0616 THE FULNESS OF TIME

THE FULNESS OF TIME

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

The Greek language has two words that are translated “time.” One is chronos and the other is kairos. Chronos, from which we get the word chronological, which means a set time. Kairos, on the other hand, has to do with opportunity or circumstance.

I am blessed to think about the implications of God having set a moment in time for Jesus to be born. The date was supposedly the year 0 A.D., of course (A.D. is for Anno Domine, the year of the Lord). But the scholar who set the calendar was wrong in his calculations, and Jesus was actually born somewhere in the year of somewhere between 6 and 2 B.C.

In any case, the moment that Jesus entered the world was a particular moment, both in chronology and in circumstances. God had orchestrated the history of the world to prepare for salvation to arrive at just the right time. In the fullness of time, Mary had a baby.

Just as God had told Jeremiah that he had been called as a prophet “before I formed you in the womb. . . Before you were born.” In the same way, Jesus was “from the beginning.” There at creation, the name of God (Elohim) is plural, and God says, “Let US make man in OUR image.” You might say Jesus was there with the Father and the Spirit, even at that moment. Adam, the first man, brought death, and Jesus, the second Adam, brought deliverance from death. Enoch walked with God, and then he was taken up, rather than dying. If you look at the chronology, you see that Enoch lived until just before the flood in Noah’s day. Because Enoch was by that point in history the only person who walked with God, so God spared him from the devastation of the great flood. 

Noah came and saved mankind from being totally wiped out in the flood. And God started over with populating the earth. People once again rebelled, and at the Tower of Babel God scattered the people by confusing their languages. So the people scattered and filled the earth, as God had commanded. Then we find that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all needed to establish the nation of Israel, set apart among the nations as the people of God. 

Then God allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery by his brothers. And Joseph in Egypt suffered, and then he flourished because God told him about the future famine. And Joseph reconciled with his brothers just in time for them all to relocate to Egypt to live in relative peace and prosperity. Too much prosperity, in the eyes of Pharaoh. And so another leader of Egypt, who knew nothing of Joseph, began to oppress and enslave the Israelites, and they were held captive against their will for some 430 years.

Then came Moses and deliverance from Egypt and the Red Sea and the disobedience of the people, and the 40 years in the wilderness, and the giving of the law on the stone tablets, and the tabernacle and all that, leading them into the Promised Land. At last! The law and the land were both in alignment. But it was not yet the fullness of time. Israel needed to go through quite the stream of prophets and judges and kings, with a divided kingdom and captivity in Babylon and invasions by Assyria and more. It all provided opportunity for God to speak through various prophets and tell details of what God was to do through Jesus. And Jesus came and fulfilled/will fulfill all of them.

In the meantime, the ambitious Alexander the Great came and conquered the known world. That resulted in everyone having a common language (Greek) for the first time since Babel. And then Rome arose and expanded the empire even more, including the land they knew as Palestine. And there was Caesar (so they could say, “We have no king but Caesar!”) and there was Herod (so he could say, “kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem.”). And there was the destruction of the temple, and its being rebuilt by Herod the Great, completed just a few years before Jesus began his public ministry.

And there was John the baptizer, who was born six months before Jesus was. He was to prepare the way of the Lord. And there was the appearing of a star in the east, somehow hovering over the place where Jesus was born, leading the wise men (Magi) to find him in Bethlehem. And they went home a different way, which made Herod angry, so he slaughtered all the baby boys in the town that year. Except that the Lord had appeared to Joseph the Carpenter and told him to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus. Then the Lord told Joseph that he was free to return, and Joseph and his family did, “that it might be fulfilled, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.” And so the cycles of history all play together to bring about the right moment in time. 

And God allows a woman named Elizabeth to remain barren for decades, and for her husband Zechariah to be serving in the Holy Place on a particular day, when He sends his messenger Gabriel to announce that the old couple will at last have a son. And it all happens just six months before a young virgin in Nazareth named Mary is found to be with child. And Caesar Augustus decides to issue a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world, so Joseph the carpenter takes his virgin wife Mary to his hometown of Bethlehem at a time when the days are accomplished that Mary should bring forth her child. And the kairos of pregnancies aligns with the chronos of rulers and stars in the east, and Jesus appears at exactly the right night of the right year in the right town with the right governor, and the rest of it unfolds according to the very specific will of God. For God is the master of details.

May you rest in the righteous will and timing of God this chronos. Amen.