By Kenneth L. Chafin
I believe with all my heart there is a timing in life and God gets involved in the history of our lives. He gets involved in the circumstances and decisions of our lives.
The two verses I read are tied together. They are tied to the celebration of Christmas and deal with God's timing in the birth of Christ. Both verses refer to the birth of Christ. "Her baby" refers to Mary's baby, Jesus. Very human baby. Very human mother. The phrase, "His own son" refers to the heavenly Father. A very divine baby. A very divine father. In these two verses we pick up the whole theology of the Incarnation: that this baby of Mary's was totally human. This son of God was totally divine and they were one baby.
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uses time to refer to the completion of a human pregnancy. It is a thing that amazes the most learned physician and the most unlearned lay person. Though people have been having babies from the beginning, there is still the ability to create wonder in each of us when we see a little baby. Babies have a way, also, of humbling experts with their own timetables. We were going to get ready for Nancy, our first child, in September. Everybody said that is when she would arrive. Nancy decided to come on August 13, when nobody was ready but Nancy. The
Luke 2 passage is a reference to the pregnancy.
The
Galatians 4 passage uses time to refer to God's timing and Christ's coming. It gives us a much broader perspective to the birth of this baby. It encompasses the whole purpose of God in His coming. He came to reveal things to us about God, what God is like, and what Christ was like; what God believes and what Christ taught; what God does and what He acted out on the cross.
In this birth we have God in the flesh. This person will become God's means of redemption. The cross points to the mystery of redemption. This person would reconcile us to God that we can find status as sons and could reconcile us to each other. In the very passage the text comes from, the Scripture says there is no such thing as Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. We are all one person in Christ. So Paul's statement about the coming is a broader statement.
I think at the time of his birth Mary probably would have found it hard to believe God's timing was in it. Very often when we are in the midst of crisis -- when we are in the midst of decision -- we wonder how God could be in these kind of circumstances. We have in our minds some ideal situations in which we're just sitting, meditating on the goodness of God. To this young woman who had not yet consummated her marriage to Joseph, to this child which was born in occupied territory, controlled by a foreign despot, to this couple who had been disrupted by a census and were in a town where they didn't have close friends or a support system, in Bethlehem crowded with people there for a census, no adequate housing, a stable became a maternity ward.