Please read the passage first. A warning is in order, for this reading has stimulated much theological discussion. I will do my best to make it clear.
Paul makes his fifth argument for his gospel, in which he focuses upon another aspect of his vision of salvation history. The implications of his arguments are radical and dangerous to those who saw the future of the church intimately interwoven with the future of Judaism. He stresses that the coming of Christ means the “fullness of time” has come, and for that reason, the time of Law, which meant slavery, is giving way to faith in Christ, which means becoming children of God. Paul has compared the Law to a prison-warden and a slave-attendant. Now, he compared its role to that of the guardians and trustees appointed to take care of a minor and his property. Thus, Paul offers another illustration that comes from law courts. Though the Jews are chosen as heirs, yet they are only slaves to the Law. Any Christian who wants to submit to this slavery is back to a state of childhood. Paul now expands upon the image of being children of God. The heir is the state of the world before, the Gospel. Jews and Gentiles are under tutors, all having a system of ordinances. Is the father of the heir represented as dead or living? Since the point is the circumstance of the child, it is likely the father is living. Is the imagery from Roman or Jewish Law? It is likely the Romans.
Of particular note is the reference in verse 3 to “elemental spirits.” Paul develops the theme of Christian freedom from slavery to the Law and to the elemental spirits of the world. J. Louis Martyn offers an interpretation of stoicheia that suggests the term refers to the elemental substances from which everything in the natural world is composed. He argues that the rival missionaries in Galatia may have sought to convince the Galatians that their worship of pagan divinities was an ill-informed worship of the natural elements that ought to point them to a truer form of religion. Abraham, who moved through the contemplation of the heavenly bodies to discern the God who made and ordered them, would exemplify such religion. Their point would be that the Law provided the true understanding of the natural world and the heavenly bodies, and therefore, regulated the calendar of human religious observance in a manner that enabled correct celebration of holy feasts at the proper times. Of course, Paul disparages this in verse 10. In fact, uses a variety of ways to describe the human plight, and stoicheia of the world is one, others being sin and death that Adam brought into the world.
In verse 4, God sent Jesus when the time was right to serve as the agent of redemption and adoption. Theologically, this notion of the sending of the Son is the New Testament origin of the notion of the Trinity, and it has its counterpart in the sending of the Spirit that we find in the Gospel of John,. "Fullness of time" is the messianic or eschatological era, which completes the long wait of centuries. One might translate it more precisely as “when the time had reached its full term.” "Fullness" means much more than an end of a period of time. "Fullness" suggests that one period of time has ended so that another can begin. It can denote the legal transition from childhood to adulthood. Furthermore, as a slave fulfills the time of his or her service, he or she becomes free; a new status is taken on, a new era has begun. First, it was the fullness of time in relation to the giver. The moment had arrived in God's plan. Second, it was the fullness of time in reference to the recipient. The human race had to reach a mature age. Law had worked out its educational purpose and God now superseded it with the sending of the Son. Negatively, it was the purpose of the Law to deepen the conviction of sin and thus to show the inability of all existing systems to bring people near to God. Positively, it assumes a moral and spiritual expansion. Barth says that the entire notion of the fullness of time pictures time as an empty vessel, not yet filled, but waiting to be filled up at a particular time. “Fullness” suggests a vessel, plan, concept, or form being filled full. The Old Testament promises are without content apart from the coming of the reign of God in the man, Jesus, and therefore defective in themselves, yet, being related to this event, they are not for nothing. Time has a similar character. It has the defect and advantage of being a time hastening toward the time of Jesus and is then destined to move away from His time. The new age brought in by Jesus is not a refutation of the old age. The old age had fulfilled its time, its purpose. All time from the moment of creation was moving toward this new time of redemption and release. A new age has begun. No longer does the Law hold sway; it is the season of grace! Christ has inaugurated a new regime.
"Sent" includes concept of pre-existence. The significance of this passage for Pannenberg is that Christology begins with the primitive Christian interpretation of the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. Messiah implies the thought of divine sonship. It early had the sense that in the man Jesus the preexistent Son of God came to earth. Only God could be behind this event, namely, the sending of the Son into the world. the sending of the Son coincides with his birth from a woman. We are to think of Jeremiah, the servant of the Lord, and Paul as he describes himself in this letter. The point is that the Son has entered the sphere of earthly existence with its conditions and relations. This applies to all his earthly course that we find mention not only of his birth but also of the subjection of his earthly course to the Mosaic Law.
In verses 5-6, as God redeems and adopts the believer, he or she can call God, the Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, "Abba, Father." "Abba" is an Aramaic word best translated "Daddy." "Abba" probably originated among Jews in Palestine. It probably relates Jesus referring to God in this way, and possibly to the Lord’s Prayer. The point is the freedom such adopted children can have in prayer. It suggests the power of response to divine love in prayer issuing forth in freedom related to adopted children. Putting Aramaic and Greek forms together symbolized Jewish and Gentile unity. It is most likely that Jesus used this word in reference to God. The word became significant to later generations of those followed Jesus. Through the grace of Jesus Christ, believers are heirs of the riches of the Kingdom of God. These verses remind the believer of the basics of faith in which they stand and offer the good news that anyone who calls God "Abba" is part of the family. The abolition of the Law and rescue from bondage was a prior condition of the universal fellowship of God family. Though Mosaic Law is uppermost in his mind, Paul extends it to all systems.
The negative aspect of redemption is freedom from slavery. The positive is adoption as children. However, it is not just an inheritance, but new life, in which Paul associates the Trinity. The presence of the Spirit is thus a witness to being children of God. We should note that here, the gift of the Spirit is the result of adoption as children. H. B. Swete says that the mission of the Son is to give the rights of being in the family of God and the mission of the Spirit is to give the power of using them. H. Schlier (1971) said that God bestows on us not only the status of children through the sending of his Son, but also the character and knowledge of children through the sending of the Spirit. God bestows on us the character and knowledge of children because we are already in the status of children. For Pannenberg this passage shows that reconciliation occurs as humanity is taken up into fellowship with the Father of the Son, a taking up that occurs through the Spirit, who assures that this reconciliation is no longer coming solely from the outside. We ourselves enter into it. The goal of the sending of the Son is to be found in others. As Paul sees it, a special link exists between the death of Jesus by which believers are liberated from the dominion of sin, Law, and death. Therefore, the sending of the Son aims at the reconciliation to God of the world. The Spirit brings the mission of the Son to its completion. Where this freedom of the Spirit is, our reconciliation to God has reached its goal.
In verse 8, Pannenberg says Paul implicitly gave Christian theology the task of a natural theology in saying of the gods that the Galatians had worshiped prior to their conversion that in contrast to the God of the Christian message; they are by nature no gods. This statement implies that the God of Paul’s gospel is the only true God by nature. The formulation by Paul fits in with the philosophical question of natural theology as to the question as to what is by nature divine. For him, Christian thinking could not evade discussion of the philosophical criterion of the genuinely divine that we must regard as the origin of the world. The God of Christian proclamation would need to meet the philosophical criterion.
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