Galatians 4:4: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law (NKJV).”
Think for a moment about your very most favorite kind of fruit. A peach or a nectarine or a pear or pineapple or whatever fruit it is that you find to be the absolutely most delicious and desirable in all the world. Now, remember that one piece you wish all the others was like – its color, its texture, its shape, its size, its smell, and – most importantly – its taste. Perfectly, ideally, lusciously ripe.
“The fullness of the time…” The place and the time that God chose to send His Son was the most ideal, the most ripe with potential for fruitfulness of any other in all of history, either before or since.
Had Jesus been born even a few years earlier, the Gospel message would have drifted into oblivion because it would not have been transportable into all of the known world in only a matter of months. Had He been born a few years later, the world would have been too wrapped up in surviving the onslaught of depraved brutality and decadence that brought about the invasion by the barbarians and the demise of the Roman Empire.
Even a brief glance at the history of the times that Jesus was born into proclaims the truth of Paul’s statement.
The place where Jesus was born was at the center of the world. That small land bridge where Jerusalem sits perfectly nestled between and is the perfect connector for the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. Every major trade route in the ancient world passed through Israel; in fact, the most traveled of them all ran along the base of a hill just a stone’s throw away from Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. There is a spot pointed out to visitors to the Church of The Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem as being the center of the world. Looking through the Old Testament we find reference after reference where God Himself says that all nations will one day gather there to worship the Lord God Almighty. Even today, the epicenter of world events lies in the heart of Israel.
No one could have planned a better place from which to launch a world religion.
“The fullness of the time…” Time. Since the beginning of measured time when God first spoke the universe into existence, the world was never readier for the Savior, first promised to Eve in Genesis 3. Socially, politically, morally and religiously, the lines of human coexistence have never been more perfectly threaded together to receive God as they were at the moment of the birth of Christ over two thousand years ago.
Shakespeare said, “There is a tide in the affairs of men.” There really does seem to be an ebb and flow to life and human history that almost demands that certain monumental events take place. More specifically, there have been a handful of moments in history when mankind was perfectly poised to receive and experience spiritual giants sent from God to awaken within us a hungering need for a loving yet righteous God.
On that Christmas night so long again, when the sky exploded with the light of the glory of God and His love for all mankind, the ebb and flow of human history reached an apex that it will not see again until Jesus returns at the end of time.
Let’s look for a few minutes at God’s timing. Perhaps we will walk away with a deeper sense of how God is working in our own lives, as well as in the conditions and circumstances of our world.
The orchestrating hand of God had been at work for several thousand years of human interaction. At the time when Jesus was born, the known world was perfectly poised politically for the birth of Christ and Christianity. Never before had the world been unified as it was at that time. The Pax Romano, the Roman Peace, extended from Hadrian’s Wall in the far northwest of Britain to the Euphrates River, from the mountains bordering the Far East to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Spain, and from the Caspian Sea to the place where jungle and desert met in North Africa.
The entire known world was held in the iron fist of Roman rule, where every nation had to live at peace with every other nation. Pirates no longer ruled the Mediterranean; roaming bands of robbers no longer ruled the open lands between towns and cities. There was a rule of law that was inviolable and unwavering. For the most part, with only minor exceptions, people lived securely and in relative safety.
The entire Roman Empire was united together with an intricate system of roads. Even today there are portions of the Roman Road intact and visible in England, France, various Middle Eastern countries, as well as Italy and Greece. The first missionaries of Christianity walked along the same roads that the legions of Caesar marched in order to maintain the peace throughout the far reaches of the empire. The gospel spread like a wildfire through the civiized world at such a rapid pace because the people carrying the message could travel so far so quickly.
Another dynamic at work at this time in history was that the world was also united by a common language. Hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects had all been united by the language of the sages, the language of the sciences, the language of the arts and the philosophers – that language was Greek; the very same language that the entire New Testament was written in.
The early missionaries could always find people who spoke Greek in addition to their home language in each city that they visited. Imagine if there was an insurmountable language barrier everywhere that they went. What do you think would have happened to the Good News of Jesus Christ? God had divinely appointed this time in history because all of the basic mechanisms necessary to ease the spreading of the Gospel were perfectly in place.
