Why Didn’t Christ Come Sooner? - Ask Pastor John

Video from Desiring God

Why Didn’t Christ Come Sooner? - Ask Pastor John

Audio Transcript

"I love the book of Galatians, and I find myself very glad to be returning to the book in our Bible reading together. We reach Galatians 4 on Wednesday, a chapter that is loaded. I mean, you’ve got the phrase “Abba, Father” in Galatians 4:6. We looked at that in years past, in APJ 1743: “What Does It Mean to Cry, ‘Abba, Father’?”

And there’s Galatians 4:4, our focus today. We have two related questions on it, one from Bryce, who simply asked, “Why did God wait so long in human history to send Jesus?” A good question, slightly elaborated by Craig, based on what he sees in our reading coming up too. “Pastor John, thank you for your dedication to ministry,” Craig writes. “Your books and this podcast have been a huge encouragement to me. Recently, my brother-in-law posed a question to me that I had no good answer to, and I’m still thinking about it. After the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, why did it take so long for Jesus to come to the earth, like thousands of years? I can’t help but think that Jesus could have come sooner and brought the saving message of the gospel to a lot more people than he did. Can you explain ‘the fullness of time’ in Galatians 4:4 and what God was waiting for?”

I’m really eager to tackle this question because, last December, way back during Advent, I was asked to preach at Bethlehem, and the topic that Pastor Kenny gave me was the superior priesthood of Jesus over all the priests of the Old Testament. And in my preparation, I was provoked by this very question: Why didn’t God send Jesus — the better prophet, the better priest, the better king — two thousand years earlier? The world had fallen with Adam. It was in such terrible corruption that he wiped out the whole world except for eight people because of how pervasive sin was and how deep the corruption was. And after the flood, it didn’t get any better, which confirmed that humanity was hopeless, in a desperate condition.

So, the question is, Okay, this is a good time to send the Son of God to die on the cross, right? And instead, what God does is choose Abraham. And he starts a two-thousand-year history of Israel, with her prophets and her priests and her kings, which is by and large a colossal failure to bring about an obedient, God-exalting people.

Bryce is asking that very question that I asked, and Craig puts a point on it, which is what makes me glad to answer it, because I want to go toward this text big-time. Craig says, “What about Galatians 4:4?” “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Galatians 4:4–5).

Fullness of Time

So, what’s the answer to why Jesus didn’t come earlier? And the answer is this: because the time wasn’t full — whatever that means. Which pushes the question forward just a little bit — namely, What is the fullness of time? Why did there need to be a fullness of time? What made it full?

Now, the first thing to do, I think, is to make it really clear that God governs times and seasons. God governs history. He sets the times. They start when he says, “Start,” and they end when he says, “End.” In Acts 1:7, Jesus says, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” Wow. So, that’s the basic truth we need to keep in front of us. God is not making do with human actions. He’s governing human actions. He is governing the times and seasons, start to finish. They are fixed by his sovereign decree.

“God is not making do with human actions. He’s governing human actions.”

So then, what is the season or time that needs to be full for Christ to come? In the context of Galatians, the answer is the season or the time of the Mosaic law, the law of Moses. Paul had just said in Galatians 3:24, “The law was [Israel’s] guardian until Christ came.” Then he says, “Now that faith has come” — namely, faith in Christ has come — “we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:25–26). Then, a few verses later, here in Galatians 4:2, he says, “He [meaning Israel] is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father.” And then he says in Galatians 4:4–5, “But when the fullness of time had come” — that is, when the date set by the Father had arrived — “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.”

So, the fullness of time is the fullness of time under the law, until the date set by the Father. And what’s that? Well, in Galatians 3:17, a few verses earlier, Paul says (and this has to do with the promise made to Abraham), “The law [the Mosaic law], which came 430 years afterward [that is, after Abraham], does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”

Which, of course, then raises the question for Paul and his readers that he asks in Galatians 3:19: “Why then the law?” Why was the law added? If it doesn’t nullify the promise, and if people are saved by believing promises even under the law, why did you even add the law? Paul asks that question because it’s this long law period that has to be full.

Aim of the Law

And he answers, “Because of transgressions” (Galatians 3:19). The law was added because of transgressions. Which I think means, in view of Romans 5:20, that the law was added in such a way that there were particular commandments that now could be broken more clearly and, thus, disobedience becomes transgression of commandments. Romans 5:20 says, “The law came in to increase the trespass” — “to increase the trespass.”

And at the same time, the law is functioning, Galatians says, as a kind of guardian until Christ comes, which is — how long? Fourteen hundred years, give or take. So, from Moses to Jesus was fourteen hundred years. From Abraham to the giving of the law was about four centuries, which brings us to roughly eighteen hundred to two thousand years.

Why? Now, why did he need that? Back in Genesis 15:16, God says to Abraham that Israel will go into bondage in Egypt and come back to the promised land in the fourth generation — hundreds of years in bondage. Why the delay? Here’s his answer (this is Genesis 15:16): “For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” You’ve got to fill up the centuries with Amorite sin in order for there to be justice in the conquest of Canaan, when God brings judgment on the Amorites. So, there’s a kind of fullness of time, and the meaning is a fullness of sinfulness.

Now, compare that to the fullness of time in which the law was given and was the standard for Israel, doing its work to increase transgressions and prepare for Christ. So, what was the law doing for fourteen hundred years? What was the point of fourteen hundred years of government of Israel by the law? And here’s what Paul says in answer to that question, in Romans 3:19: “We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth” — not just Jewish mouths — “may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”

So, the law is given to make the whole world accountable to God — and then here comes the explanation in Romans 3:20: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in [the] sight [of God], since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” So, the law was proving, not only to Israel but also to the whole world, that it is impossible for anyone to get right with God through law-keeping.

Who Is the Son of God?

Israel became a centuries-long lesson book for the nations, for us, to show that efforts to get right with God by law-keeping cannot succeed. And when the fullness of the sins of Israel through lawbreaking (and this kind of legalistic law-keeping) were full, Christ came into the world to show how salvation will really come to pass through faith in him.

Now, in our arrogance, we might presume to say to God, “You didn’t need fourteen hundred years to make that point. Sorry, God.” That’s really unwise to talk like that. We’d better put our hands on our mouths. We don’t have the wisdom of God, and we had best just silence ourselves and learn from how he did it rather than make suggestions to him how he should have done it.

Now, that was Paul’s answer to why there has been such a long delay and what kind of time needed to be full and how it was full. That’s not the only answer in the New Testament for why we have this history. The book of Hebrews — and this is where I spent most of my time in my sermon last year — says more, lots more. Namely, during all that time of the law and the history of Israel, God was providing categories for understanding who the incarnate Son of God is.

God intended for us to know his incarnate Son, the divine Son of God, in categories provided by fourteen hundred years of Israel under the law — categories of prophecy, categories of priesthood, categories of kings, categories of Messiah, categories of law, wisdom, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), and many, many more. Think of it: If the Son of God had been incarnate in the days of Abraham, none of these categories would have been available for understanding the Son of God.

So, the fullness of time came. The Jewish lesson book for the nations was complete. For two thousand years, we have been blessed to understand the Son of God because of those categories and that lesson book — and justification by faith over against justification by law-keeping. We have been blessed to know the truth of the gospel in view of the reality of the crucified Messiah, and no other way. It’s plain because we have the lesson book for the nations." from the Transcript

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.