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Pastor's Blog December 12, 2019

• "The Right Time"

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One of the questions I am sometimes asked concerns the timing of the first coming of Jesus: "If Jesus is God in the flesh, why didn't God become incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth immediately after the fall?" 

The question is a good one, and it gets at the heart of a desire that we have: freedom from sin and liberation from bondage to decay and mortality.  The logic of the question proceeds along these lines: Adam and Eve disobeyed God and fell into a sinful state of existence, which means they needed salvation; salvation can only be provided by a Savior - someone who is not in the same situation in which Adam and Eve find themselves; therefore, Adam and Eve needed a Savior as soon as they fell, not several millennia after their deaths - so, why the delay?  Why didn't God just show up and become incarnate the moment Adam and Eve fell into sin, in order to save them from the effects of their fall from God? 

Galatians 4:4-5 provides us with an answer to this question: "But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship" (NIV).  Did you notice the phrase, "the set time had fully come"? 

The literal Greek is more clear (and emphatic): "when the fullness of [chronological] time came."  Apparently, the plan of redemption required time in order to unfold.  God could come to earth at any time he wanted, but we would not have been prepared for it - time itself would not have arrived at the exact moment necessary for our salvation.  It seems that, even for salvation from sin, there is a right time and a "not-yet-ready" time for salvation to appear: a time that is ripe for God to become incarnate and a time when it would be premature or too late. 

But Galatians 4:4-5 tells us that God came at just the right time!  The reason why God did not become incarnate immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve, according to Galatians 4:4-5, is that it wasn't yet the right time; instead, the right time for the incarnation was when Jesus was actually born. 

Friends, let us rejoice that God became incarnate right on time - at the perfect time for our salvation to be won.