2. The most frequent form under which the great fact of the
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Incarnation is represented in Scripture is that of our text — " God sent his Son." It is familiar on the lips of Jesus, but He also says that " God gave his Son." One can feel a shade of difference in the two modes of expression — the former bringing rather to our thoughts the representative character of the Son as Messenger, and the latter going still deeper into the mystery of Godhead and bringing into view the love of the Father who spared not His Son but freely bestowed Him on men. Yet another word is used by Jesus Himself when He says, " I came forth from God," and that expression brings into view the perfect willingness with which the Son accepted the mission, giving Himself, as well as being given by God. All three phrases express harmonious, though slightly differing, aspects of the same fact, as the facets of a diamond might flash into different colours ; and all must be held fast if we would understand the unspeakable gift of God. Jesus was sent ; Jesus was given ; Jesus came. The mission from the Father, the love of the Father, the glad obedience of the Son, must ever be recognized as interpenetrating and all present in that supreme act.
Our text tells us : —
I. The Time at Which Christ Came into the World. II. TTie Manner in Which Christ Came. III. The End for Which Christ Came.
The Time When Christ Came.
"When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son."
No one can study any of the great movements which have made history without observing that it had two conditions — there was the man, and he came at the time. Certain ideas had long been simmering in the popular mind, a train of circumstances had been laid, a multitude was ready to rise; but those were only forerunners, anticipations, auxiharies. Nothing would have come to pass, and the morning glow would have faded into darkness, had not the secret yearning in many hearts taken shape in a single man. No one could have foretold his origin ; no one can
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take credit for training him; no one can boast afterwards of having been his colleague. From behind the veil he comes — from a palace, or from a cottage, or from a college, or from a desert. Upon him is laid one burden, and he rests not till it is fulfilled; he is incalculable, concentrated, forceful, autocratic. Now he is the idol of the people ; now he is their victim ; he is ever independent of them, and ever their champion. They may not understand him, yet he expresses them ; they may put him to death, yet he accomplishes their desire. These are the makers of the race through whom God intervenes in human history ; in Jesus, the chief of them all, God became incarnate.
Between the man and his time there must be a certain correspondence, else he cannot have full course. Nothing is more pathetic than the experience of one who has arrived too soon, delivering a message which will be understood to-morrow, but which to-day is a dream; attempting a work which to-morrow the world will welcome but which to-day it considers madness. He dies of a broken heart an hour before sunrise. Nothing is more ironical than the effort of one who has arrived too late, for whom there was an audience yesterday, for whose cause there was an opportunity ; but now the audience has dispersed, and the field is taken ; he has missed his tide, and for him another will not come. It may be said that Jesus was independent of time and environ- ment. As a person, yes ! who never could have been hid or altogether have failed. As a worker, no ! for this were to ask an endless miracle. Had Jesus come in Samuel's day, no one would have understood His Kingdom; had He come in the second century, there had been no opening for His Kingdom. There was a brief space when the life seed of Hebrew thought was ready for the sower, and the Eoman Empire still remained a quiet field for the sowing. This was the fulness of the time, and Jesus appeared.
1. The fulness of the time. — This remarkable expression, " the fulness of the time," is, with a slight variation, once used by St, Paul elsewhere: he calls the gospel, when writing to the Ephesians, " the dispensation of the fulness of times." In both cases he means by "fulness" that which fulfils or brings to completion ; the arrival of a given moment which completes an epoch ; the hour which fills up its appointed measure and brings
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it to a close. It was in a like sense that our Lord and His Apostles used the word " hour " as marking a particular point in His life, determined in the counsels of God.
Such language is fully understood only when we bear in mind that that succession of events which, looking at it from our human point of view, we call time, is distributed upon a plan eternally present to the Divine Mind; and that particular persons or particular characters are assigned, in heaven, their predestinated place in this succession. " To everything," says the Wise Man, " there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven." All the lesser incidents of our lives are really arranged in a preconcerted order. There is a "fulness of the time" at which, and not before, we can understand particular truths or undertake particular duties, because for these truths or duties all that has preceded has been a preparation.