In the Fullness of Time: Redemption | Galatians 4:4-5
Brian Hedges | December 11, 2022
I encourage you this morning to open your Bibles to Galatians 4, as we now turn to God’s Word together. We’re going to think this morning about the very gospel that our friends have been commissioned to proclaim in the name of Jesus. It’s the same gospel by which we are saved and the gospel that we are also charged to share with others.
While you’re turning there, let me remind you of a story that some of you may remember from the 1980s, all the way back to 1987. I remember this when I was a little kid living in Texas, and not too far away from where I lived, in Midland, Texas, and 18-month-old little girl named Jessica McClure had fallen into a well in her aunt’s backyard. Every media outlet in the country covered the story. She had fallen 22 feet below ground, and rescuers were coming around to try to figure out a way to save this little girl. People were glued to their TV sets, watching the news of baby Jessica, hoping that they could read her in time.
Well, that part of Texas is oil country, and so what happened is these oil men came in with their drilling rigs and were able to sink a shaft parallel to that well, 22 feet down. It took them 58 hours, but after 58 hours they were finally able to reach her, to rescue her, and she was saved with very minimal harm to her physical condition.
I believe that that spirit of waiting, followed by celebration, that really characterized thousands of people as they tuned into that story in 1987, that same spirit of waiting is what should characterize us as believers during the Advent season. When we enter into Advent we are trying to enter into the hopes and the promises and the eager anticipation and expectations of God’s people in the Old Testament as they waited for the Messiah, and our own hopes and eager expectations for the second coming of Jesus Christ, when he comes again to complete our redemption.
We’ve been in this series now for several weeks. This is the third Sunday of Advent. Our series has been from Galatians 4:4-5, and it’s called “In the Fullness of Time.” We began by thinking about anticipation. What does “in the fullness of time” mean, and entering into that spirit of anticipation? Last week we talked about the object of our faith, who is Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God, the one who was sent to be our Messiah and our redeemer.
Today we’re thinking about redemption. What is it that Jesus came to accomplish? What did God send Jesus Christ his Son for? We’re going to begin by reading this passage, Galatians 4:4-5, and then we’ll take a few minutes to work our way through this whole concept of redemption, asking some questions about it. Let’s read the text of God’s word, 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.
It’s a very simple outline this morning. I simply want to ask three questions: what, why, and how. 1. What is redemption? 2. Why do we need it? and 3. How do we get it?
1. What is redemption?
This is a word that we use a lot. We are, after all, Redeemer Church, so we talk about Christ as our Redeemer, we talk about redemption. This is theological vocabulary that we use, but what do we mean when we say redemption, and what does it mean to be redeemed?
The particular word that Paul uses in this passage has a very specific connotation. It’s a word that really comes from the marketplace, and it’s a word that means to deliver from harm or from evil, but it’s conceived in terms of buying something back or purchasing something from the marketplace. In fact, the root word here of this word for “redeem” is the word for the marketplace, the agora. So it’s a word that carries this idea of deliverance through a purchase. That’s essentially what we mean.
We have to understand the Old Testament background to this word to really get into this concept of redemption. Those of you who have been with us for the last several months, we’ve been working through the book of Exodus and the events of the exodus, the deliverance of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. That is the great redemptive event in the Old Testament. If you would have asked any Jew if they were redeemed, they would have said, “Yes, we were redeemed when we were delivered from Egypt.” So that’s the first thing we have to understand, that redemption is understood in terms of the exodus event.
You remember what happened. God delivered his people by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and he did it especially through the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, a substitutionary lamb, where blood was shed, and God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over them. I’ll pass over their sins.” And then God set them free and delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
But that exodus event was not only something that the people of God looked back to, but years later, when the nation of Israel was invaded by foreign nations—Babylon and Assyria—and when their people were carried off as prisoners of war, they were living in foreign lands, they were scattered across the world, they were exiles. They were people living in exile, longing to be returned to their homeland. The prophets of Israel pointed God’s people to a new exodus, and they essentially said (you can see this all over the place in Isaiah, for example), that God would come again and he would ransom the captives and he would take them back home, he would make a way through the wilderness, a path in the desert; he would once again bring his people home, and it would be a second exodus, a new exodus.
That’s part of the hope and the longing of the people of God in the Old Testament. They were longing for another redemption, another kind of rescue or deliverance or salvation.
It’s this hope that we sing about when we sing our Advent hymns. In a little while we’ll sing the song,
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
What we’re doing when we do that is we’re remembering that prophetic hope that sustained the people of God in the Old Testament as they waited for redemption.
