Paul writes to the Romans in what may seem almost an off-hand comment: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6 ESV; emphasis added).
This verse starkly shows that Paul, at times, can refer to the flow of human history as a collective pronoun. “We” were weak in the beginning of the first century, and then Christ died for us. Many Christians have conversion stories whereby they learned what Jesus did for them, repented and entrusted themselves to Him, and were empowered by the Holy Spirit to walk in newness of life. That is a fruitful analogy, but Paul obviously isn’t talking about what happened in all Christian biographies. He is talking about what God and Jesus Christ did in human history at the crucifixion.
And this passage tells us not only that Christ died in human history but that he did so “at the right time” in human history.
What was it about what we now know as the First Century AD (which is also the common era, but that designation remain dependent on the work of Our Lord) that made it appropriate for Christ to be born, live, die, rise, ascend to the throne, and pour out the Holy Spirit?
Paul repeatedly makes this claim about the timing of redemption is Christ:
- “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:3-5 ESV).
- “…making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10 ESV).
- “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:5–6 ESV).
- “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior” (Titus 1:1–3 ESV).
So there are many reasons to ask the question: What was so important about the timing of Jesus’ mission? What made that point in human history “the fullness of time” and “the proper time”?
Perhaps it might help us to answer that question if we developed curiosity about another question. Maybe the real question should be: What delayed Jesus so long in human history? Maybe we ought to expect that there must have been something proper about the time of the incarnation and the work of Christ. Or rather, that there must have been some good reason for the delay. Without an explanation for the thousands of years between Genesis 3 and the Gospels, John 3:16 becomes rather confusing. “For God so loved the world, that” thousands of years later “he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Why the wait?
Consider the synoptic Gospels.
Jesus declared that the sins of Israel were reaching a climax in his own death. In the parable of the tenants and the vineyard (Matthew 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–19), Jesus described his impending murder as the final climactic sin in Israel’s history, the one that will mean “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:41). Of course, this death is, in fact, the action that will provide for a New Covenant that involves forgiveness of many, as Jesus signified in the establishment of the Lord’s supper (Matthew 26:28). So this murder, while bringing wrath on those who remain in unbelief, also provides the salvation for all who believe.
Again, this isn’t presented as a simple one-time sin. It is presented in the parable as the climactic sin that builds on a repeated history. In Matthew 23, the point is a bit more obscure because Jesus includes the persecution of his followers along with his own suffering at the hands of the unbelieving rulers in Jerusalem. But nevertheless, Jesus is again warning them that they are culminating a historic pattern of sin.
Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation (Matthew 23:32–36 ESV).
The plain reading of these texts is that the rejection of Christ (and his followers) was not an isolated incident. It was a climactic sin that fulfilled a practice that Israel had long engage in. And this sin was serious not only because of who Jesus was, but because it showed they were doubling down on their worst behavior. “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours’” (Luke 20:13–14 ESV). They were presuming on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness was meant to lead them to repentance. Because of their hard and impenitent heart they were storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment would be revealed.
God Meant It for Good
This might be a good place to briefly consider the mystery of predestination. God was repeatedly merciful to Israel. Though he slew the Exodus generation in the wilderness, that was a mere chastisement. When he was really angry he wiped out entire family lines. In this case, he saved all their children.
He constantly forgave Israel in the time of the Judges. When the sins of Eli and his sons caused the ark to be taken into captivity, damaging Tabernacle worship beyond repair, He gave them a new place of worship and a new system of government (Temple and the Monarchy).
And when they sinned to the point that the Temple was destroyed and God sent them into exile, seventy years later God brought them back to their land in a greater way. They had a new Temple and new international influence as a people both in the Promised Land and throughout the empires. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
But when Jesus began his ministry, Israel, having sinned against the grace of restoration from exile, was now more debauched than ever. The prophet Zachariah was shown a vision of Israel being cleansed of demonic possession at the return from exile in a kind of inversion of Ezekiel’s glory cloud (Ezekiel 1) involving an anti-ark of the Covenant:
Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Lift your eyes and see what this is that is going out.” And I said, “What is it?” He said, “This is the basket that is going out.” And he said, “This is their iniquity in all the land.” And behold, the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket! And he said, “This is Wickedness.” And he thrust her back into the basket, and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening. Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are they taking the basket?” He said to me, “To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.”
