God Sent Forth His Son

Quoting Billy Bryant:

But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, ‘To redeem them that were under the law.”(Galatians 4:4-5)

These words, written to the church of Galatia by the Apostle Paul, tell us that a promise of God had been fulfilled. Way back in the beginning of creation, when the fall of man had just taken place, God appeared on the scene and said that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent s head (see Gen. 3:15). That was the promise that Jesus Christ would one day come into the world and would defeat the old serpent – -the devil – – and win victory over sin and Satan for the human family.

1. GOD SENT FORTH HIS SON

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The words “only begotten” mean the only one of His kind. Jesus Christ had no earthly father. He was always the Son of God and God the Son, and His coming into the world was only His incarnation, or His taking on a body.

2. MADE OF A WOMAN

It was the seed of the woman that was to bruise the serpent’s head (see Gen. 3:15). When the angel, Gabriel, came to the virgin Mary and announced to her that she would be with child, he told her that the power of God would overshadow her, that she would conceive and bear a son, and that He would be called the “Son of the Highest” (see Luke 1:32). With the birth of Christ, God became man in order that man might be brought back to God.

3. TO REDEEM

The purpose of God sending forth His Son, begotten by the Holy Ghost and born of the blessed virgin Mary, was to redeem the world. Jesus became our kinsman-redeemer by becoming man and remaining God. Praise God, in the fullness of time, He came and accomplished our redemption. “In whom we have redemption through His blood” (Col. 1:14). In the fullness of time, He will also come again to take His redeemed to heaven. Are you ready?

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D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Christian And The Covenant

Born in South Wales, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones trained at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and thereafter practiced as a physician. After leaving medicine in 1927, he became the minister of the Welsh Presbyterian Church in Aberavon, South Wales. In 1938 he moved to London to share the ministry of Westminster Chapel with Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, who retired in 1943. Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ ministry lasted for 30 years until he retired in 1968. While in retirement, he engaged in a wider preaching ministry and writing until his death in 1981. The following excerpt is from one of his many writings:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)

A covenant was made with Noah, with Abraham, [and] with Moses. These are not the original covenant, the covenant made with the Son. They were temporary, but all these subsidiary covenants point to this great covenant. The types and ceremonial offerings and sacrifices were all pointing to Christ. ‘The law was our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ’ and His great offering. The law given to Moses does not annul the covenant made with Abraham, but that, in turn, points back to the great covenant made with the Son Himself in eternity.

Thus we begin to see why Paul says, ‘The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. God before time, and before the world, saw our predicament and entered into this agreement with His own Son. He has taken an oath, He has signed, He has pledged Himself in a covenant. He has committed Himself. Everything is in Christ. He is our Representative. He is our Mediator. He is our Guarantor — all blessing comes in and through Him. Who can realize what all this meant to the Father, what all this meant to the Son, what all this meant to the Holy Spirit? But that is the gospel and it is only as we understand something of these things that we shall begin to praise God.

Look at the matter in this way. Here are you and I, miserable worms in this world, miserable worms with our arrogance and our pride and our appalling ignorance. We deserve nothing but to be blotted off the face of the earth. But what has happened is that before the foundation of the world this blessed God, these three blessed Persons, considered us, considered our condition, considered what would happen to us, and the consequence was that these Three Persons, God, whom man hath never seen, stooped to consider us and planned a way whereby we might be forgiven and redeemed. The Son said, I will leave this glory for a while, I will dwell in the womb of a woman, I will be born as a babe, I will become a pauper, I will suffer insult in the world, I will even allow them to nail Me to a Cross and spit in My face. He volunteered to do all that for us, and at this very moment this blessed Second Person in the Trinity is seated at the right hand of God to represent you and me. He came down to earth and did all that, and rose again, and ascended to heaven; and it was all planned ‘before the world’ for you and for me.

Do you still say that you are not interested in theology? Do you still say that you have not time to be interested in doctrine? You will never begin to praise God or worship or adore Him until you begin to realize something of what He has done for you. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ We are in the covenant! (From God’s Ultimate Purpose: an Exposition of Ephesians One published by Baker Book House, 1978)