There’s one other story in the Old Testament that’s also helpful to remember, and it’s the story of the prophet Hosea, one of the minor prophets. Hosea; maybe you’ve read that book in the Old Testament.
Hosea was this prophet whom God gave a really strange assignment. He told Hosea that he was to marry a prostitute, a woman who was immoral, who was an adulterous woman, and it was to symbolize God’s faithful love for his faithless, unfaithful, adulterous people Israel.
You have it in Hosea 3, where the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, show your love to this woman, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods.”
What Hosea does is he goes into the city and he buys her off of an auction block! Here she was, probably stripped naked for all to see in her shame, just hoping that someone with love in his eyes would find her and set her free. Hosea purchases her, and she becomes his wife.
Brothers and sisters, when we think about redemption we have to enter into the emotion of those different stories. Imagine for a moment that you are a slave in Egypt and you’ve been a slave all of your life. All you’ve ever known is slavery. For 400 years your fathers and your forefathers have been slaves. You’re longing for the day when God will fulfill his promises to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and you’re asking, “How long, O Lord? How long before we are redeemed and set free?”
Or enter into the experience of God’s people in exile. There they are; they’ve been deported to Babylon. They’ve lost their homeland, and they’re longing for Jerusalem. They’re longing for the temple, the holy city. They’re looking for the day when God will fulfill his promises once again and there will be this new exodus, a new deliverance, a new day of salvation. They’re crying out, “How long, O Lord, until you deliver your people?”
Or put yourself in the place of Gomer, this woman who becomes the wife of Hosea. There she is, standing on the auction block, full of self-hatred and loathing, just hoping that someone will be kind to her instead of using her and abusing her.
Let me ask you this morning, where is that ache? Where is that hope, that longing, in your life this morning? I think if you look deep into your heart, every single one of you will be able to find it. You think about the things that you’ve suffered, you think about griefs and losses in recent weeks or months or years. You think about a recent medical diagnosis or maybe a long term illness that you’re suffering with or some member of your family is suffering with.
You think about your own wrestling with sin and grief, and the grief of your sin, and there’s something in you that just wants to be done with it once and for all! “Lord, when will the struggle end? When will I be free from temptation?”
You think about your aging body and the aches and pains that come with old age. You think about the heartache of this world, the injustice, the oppression, the division, the calamities, the wars; all of the awful things that we read about in the news every day. You don’t have to look far to find that emotion, to find that ache, that longing, where there’s something in you that says, “How long, O Lord? How long until Jesus comes again and makes all things new? How long before our redemption comes?”
That’s what we long for. We’re longing for God’s redeeming grace that will be consummated when Jesus comes again.
What is redemption? It is deliverance through a purchase or a payment.
2. Why do we need it?
I’ve really already gotten into the answer, haven’t I? We could say, very simply, that when Scripture talks about our need for redemption it has basically three things in mind. It’s redemption from sin, it’s redemption from death, and it’s redemption from the law. We need to be redeemed from sin because our sins are what put us in exile from God. Our sins are what separate us from God. Our sins are what have brought this grief and heartache into the world. In fact, sin is what leads to death! We need to be redeemed from death because of our sins.
You remember that Paul says in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” I think we understand that. Most of us understand that we need to be redeemed from sin, and we know that we need to be redeemed from death. We need resurrection. We need eternal life.
But in this passage we’re looking at this morning, Galatians 4, Paul says that Jesus came, that God sent his Son, Jesus, “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons.” What does it mean to be redeemed from the law, to be redeemed from under the law?
I think to understand that we have to dig a little bit into the context of this book of Galatians. I want you to read with me from Galatians 3, which really sets the context for this wonderful gospel hope that’s given to us in Galatians 4. I’m going to read Galatians 3:16-24, most of the verses in that section.
Here’s basically what’s going on. Paul here is talking about the history of God’s saving purposes in the world, and he’s talking about the promise that God made to Abraham that through Abraham and through his seed, through his offspring, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Then, God’s purpose for giving the law, which he gave about four centuries later. Why did God give the law, and is the law in conflict with the promise? That’s what’s going on in this passage, and in the course of it Paul is asking a question about the purpose of the law. Galatians 3, beginning in verse 16, says,
Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
So you see, there’s a tension. There’s the promise and there’s the law. But does the law somehow nullify the promise? Paul says no. So, what’s the purpose for the law? This is verse 19: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made . . .”
Drop down to verse 21. There’s another question.
