Christ came to die for us. If He had come a hundred years earlier, the Roman State would have had no authority in Judaea, the world-power would have had no part in His condemnation, and the manner of His death would not have been that foretold. If He had come a hundred years later, the consenting of the Jewish religious authorities to His death would have been impossible ; for their Temple was then destroyed and their nation exiled from the land of promise. The conditions of redemption, therefore, would not have been fulfilled. At the one point and moment in history where the favourable religious, intellectual, and political conditions met, the Son of Man was born at Bethlehem.
3. Darkness hefore the dawn. — The Saviour of the world did not come a day too soon, for the decay and death of men's religious beliefs had been accompanied by the destruction of morality, and at the birth of Christ the state of the world was deplorable in the
GAL. IV. 4, 5 369
extreme. In that enlightened age the moral sense of man had become completely blunted, and the national conscience was a thing of naught. " Immorality, sensuousness, grossness, gluttony, cruelty, bestiality, sordidness, sycophancy, untruthfulness, were," says Professor Wenley, " never so rife at one time ; and as if to render the sit^^uation even more gloomy, acts such as we should regard with utter revulsion amounting even to physical sickness, were perpetrated not in secret, but in the light of common day, and this without arousing anything in the nature of serious or unanimous protest." .
When Jesus came '
The world was all at peace in utter wickedness.
Doubtless, the testimony borne by Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, Persius, and Martial, to the abounding and shameless iniquity of their time, may be held as referring in the first place and for the most part to life in Rome and in those pleasure cities of the Empire which imitated or taught the capital. Among Rome's hundred million subjects there would be, at all events in country districts, many whose lives were fair and worthy. And even in Rome itself there would be some of whom it could not be said that they loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. But the facts would seem to show that such were the exception which goes to prove the rule. Speaking broadly and generally, men and women had fallen away from the eternal laws of righteousness and were walking in the vanity of their minds, according to the whims of evil hearts, the promptings of sinful passions, or the suggestions of depraved and degrading inclinations.
The Incarnation is thus a predestined event in the furtherance of the redemption and education of humanity. It occurs in the " fulness of the time." That is the primary fact. It is not an accident. It is part of, and fits into, a fully articulated plan of world-redemption. It closes an epoch. It opens a new era. It is not a separable accident, cut off from the rest of the life of the race ; it is an integral part of it, with vital relations to its earliest manifestations, and to its latest, and to each and every experience of man between the first and the last. It is no after- thought. It happens just when it ought to happen, when it was
2 COR. & GAL, — 24
370 THE MISSION OF THE SON
meant to ha )pen, when it could take its place and do its work most effectively. ,' The time receptacle, into which the centuries and millenniums Ea3 been poured, was full up to the precise moment when this great event should be added ; and it was added just then.
Earth was waiting, spent and restless,
With a mingled hope and fear ; And the faithful few were sighing,
" Surely, Lord, the day is near ; The desire of all the nations,
It is time He should appear,"
Still the gods were in their temples,
But the ancient faith had fled ; And the priests stood by their altars
Only for a piece of bread; And the Oracles were silent,
And the Prophets all were dead.
In the sacred courts of Zion, Where the Lord had His abode,
There the money-changers trafficked, And the sheep and oxen trod;
And the world, because of wisdom, Knew not either Lord or God.
Then the spirit of the Highest
On a virgin meek came down, And He burdened her with blessing.
And He pained her with renown ; For she bare the Lord's Anointed
For His cross and for His crown.
Earth for Him had groaned and travailed,
Since the ages first began ; For in Him was hid the secret
That through all the ages ran — Son of Mary, Son of David,
Son of God, and Son of Man.^
* Walter C. Smith, Hymns of Christ and the ChrisPian Life.
GAL. IV. 4, 5 371
II.
The Manner in Which Christ Came.
" Born of a woman, born under the law."
There can be no question that in the text, as is shown by the juxtaposition of " sent " and " born," and in all the New Testament references to the subject, the birth of Jesus is not regarded as the beginning of the being of the Son. The one lies fiar back in the depths of eternity and the mystery of the Divine nature, the other is a historical fact occurring in a definite place and at a dated moment. Before time was the Son was, delighting in the Father, and, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God," and He who in respect of His expression of the Father's mind and will was the Word, was the Son in respect of the love that bound the Father and Him in one. Into the mysteries of that love and union no eyes can penetrate, but unless our faith lays hold of it, we know not the God whom Jesus has declared to us. The mysteries of that Divine union and communion lie beyond our reach, but well within the grasp of our faith, and the work of the Son in the world, ever since there was a world, is not obscurely declared to all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand.