Introduction: “The Fullness of Time”: How Jesus Comes to Fulfill All the Covenants
St. Paul tells us in Galatians 4:4 that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.” That’s a kind of summary of Christ’s ministry of what He came to do. We notice that St. Paul mentions He was born under the law, that is a reference to the Mosaic Covenant that we spoke about in our previous lesson. To redeem those “under the law;” again, that is the people of Israel who were under the Mosaic covenant with all those laws that were penitential because of their sin with the golden calf. St. Paul goes on to say that we may receive adoption as sons, that is covenantal. We’ve been saying all along the covenant forms a family and that adoption takes place by swearing an oath which ushers you into a covenant.
St. Paul is telling us that when everything was prepared, he describes it as the “fullness of time” or “when the time had fully come” then God sent forth His Son. That’s a good introduction to examining the work of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of everything that we’ve seen so far in the Old Testament covenants. To explore this more, I’d like to focus on the very first verse of the New Testament because there is a lot of theology present there in a short sentence.
The New Testament begins with Matthew 1:1, a statement “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham.” This brief sentence connects Jesus to three great covenant mediators of Salvation History. First of all, the phrase “this is the book of the genealogy of” is only used in one other place in the Bible and that’s in Genesis 5:3 where the full phrase is, “The book of the genealogy of Adam.”
When any good Jewish reader would pick up the Gospel of Matthew in the first century and begin reading, and it begins with “the book of the genealogy of,” they would be waiting for “Adam” to drop, but what drops is “Jesus.” What’s the point of that? Very clear: Jesus is being presented as a New Adam figure, or we might say a “Second Adam.” A new founder of the human race, and someone to bring us back, as it were, the peace of the Garden where we can enjoy that perfect peace with God and that perfect peace with creation in that covenantal relationship that God intended for humanity from the beginning.
Then, St. Matthew goes on to describe Jesus as “Son of David.” It’s employed as a title here, not meaning just any descendant of David because, little known fact, there are many descendants of the royal house in places like Nazareth and Bethlehem in the first century in Israel. Jesus wasn’t just any descendant of the house of David, He was the son of David, That means the heir, the one to fulfill the promises associated with that ancient covenant that was given to David and all those wonderful and even hyperbolic things that are said about the son of David in various Psalms and various prophecies. Jesus was the one to come and fulfill those.
Then, finally, He’s called the “Son of Abraham.” Again, this is not just any descendant of Abraham because all the Jews were descendants of Abraham, even some other nationalities like the Edonites were descended from Abraham. Jesus is not just any son, He is the son of Abraham, a title. He is the definitive son, He is the promised seed who would be the source of blessing to the whole world in Genesis 22:18, “through your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Jesus is that seed.
As we proceed through the rest of the Gospel of Matthew and other Gospels are parallel, we observe that Jesus is constantly fulfilling the types of the Old Testament mediators. For example, in Matthew 5:1, He goes up on a mountain and begins to teach people Divine Law. Well, that calls to mind Moses who likewise went up on Mt. Sinai and gave the people the 10 Commandments.
We move further on in Matthew, Matthew 12, Jesus casts a demon out of a man and the surrounding bystanders say, “Can this be the son of David?” Why do they say that? If we go back to the Old Testament, the only exorcist in the Old Testament was David. We read about the exorcism he performed in 1 Samuel 16 immediately after being anointed by the prophet Samuel and receiving the Holy Spirit. Earlier in the chapter, David then proceeds to go to the courts of Saul and through the playing and singing of his music, he is able to exorcise Saul and drive the evil spirits out of Saul. That’s why, when Jesus does likewise, people will recognize Him as the heir of this Davidic exorcistic tradition.
We go further into Matthew 14:17ff, we see Jesus feeding a multitude of the people of Israel who are out in the wilderness and He feeds them with supernatural bread as He multiplies the five loaves. This is like Moses feeding the people of Israel with supernatural bread in the wilderness. So much of the Gospels comes to life when we understand the Old Testament background and see that on virtually every page, Jesus is fulfilling and actualizing the types of the Old Testament. He is playing the roles and bringing to perfection the roles of those great mediators like Adam, Noah, Moses and David, just as the prophets said He would as they prophesied about the coming of the new covenant.