Seventh Day of Christmas

GALATIANS 4:4-5

⁴But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT

So often, we look at the law of God as something bad, something to be juxtaposed with grace. The problem is that the law is presented as something good in the Scriptures. We are the problem. Mankind, indeed the whole of creation, was groaning and still groans because of the Fall. The apostle Paul refers to the “futility” that the entire world was subjected to because of the Fall of the human race in Adam. But God’s law is holy and gives a pattern for how a perfect man should live. No one had lived the law perfectly until the promised deliverer, born of a woman, had come in the fullness of time. Jesus lived perfectly to the law’s standards and fulfilled the law in His life and death. And now, in Him, the perfect Son, we also stand like perfect law abiders, because of Him who came in the fullness of time. In Him, we have been adopted as sons of the living God. 

—Pastor Garrett Craw, Christ Church, Santa Clarita, California

PRAYER

Lord of the ages, you promised a deliverer, who would come in time, born of a woman. Your Son has come and having been born under the law has fulfilled it so that, in Him, we also receive adoption as sons and daughters of the only true God. We praise You for Your perfect love and timing. AMEN

CHRISTMAS APPLICATION

Discuss with your family the story of the adoption by Julius Caesar of Gaius Octavius who became Augustus Caesar. Adoption meant inheriting a name in the ancient Greco-Roman world and in Augustus’ case it meant taking Julius Caesars status as well. Unlike the ruthless world of Roman adoption, we are lovingly adopted as sons of God the Father, by the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We have a royal status in Jesus as though we had never rebelled against God.