In our own day, we have similar conditions at work. We are united by mass media and the Internet; events anywhere in the world can be witnessed by the rest of the world in real-time, as they occur. The English language is spoken by more people on earth than any two other languages, including Chinese. International, transoceanic travel occurs in hours instead of months. Perhaps we are even now being prepared for another divine appointment?
Aside from the political conditions of the world, there was a “fullness of the time” economically. The economic condition of most of the Roman Empire – and, more specifically, of Palestine – had reached a crisis point. The extreme cost of war, the wild extravagances of the Caesars in Rome and of Herod the Great in Jerusalem, the colossal burden of taxes in excess of 50% in some places, and a growing overpopulation that strained the already depleted food supplies had created greater poverty than at any other time in history. Two out of three people on the streets of Rome and the other major cities were slaves – they were owned; they owned nothing. Life was so depressing and so riddled with heavy, unyielding labor that people were becoming hopeless.
It was at this moment that the Voice of God called out, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).” Hope infused their souls, for they heard a message that they had never heard before; “God loves you and has amazing blessings in store for you. Seek His kingdom and His righteousness ahead of everything else, and He will meet every single need that you have.”
“The fullness of the time had come,” politically, economically, and morally. Paul tells us in the First Chapter of Romans how the world had sinned itself into such moral depravity that there was a cancer of the soul that left men and women everywhere feeling desperate and hopeless in the vileness of their sin.
Even with “games” as the Caesar’s called them, there was only a deeper slide into moral decay and decadence. Disaster and oblivion was all they had to look forward to, and they had no idea how to escape their destiny. Sensuality and sensationalism can hold sway for only so long, and then the Living Christ comes in an overwhelmingly and overpoweringly unavoidable way. Moral depravity will always have Christ to deal with – sooner or later.
For centuries, while the political, economic and moral spheres of man’s existence were deteriorating exponentially more deeply into unrestrained wickedness and accompanying evils, there were men of deeper vision and greater spiritual sensitivity who were looking forward through the ages to an as yet unknown event with great anticipation. Within men’s hearts was a stirring; there was a sense of expectancy that a solution to mankind’s unrelenting hopelessness was just over the horizon of time. Mount Olympus had become so overcrowded with gods and goddesses that no one took them seriously any longer. And, Caesar-worship gave them no hope, either.
Neither the gods of Olympus nor the mighty Caesar could soothe souls troubled by sin and its consequences. None of the philosophies gave comfort in the dark of night when men and women lay alone with their shame and their fears. The need was evident, the time was full – it was time for the Savior to appear.
Closer to home in the Promised Land, the chosen people of God had reached the place where God had been so silent for so long that they were desperate to hear from Him – any voice would do.
The intertestamental writings that we today call The Apocrypha are full of yearnings for the coming of the promised Messiah. When John the Baptist appeared on the scene with his clear, concise message reminiscent of the prophets of old, people couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this Him? Is He the One promised?” The people of God had taken their message of hope of a Savior with them as they moved throughout the empire.
Everywhere they went, people who had never heard of Jehovah before learned not only of Him, but also of His promise to send His Anointed One to save His people, and through them all of humankind.
Religiously, “the fullness of the time had come”, also. Everything in the world, from the place of His coming to the hearts and minds of mankind, everything was perfectly poised to receive the Coming of the Prince of Heaven, the coming of the Redeemer, the coming of the Anointed One of God.
How about your world? Do you feel filled with a sense of anticipation, of expectancy? Do you feel a groaning deep inside that you can’t get free of? Do you have a longing for a deeper knowledge and understanding of God than you ever have before? Do you carry a burden that requires strength beyond your limits? Do you need direction? Do you sit in a place of excitement over the future that God holds for you?
Then, the fullness of the time has come in your life, as well. Just as God stooped down and joined us on this level and met us just where we were when He came as a helpless, totally dependent infant, today He reaches down in complete understanding and compassion and meets you right where you are.
God knows…and His time has come. Surrender to Him – completely, without conditions, without negotiation – surrender, and He will direct your every step and celebrate right along with you. He’s that kind of Savior.
