The pivotal in the space-time continuum of creation was encapsulated in the life and death of Jesus Christ. All history had been building to the entry of the Son of God into His world. It was truly the fullness of time. The world was unified under Roman imperialism; there was a common language (Greek), an extensive road system (Roman), a heightened sense of the supernatural, a yearning for a Messianic deliverer in Israel—all made the times pregnant for the delivery of the Lord’s entry as the God-man redeemer. It was a Creator-creation warp, where divinity and humanity intersected, the supernatural collided with the natural. Eternity and time merged. Grace delivered the final blow to law. Death gave way to life, rebellion turned into restoration, judgment to forgiveness. The fullness of times had indeed come, a time to bring fullness in the most spiritually full sense, as it were, from fullness to fullness!

God sent His Son, from His place at the Father’s side, setting aside the glory about which He prayed before the cross, “Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5). He left glory for the life of a peasant in Israel, and to live under the Law He had given His people to order their lives by. That was the same Law that resulted in the condemnation of all, because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). He, the holy One, came to live under the Law that showed all humans to be sinners. Yet, as Hebrews points out, “[He] has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). So He lived fully under the  Law, yet He never sinned. The time was ripe for a God-man to live like that, because history showed no mere man was able to.

As a result, praise God, there is redemption for people under law, and that would come by adoption as sons. Continuing to live under the Law would be like remaining as infants, with the Law as our manager. But as adopted sons, we no longer need the law-manager, but have a vital relationship with the Law-giver, God Himself. We are now redeemed, and no longer in need of redemption—it is the blessing of Abraham that is already ours through faith. We no longer need to strive for a righteousness good enough to be saved; we already have a new kind of righteousness—not by law, but one that comes from the righteousness of Christ.