Zechariah 5:5–11 ESV
Jesus explained that the woman had returned and now Israel, “this evil generation,” was infested with demons:
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”
Matthew 12:43–45 ESV
This could explain why there is no precedent for the number of times Jesus had to deal with unclean spirits. These incidents might remind us of how Saul was tormented by a demon and needed David to play his harp, but there was never anything as widespread as the demonic invasion that Jesus had to deal with. Israel, precisely because God graciously restored the nation time and again, had existed and persisted long enough in sinning against that grace to become worse than ever before.
And that climactic sin brought us the betrayal, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus by which believers are saved from their sins.
God’s grace to Israel resulted in greater sin over time, which resulted in salvation for all nations.
But what does all this have to do with predestination?
Because, when we realize God is gracious to people for the purpose of increasing sin, we are tempted to think that it is not really grace. Paul says that God has kind intentions, and the object of those intentions are storing up wrath (Romans 2:4-5). So even if we (wrongly) reduce predestination to prescience, God would still have willed for future wrath.
I don’t bring up predestination to worry about it philosophically. We all know that Romans brings up the topic and Paul writes a lot of scary stuff in Romans 9. Rather, I want to refer to the two earliest texts that refer to God working salvation through Israel’s sinful actions.
So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”
Genesis 45:4–8 ESV
As a Calvinist, I treat this passage as information that informs a general philosophy for everything that happens. I don’t see how God can control and work through the sinful actions of Joseph’s brothers and not work that way in all of life. Joseph’s brothers are still treated as responsible moral agents in this story, so God’s sovereignty (as Calvinists refer to God’s control) is somehow compatible with human responsibility.
But emphatically, this is not just any story. The story of Joseph is an answer to what happened in Genesis 3 and a fulfillment of the promises to Abraham. It is not a complete answer nor a complete fulfillment. That will take a lot more time (we will get back to why God needs more time). But it is a fitting end to the book of Genesis, with the story of Joseph’s death alerting us that sequels are necessary to truly complete the story arc.
Adam and Eve, grabbed at a forbidden tree, discovered they were naked, were deprived of access to God’s special food (the Tree of Life) and were forced into a world where food was hard to get. Joseph on the other hand was twice stripped of his robe of authority for being faithful. First, his brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery, then Potiphar’s wife maligned him. When he offered wise counsel, he was still forgotten for two more years. By being patient and faithful, he acted the opposite of how Adam had acted. Then Pharaoh exalted Joseph and robed him with authority, so that he fed the world and saved the peoples from starvation.
Abraham had been promised that kings would come from him. Joseph told his brothers that he had become a father to Pharaoh. In him all the families of the earth were blessed.
And all this happened through God’s predestination working through the sin of the sons of Israel. We are even given a second statement about it (Genesis 50:20) so that we have two witnesses.
Many of us have grown up with the story of Joseph. We don’t think of how a moral person might naturally react to hearing that the sons of Israel were saved because they betrayed the faithful son. What kind of Bible story is that? Are you saying that we should do evil that good may come?
The Completion of Iniquity
Since we are thinking of Genesis and the Abrahamic Promise, perhaps we should return to the question of why God waited so long to bring salvation.
God had told Abraham what he made a covenant with him (Genesis 15) that his descendants would go into Egypt and then come out again to take the Promised Land. He gives a specific reason why more time has to pass: “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16 ESV). The ESV cross references Matthew 23:32 quoted above.
God is hostile to sin and no individual knows when his life will be ended. But, apparently, that doesn’t mean that God is ready to punish national (or worldwide) sin at any moment. Rather, he is normally patient and then, when sin reaches a certain point, his wrath is poured out. Sodom and Gomorrah reached that point in Abraham’s day, so God destroyed them by fire. But the rest of Canaan was not so bad and did not provoke God to destroy them until the time of the Exodus.
If we look at human history he can see it building up toward judgment and then being given new grace. Noah and the flood was the first such judgment. Then there were other judgments. Egypt was judged in the Exodus. Israel was judged in days of Eli, as I’ve mentioned. The northern and southern kingdoms were exiled. And, as I have already written, Israel was ripe for a new judgment when Jesus was working there.
When Jesus was crucified, it is described to us as a great Judgment Day. The sun went out (Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44, 45). The Temple was struck (Mathew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45), the earth was shaken apart and the dead were raised (Matthew 27:52, 53). Indeed, Jesus as King judges between the righteous and the unrighteous (Luke 23:28-43).
So this was the culminating sin, but in the same act, it was the time when God poured out judgment on his Son! Rather than judging the nation of Israel, God punished Israel’s King.
