Gal. iv. 4, 5. When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that tvere under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
THE advantages which we as Christians enjoy above the Jews are exceeding great. The Jewish Church was like an heir to a large estate during the
years of his minority : he has indeed bright prospects before him ; but at present he receives no more than what his guardians judge necessary for his use, and suited to his condition. " He, in fact, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all :" for he is altogether " under the controul of tutors and gover- nors, till the time appointed by his father," whose possessions he is to inherit. We, on the contrary, are like the same person when arrived at full age, having perfect liberty from servile restraints, and entering into the complete enjoyment of the inherit- ance, to which by our Father's will we are entitled. In this view St. Paul himself has illustrated the subject in the chapter before us. Having in the preceding verses described the state of the Jewish Church, he declares, in the words of our text, the superior privileges which, through the incarnation of the Son of God, we enjoy.
To bring the whole subject under your considera- tion, it will be proper to notice the time, the manner, and the end of our Saviour's incarnation. I. The time —
It may seem strange that, when God had promised to send his Son into the world, he should delay the execution of that promise four thousand years. But it does not become us to sit in judgment upon God's proceedings ; it is sufficient for us to know that he cannot err. But, in relation to the point before us, we may observe, that the time when our Lord came into the world, was,
1. The time fixed in the Divine counsels —
[When the promise of a Saviour was given to our first parents, nothing was specified respecting the time. Hence Eve (as it should seem) imagined that her first-born child was he: for she named him Cain (which signifies getting); intimating, that " she had gotten a man from the Lord," or rather, that she had gotten the man, the Lord3. Nothing seems to have been declared concerning the time of the Mes- siah's arrival, till it was revealed to Jacob, that " the sceptre should not depart from Judah, till Shiloh should comeb:" and
a Gen. iii. 1. b Gen. xlix. 10.