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
You see the flow of Paul’s argument here. The law stands for the Mosaic covenant, this Mosaic dispensation, the law given to Moses at Mount Sinai. Paul is saying that the law does not nullify the promise made to Abraham. So what’s the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions, and the law functions like a prison warden, keeping everything locked up under sin until the promise would come.
Now, you might say, “Isn’t this just about Israel? What does this really have to do with me, because I’m not under the Mosaic covenant?”
I think what we have to understand is that in some ways the story of Israel is meant to be a paradigm for what’s true in the whole world. The story of Israel is the story of the world written large. In the same way as Adam was exiled from the garden because of his disobedience to God’s command and he came under a curse, so Israel, in disobedience to the commands of God given under the law, comes under the curse of the law. That’s true for every single one of us who fails to love and obey God. We come under this curse of the law. We’re really under the curse of Adam; it’s the curse of sin and death. While the law as a Mosaic covenant was given specifically to Israel, it teaches us something important for all of us, and it reminds us that the purpose of the law was not to save. Paul says the law was given because of transgressions.
If you go to Romans and read everything Paul says, especially in Romans 7, about the law, what becomes really clear is that the law actually is given, in a sense, to put a magnifying glass on sin, to show us what sin really is, to show us what it’s really like. It even intensifies sin, in the same way as when you tell your little four-year-old, “Don’t do this,” and as soon as you say, “Don’t do this,” it puts the idea in the four-year-old’s mind, “Okay, I think I want to do that now.” Right? That’s kind of how it works. That’s how we are as human beings. We want to do that which is forbidden. Why? Because we have sinful hearts.
The law was added because of transgressions, and it exposes sin, it increases, intensifies sin, and it condemns sin.
Perhaps nobody made it more clear than Martin Luther, a great theologian of law and gospel. This is what Martin Luther said about the law. He said,
"The principle point of the law is to make men not better, but worse. That is to say, it shows them their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised, and broken, and by this means may be driven to seek grace and so to come to that blessed seed, who is Christ."
You might think of the law as something like an X-ray machine. I’ve used this illustration many times here at Redeemer. If you break your leg and you go to the ER, one of the first things they’re going to do is they’re going to X-ray your leg, right? What does the X-ray machine do? It exposes the fracture. It shows what the problem is. But you can sit under an X-ray all day long and it’s not going to heal your leg; in fact, the longer you sit under it, the more harm it’s going to do, because of the radiation.
In the same way, the law can expose the problem. The law shows us the standard; it shows us what God requires. It shows us how we fail to meet that standard. It shows us our brokenness, it shows us our sin. But listen, the law can never redeem you. The law can never rescue you. The law cannot save you. For that, we need something else; we need grace, we need gospel, we need a new covenant, given to us through Jesus Christ.
Why do we need to be redeemed? We need to be redeemed because of sin, because all of us sinners—we’ve all done and sometimes still do things that we should not do. We do things that God forbids, we do things that hurt other people and that hurt ourselves and bring destruction and desolation into our lives. So we need to be redeemed from sin.
We need to be redeemed from death. We live in a world that is full of death. Every single one of us is headed straight for the grave, and it’s not only physical death, but it’s our alienation from God, it’s the spiritual death and eternal separation from God; we need redemption from that. We need redemption from the law because if you try to fix your sin and your death problem with the law, by trying to be a better person, that’s never going to work. The only thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get worse. You’re not going to get better. That’s why we need redemption.
3. How do we get it?
So the last question is, how do we get redemption, this thing that we all need? The whole world needs it! How do we get it?
Galatians says two things about how we get it. First of all, in our main text it says that Christ was born “under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that they might receive the adoption as sons.”
The first thing that had to happen is that Jesus had to come. God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. You know what that means? It means that the eternal Son of God became a human being. That’s the incarnation. But he didn’t just become a human being, he became a Jewish human being, because he came and he fulfilled everything that the law, that old covenant law, required. He lived a perfect life, he lived an obedient life, he lived a righteous life. He lived the life that you and I should have lived but haven’t. He came and he fulfilled the law in every aspect of it—every moral requirement, every ceremonial requirement, every bit of typology from the Old Testament—all of it was fulfilled by Christ. He came under the law. That’s the first thing that was needed: his incarnation.
But there’s more that’s needed. Here’s the second thing, and you get it from Galatians 3:13-14. We also needed the cross, because listen to what Paul says:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
We’ll look at verse 14 next week when we think about adoption, this great blessing of the gospel and the work of the Spirit. That’s what Jesus came to give us. But in order to do that, he had to die. He had to die as a substitute, he had to die in our place.