So let us suppose that the record in the Gospels of Israel’s large-scale apostasy is not an accident that just happened to be the case, but rather an essential element of Christ’s atonement.
How Much of the Gospels are Gospel?
Given the way we usually articulate the Gospel, it seems to me that Jesus could have been born an Irishman, an Iraqi, or an Asian, and could have died in any number of ways, to complete his mission to die for the elect. But this leaves us with some problems. A minor one is in apologetics. The whole scheme seems fantastically arbitrary.
There is a more substantial problem for believers that I will break down into two related ones: First, it renders much of the information given to us in the four Gospels actually superfluous to the message of the Gospel. Second, it leaves us with no explanation as to the entire history of Israel recorded in the Scriptures.
I have already mentioned the second problem: Why did God wait thousands of years and spend so much time working with the nation of Israel? What was the point–to give us moral lessons? That doesn’t make much sense. Why not simply choose Abraham and Sarah to give birth to the Christ child? Why not allow Eve to be the mother of our Lord?
Let’s assume that history in Scripture matters. What is the Biblical history? I’ve referred to it above but it might be helpful to summarize it in three stages:
- From Adam to Noah the world grows in evil until God has to destroy it.
- From Noah to Moses the world grows in evil. After the nations are formed in the shadow of the ruins of Babel, Abraham is chosen to bring salvation to the nations. But we find Jacob’s sons are about to mix up with the Canaanites (the point of the story of Judah and Tamar). God curses the world with famine but provides a savior in Joseph to deliver the world and his family from the famine and, in Egypt, from the intermarriage, since the Hebrews were abominable to the Egyptians. Nevertheless, in Egypt they fall into idolatry and become slaves.
- From Moses to Jesus. Three times the covenant unravels. The decline found in the book of Judges is corrected through Samuel and David. The decline under the kings is corrected through exile. But Jesus came to a nation worse than it had ever been. The demons alone, prove this. There is no precedent in the Hebrew Scriptures for widespread demonic oppression.
Thus, my thesis: God was about to destroy the world.
Israel was given the law and they had only become worse sinners as a result. To whom much is given much is required. And if Israel was under judgment–they whom God had given the task of being a light to the nations–then the rest of the world was surely doomed as well. The wrath of God was about to fall.
And Jesus both provoked the world to the ultimate sin and then stepped in the path of that wrath.
He came at the right time just when the priestly people who had been given the covenant law had become the worst offenders. He literally came on Judgment Day. And the only reason there is a world of human beings today is because that judgment fell on him instead of the ones who deserved it. We still have a planet to live on because Christ became the target of God’s wrath.
It is as if Noah, instead of getting on the ark and being the lone survivor with his family, inhaled the entire flood himself and drowned instead of the wicked people around him.
And Romans is all about this aspect of the story of the atonement. Almost everything distinctive to Romans regarding grace, the law, and predestination is there because Paul is dealing with opponents who understand his reading of Israel’s history and have been raising objections to it.
The Climax of Paul’s Argument
Paul has more than one agenda in his letter to the Romans. He is concerned with using Rome as a basis for his mission to Spain, encouraging peace and brotherly love between Gentile and Jewish Christians, and answering objections from Jewish opponents. This last agenda item is largely dealt with in an argument that begins in 1:16 and ends with chapter 11:11-36. His conclusion begins: “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.” (ESV)
Through their trespass salvation has come to the nations. He repeats that claim six more times:
- “their trespass means riches for the world” (v. 12).
- “their failure means riches for the Gentiles” (v. 12).
- “their rejection means the reconciliation of the world” (v. 15).
- “some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree” (v. 17).
- “…you will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’ That is true…” (vv. 19-20).
- “you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience” (v. 30).
So seven times, in a short section, Paul repeats the claim that the Gentiles have been brought to faith because of the unbelief of Israel.
I contend for two things:
- This is not some novel idea that Paul is dropping into his letter for the first time. Rather, it is a dramatic expression of a conclusion that he has been arguing for all along, especially in 3:1-8; 5:12-6:1; 9:1-29.
- Paul is not saying that there are a limited number of reservations among the elect so that some Israelites had to be excluded to make room for Gentile believers, nor is he saying that Gentiles would never have been evangelized if Israelites had believed the Gospel. Rather, he is saying that the Gentiles, the nations, the world (v. 12) were saved through the crucifixion of Christ, the climactic sin of Israel. “For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (11:30–32 ESV).
This is brilliant and builds on some comments JJordan has made.