Galatians 4:4-5 But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,… The life of the family is indeed older than Christianity; it is grounded on facts and instincts of human nature. It is perhaps, in the last analysis, the product of the action of man's reason and man's conscience upon his rudimentary physical instincts. But the nature and sacredness of family life has been recognized with very different degrees of clearness in different ages and countries of the world. It has had to contend with selfish passions always threatening to break it up, and, in particular, with the widespread and degrading institution of polygamy. Those who have best understood the true well-being of our race have done their best at all times to insist upon and to uphold family life as the safeguard of pure human life, as the firmest foundation of social order. Now, when our Lord condescended to be "born of a woman," He became a member of a human family, and He bestowed upon family life the greatest consecration it has ever received since the beginning of human history, He had, indeed, no earthly father; but He was subject to His foster-father, St. Joseph, as well as to His own mother, Mary. He was subject, while yet He blessed them. In every age Christians have loved to dwell upon the picture of that incomparable home, first at Bethlehem and then at Nazareth, that home in which for a while Mary presided, and for which Joseph toiled, and in which Jesus was nursed and trained. No homestead, we may be sure, ever rivalled the moral beauties of that which was set up on this earth when the Son of God was "born of a woman." From that day to this, He has been the inspiring, regulating, combining influence in all Christian households. In the Christian faith we trace His moral authority, in .the Christian mother His tenderness and love, in the Christian child His lowly obedience. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,WEB: But when the fullness of the time came, God sent out his Son, born to a woman, born under the law, |
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