So there are two things needed: incarnation and substitution. The life of Jesus and the death of Jesus; the obedience of Jesus and the suffering of Jesus. Or, to put it in the simple way that Tim Keller puts it (I’ve quoted this probably a thousand times here), “He lived the life we should have lived, and he died the death that we should have died.” That’s what we needed.
Listen to how Martin Luther put it on a wonderful meditation on Scripture. Luther is almost shocking in his language, but he makes the point so well. Luther says,
"All the prophets did foresee in spirit that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, et cetera, that ever was or could be in all the world."
I mean, it’s almost blasphemous! How could Christ become the greatest sinner? But Luther explains. He said,
"For he, being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is not now an innocent person and without sins, but a sinner." [How?] "Our most merciful sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him the sins of all men, saying, 'Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men. See therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now comes the law and sayeth, “I find him a sinner.' Therefore let him die upon the cross. By this means the whole world is purged and cleansed from all sins."
Brothers and sisters, what this means for each and every one of us—I’ll just put it personally—what it means is that when Jesus Christ hung on the cross of Calvary and God the Father looked down from heaven and saw his Son, what he saw was Jesus burying all of my sins. It was as if Jesus had lived my life, as if every act or thought of sin was laid on him—every moment of pride, every word of anger, every stirring of envy, every lustful thought, every bitter emotion; all of the hostility, all of the wickedness in the life of Brian Hedges, God saw it on Jesus. It means that when God now looks on me, what he sees is the perfect, obedient, spotless righteousness of his Son.
That’s the greatest news in the world. If that’s true, that’s the greatest news in the world, because that means that forgiveness is free. It means that redemption is granted through grace. It means that the price has been paid, the penalty is fulfilled, the guilt is removed. It means—we’ll see this next week—it means that the transforming power of the Holy Spirit is now poured into our lives, so that we are both counted righteous in the sight of God and we are also renewed from the inside out as we become the children of God, his sons and daughters, indwelt by his Holy Spirit.
The real question this morning is simply this: is that true for you? Is it true for you, so that you have counted on Jesus to be your substitute, your representative? You’re looking to him and not to yourself?
Listen, there’s no salvation through law-keeping. There’s no salvation through the old covenant. There’s no salvation through trying to keep the Ten Commandments or trying to be a better person. Just try! Try pulling yourself up by your moral bootstraps and making yourself a better person; it’s doomed to failure. There’s no redemption that way; you’ll only get worse. The only way that you really get the transformation, the forgiveness, the change—the only way you get it is through Jesus Christ. This is the big application point this morning: Trust in Christ, not yourself. Depend on his righteous, obedient, law-fulfilling life to count for you, and rely upon his sin-atoning, death-defeating death to rescue you from sin and death. In so doing you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, a promise made to Abraham all those years ago. You will receive it in your own life, and you will become a new person.
In summary, what is redemption? It is deliverance through the payment of a ransom. Why do we need it? We need it because we need to be redeemed from sin and death and the law. How do we get it? We get it through the cross of the incarnate Christ.
Let me end with Luther one more time. This was not from a theological treatise; this was a letter that Luther wrote to one of his friends, exhorting one of his friends to trust in Christ. This is what you and I need as well.
"Learn to know Christ, and him crucified. Learn to sing to him and say, “Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness. I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You became what you were not so that I might become what I was not."
This is the message of redemption, brothers and sisters. Let’s look to Christ. Let’s trust in him. He is a glorious Redeemer. Having trusted in him, let’s take that message to the world. Let’s pray together.
Gracious and merciful God, how we thank you this morning for your mercy and your grace given to us in Jesus Christ, so that we are freely redeemed, delivered through Christ’s payment of our debt. Lord, we don’t deserve it. There’s nothing we have done or could do to earn it. But we do this morning, by faith, receive it and thank you for this gift. We pray that you would work effectually in our hearts to renew us to faith and repentance and hope and love and gratitude and worship and all of the heart affections that should characterize us now as sinners who have been saved by your mercy and your grace.
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we ask you, Lord, to draw near to us by your Spirit. We pray that your Spirit would make these things effectual to our hearts; that your Spirit would do what only you can do; that you would make the gospel pierce deeply to the very core of our being, and that the response of our hearts would be whole-hearted trust in Christ and dependence on him for everything that we need. Help us, Lord, not only to take these elements this morning by faith, but help us to live by faith this week and to walk in the obedience that comes from faith. Help us, Lord, to obediently share this good news with others and to look for opportunities to do that. So Lord, draw near to us in these moments. We confess our need for you, even as we thank you for your word. Now come to your table; we ask you for your help. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
