Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: Because that was when the set time had fully come?
For that is what we’re told in Galatians 4:4.
There is a true story that I love to tell from when I worked as a GP. It concerns the time I made a passing comment to a health care assistant who for reasons I won’t go in to, was grimacing at me like some latter day pirate.
‘Who do you think you are?’ I asked her, loudly enough for the whole waiting room to hear, ‘Long John Silver?’ – just as the patient I’d called moments before arrived at my side…complete with his wooden leg!
And so the question arises, was I just unlucky with the timing of my words, or was the whole incident somehow determined by God’s sovereign will?
Well, as one who believes that nothing happens outside of God’s absolute control, I have to conclude that it was the latter. Quite why he should have ordained things the way he did, I do not, of course, know – though I like to think it might be because God has a sense of humour and thought it’d make me, my healthcare assistant and the patient laugh. Which I’m glad to say it did.
But be that as it may, I believe that all things happen when they do for a reason – including the birth of Jesus which, as the verse above suggests, happened exactly when God ordained that it should.
But there is another incident in Jesus’s life that we’re told happened at just the right time too. And that was his death.
Jesus died during the feast of Passover, when the Jewish people sacrificed lambs in remembrance of the time they had to do just that to avoid God’s judgement falling on them in Old Testament times.
And, because what took place in Exodus Chapter 12 was only ever meant to point us to Jesus, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, it was fitting that he too should die during Passover.
Which is exactly what happened – despite the fact that the feast of Passover was the one time that those plotting Jesus’ death didn’t want him to die. [Mark 14:2].
All of which goes to prove that, whilst he was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, Jesus was ultimately delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. [Acts 2:23]
And that, in part at least, is why Paul could write in Romans 5:6 that ‘at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.’
And it’s also why we can be sure that Jesus came to earth on that first Christmas Day, because that was when the set time had fully come.
To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 5 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here
Some musings 