In the fulness of times; a phrase often pondered at Christmas, as we celebrate the Incarnation–yet a phrase that should abide in our hearts all year as we wonder at His marvelous works, and worship the God who Providentially has worked all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Purposes which He foreordained before the foundation of the world. Nothing happens by chance, nor by good fortune, nor by luck or any other astrological heresies. Nothing is at the whim of a “watchmaker god” who sits back and cringes at the mess we make of things. He has, since He created time and space and matter, been working out His intricate, beautiful, orderly, plan of redemption!
As the church calendar marches toward Easter, and Pentecost; as you ponder the death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord–consider how all of this was “in the fulness of time” at the exact moment our Triune God intended, in the way He intended, and for the purpose He intended.
Read this quote below, read it slowly, bit by bit pondering. Be like the Bereans who hear teaching and go back to the Word and study!
Quote from Thomas F. Torrence, The Mediation of Christ, (Helmers & Howard: Colorado Springs, CO, 1992); p.8-9
“By its very nature that revelation could not be faithfully appropriated and articulated apart from conflict with deeply ingrained habits of human thought and understanding and without the development of new patterns of thought and understanding and speech as worthy vehicles of its communication. Throughout the long ordeal of Israel’s historical and religious encounter with the living God, in the course of which there took place a unique cultural integration of its thought and religion, its literature and its way of life, the Word of God was at work preparing the matrix for the final mediation of divine revelation to mankind, when the personal self-communication of God could be met by true and faithful reception from man. And at last in the fullness of time the Word of God became man in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, within the embrace of Israel’s faith and worship and expectation, himself God and man, in whom the covenanted relationship between God and Israel and through Israel with all humanity was gathered up, transformed and fulfilled once for all. In him the revealing of God and the understanding of man fully coincided, the whole Word of God and the perfect response of man were indivisibly united in one Person, the Mediator, who was received, believed and worshipped together with God the Father and the Holy Spirit by the apostolic community which he creatively called forth and assimilated to his own mission from the Father. Thus as both the incarnate revelation of God and the embodied knowledge of God, Jesus Christ constitutes in himself the Way, the Truth and the Life through whom alone access to God the Father is freely open for all the peoples of mankind. That is to say, as the incarnate Word and Truth of God Jesus Christ in his own personal Being is identical with the Revelation which he mediates. But he is at the same time the very Way in which it is to be apprehended and interpreted and the very Life which is the light of men, for it is only through the assimilation of our minds to the Mind of God incarnate in Christ that we are given the modes of discernment, forms of thought, and the structures of understanding which we need in order to grasp and articulate knowledge of God in a way that is worthy of him.”
Jesus Christ was sent, and came, that we may know God (2 Corinthians 4; 1 John 5); let us press on to know Him who is continually interceding for us! Let His prayer shape your own prayers this weekend.
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the One true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
“Now these people [in Berea] were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11