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,… "Is it not strange," asked a thoughtful boy one day of his tutor, "is it not strange that St. Paul should tell us that our Saviour was born of a woman? Everybody that I know is born of a woman, and it is hard to see why such a matter should be mentioned at all as if it were remarkable."... There is, it is true, nothing remarkable in this circumstance, if we take human life simply as we find it. For us men to be born of a woman is not merely a rule, it is a rule to which there is no known exception. Since the first parent of our race, no human being has appeared upon this earth who has not owed the debt of existence to the pain and travail of a human mother. The rule holds equally with the wisest, with the strongest, with the saintliest. Millions there have been among the sons of men, who have been also by Divine grace made to become sons of God; millions who have been born again, and thus have seen the kingdom of God; but of these each one was also first born of a human mother. So that we are driven to ask why a circumstance which might have been taken quietly for granted should be invested by the apostle with such prominence in the case of our Saviour Jesus Christ. But observe, the question is whether in His case it could have been taken for granted? If St. Paul mentions it thus emphatically, it is because he, at least, will not at once presume that this is the case. If, indeed, the Christ whom St. Paul loved and served was only a Son of God by grace, while by nature He was only and purely a man, then to have written down that he was "born of a woman" would have been an unmeaning truism. But if, in naming Him, St. Paul is thinking of Being whose nature is such as to make His appearance at all to the eye of sense, and in this visible sphere of things, in a very high degree extraordinary, then to say that He was "born of a woman" is to make an assertion of startling significance. Now, that St. Paul is thinking of such a Being is clear, for when he says, "God sent forth His Son," he used the same word as when, just after, he says, "God sent forth the Spirit of His Son." It is a word which implies, not simply the action of God's providence, placing a created being on the scene of life; it is a word which implies a sending forth from the inmost life, from the depths of Deity itself, of One who shared the essential nature of the Sender. (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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