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The First Coming of Jesus, January 1
When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son,...to
redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the
adoption of sons.
Galatians 4:4, 5
.
The Saviour’s coming was foretold in Eden. When Adam and Eve first
heard the promise, they looked for its speedy fulfillment. They joyfully
welcomed their first-born son, hoping that he might be the Deliverer. But the
fulfillment of the promise tarried. Those who first received it died without
the sight. From the days of Enoch the promise was repeated through
patriarchs and prophets, keeping alive the hope of His appearing, and yet
He came not. The prophecy of Daniel revealed the time of His advent, but
not all rightly interpreted the message. Century after century passed away;
the voices of the prophets ceased. The hand of the oppressor was heavy
upon Israel, and many were ready to exclaim, “The days are prolonged, and
every vision faileth.”
Ezekiel 12:22
.
But like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God’s pur-
poses know no haste and no delay. Through the symbols of the great dark-
ness and the smoking furnace, God had revealed to Abraham the bondage of
Israel in Egypt, and had declared that the time of their sojourning should be
four hundred years. “Afterward,” He said, “shall they come out with great
substance.”
Genesis 15:14
. Against that word, all the power of Pharaoh’s
proud empire battled in vain. On “the self-same day” appointed in the
divine promise, “it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out
from the land of Egypt.”
Exodus 12:41
. So in heaven’s council the hour for
the coming of Christ had been determined. When the great clock of time
pointed to that hour, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
“When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.”
Providence had directed the movements of nations, and the tide of human
impulse and influence, until the world was ripe for the coming of the
Deliverer....
Then Jesus came to restore in man the image of his Maker. None but
Christ can fashion anew the character that has been ruined by sin. He came
to expel the demons that had controlled the will. He came to lift us up from
the dust, to reshape the marred character after the pattern of His divine
character, and to make it beautiful with His own glory.
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