Matins Devotion: August 15, 2024

Galatians 4:4-7

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son.” What does this mean? Well, this is fullness from God’s perspective, not from ours. That is to say, while we may not know the reason, God knows why He chose this moment to be the precise moment in mankind’s history for the Savior of mankind was born. Quite simply, God’s will is great and glorious, gracious and merciful, even if we can’t fully see or understand it.

“God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law,” So God’s Son was not merely in human form, but was and is human. He is one of us. He was born miraculously and of a virgin, and thus free of sin, but He shares our birth, our flesh, our genetic coding. And He shares our obligations. He who gave the law placed Himself under the law. And He placed Himself under the law to fulfill it in our place, to give us His perfect righteousness with one nail-pierced hand as He took away our sins with the other. This is what Paul means when He says, “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

And now we have received that adoption. Through Holy Baptism, we have been added to the family of God. And because we are indeed the sons of God, worthy to inherit His kingdom, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” In other words, because we are sons of God, we have the right to call upon our Father, to call upon Him tenderly yet reverently, as the name ‘Abba’ indicates, to ask Him for the kingdom, the power, and the glory, and to expect Him to expect Him to give those gift to us, His beloved children.

So the God who was always going to make us His own chose the right moment. And in that moment, He sent His Son, truly God and truly man, to place Himself under the law, to fulfill the law, to forgive us and clothe us in His righteousness. And now, because of this, you are no longer a stranger or a slave in the eyes of the One who made the very heavens and the earth. You are His beloved son with whom He is well pleased.