The Fullness of Time

The Fullness of Time.  The Steve Miller Band was not entirely wrong when they sang, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future” (Fly Like An Eagle, 1976). The sensation of time does seem to slip past us into the next moment, and the next, and the next no matter which barricades we set up in its path. We cannot stop or slow or outrun time. Time marches toward the future … except when it didn’t. When Jesus entered our timeline, time stopped.

Time reaches toward Jesus. When Jesus was in the future, then time leaned toward the future. When Jesus was in the present, then time pooled in the present. When Jesus was in the past, then time stretched toward the past. It is accurate and biblical to assert that the Lord is not the servant of time, but rather, time is the servant of the Lord. Like a comet is always leaning toward the sun with its tail trailing behind, so does time always lean toward the Son with its shadow trailing behind.

Paul spoke of this mystery in the context of a child awaiting the father to declare the day when childhood was over, and adulthood had begun. In Greek and Roman culture, that day was “adoption,” when the father—on a day that he had in mind all along but told no one (Gal. 4:2)—named the child as his heir. The child, who previously had no legal standing, in an instant received full legal standing in the family and in the community. “But 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, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). It was not God who was waiting on time to reach its fullness but rather time waiting on God to announce when “fullness” had arrived. When God declared “enough,” then time pivoted.

Time waits for no one, except if that person is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came in the flesh to redeem those who were in bondage to the cold, cause-and-effect legality of the Law. At the Incarnation, time shifted from slippin’ into the future and started measurin’ everything based on Christ’s historic, monumental, redemptive arrival. Jesus truly split time in half. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:6-7).