Then, proclaim the Son. If you’ve been called by his grace, share that good news with others. That’s our calling, brothers and sisters, in this Advent season. Let’s keep our eyes on Christ, the object of our faith.
Brian G. Hedges
