Our Constant Star: Day 14

Read & Journal

Read Galatians 4:4-7. Use the following journal prompts to help you better understand what you’ve read.

• What does this passage teach you about Jesus? Add to the list you’ve been compiling in your journal.

• What does this passage help you understand about the incarnation and why it matters? Explain.

• If you were explaining these verses to a friend, what would you say? Jot down the main points in your journal using your own words.

• What does this passage teach you about yourself and how God regards you? Explain.

• Look over the lyrics of the second verse of “O Savior of Our Fallen Race.” How does today’s reading help you to see the “promise bright” that God has given us in Jesus Christ?

Ponder

I struggle with “at just the right time.” I’m either incredibly early or a little bit late—and there’s apparently no in-between!

But, thankfully, our God is not like that. Today’s passage tells us that at “just the right time” God sent his Son, “born of a woman” into the world to save sinners. Sound familiar? It should be. You’ve read it again and again in the lyrics of the second verse of “O Savior of Our Fallen Race”:

Remind us Lord of life and grace

How once, to save our fallen race,

You put our human vesture on

And came to us as Mary's son.

When the law had accomplished its purpose and we began to recognize that there was no way we could save ourselves from our own sin, God sent his Son to redeem us. To buy us back, to free us from slavery to sin and give us full rights as his children. He adopts us as his own, not because we earned his favor or we were good enough on our own merits, but because he loves us and accepts Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf.

We aren’t just sons and daughters, though; we’re heirs (v.7). All of God’s resources are available to us, and God has sent his Holy Spirit into our hearts to make that possible. In God’s family, no one is excluded from the inheritance. Along with Jesus, we have access to all that is God’s.

As Timothy George writes in The New American Commentary on Galatians: “No longer is your relationship to God determined by your race, rank, or role. … No longer are you shut up in the prison house of sin. No longer are you under the curse of the law. The promise given to Abraham and fulfilled in his prophetic Seed, Jesus Christ, has now been extended to all of those who through faith in him have become sons, crying “Abba!” and heirs of the living God.”

Once, long ago, Jesus put on flesh and came to us as Mary’s son, and it changed everything. When we were lost and trapped in sin, Jesus came to rescue us. We are saved, not because of our own goodness or our ability to fulfill the law, but because Jesus is good. Because Jesus fulfilled the law. Because Jesus, our sinless savior, laid down his life on the cross so that we would not have to take the punishment our sin deserves. He has made a way for us to live eternally with the Father and wrapped us in his own righteousness.

So, as we end this second week of Advent, may your life be filled with hope and joy as you dwell on what Jesus has done for you.

Today, as year by year its light

Brings to our world a promise bright

One precious truth outshines the sun:

Salvation comes from You alone.

Source: Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 309.