Delivered From Slavery To Sonship
advent Part five - christmas eve - Galatians 4:4-5 (ESV) - Pastor Tim Kroeker
For both the believer and non-believer alike, surely the most powerful part of the Christmas story is Jesus’ humble estate. Hollywood itself couldn’t invent a more mind-boggling script. The king of the universe leaves his heavenly throne room, counting as nothing all of his divine glory, the eternal majesty, and endless adulation to become a helpless little baby. He wasn’t born into royalty, but into a family with no social status or monetary means. What’s more, while they were traveling, the time came for the baby to be born. But there was no room for them in the inn. His mother wrapped him cloths and layed him in a manger, a feeding trough for the animals. On the night of his birth, he was visited by common shepherds who’d been out watching their sheep. Jesus became poor.
This Advent season, we’re reflecting on an ancient Christmas hymn found in Galatians 4:4-5, which forms the objective basis for the doctrine of justification by faith. These two verses tell us about the person and saving work of God in Christ. In the first line of our hymn, we saw that salvation was God’s idea, decided before the creation of the world, which He brought to fulfillment according to His perfect timing. The second line tells us what that plan was. God sent forth His Son. When God sent forth His Son, He didn’t send a surrogate. He came Himself. Jesus, the Eternal Son, was the only one capable of accomplishing what we could not by our own effort. The third line tells us how it was that the eternally existent Son entered into history to save humanity. He was born of a woman. Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, Jesus became fully man so that he might save us in full. When Jesus took on human flesh, the fourth line of our hymn tells us the conditions under which he entered. He was born under the law. Like a straitjacket, Jesus subjected himself to the constraints of the Mosaic law, which he performed perfectly on our behalf.
The hymn concludes with a resounding explanation of purpose. Why did God send forth His Son? To deliver us out of slavery and into sonship; a remarkable reversal. He became poor so that we might become rich.
