The Apostle goes on from describing the great fact which took place in
heaven to set forth the great fact which completed it on earth. The
sending of the Son took effect in the birth of Jesus, and the Apostle
puts it under two forms, both of which are plainly designed to present
Christ's manhood as His full identification of Himself with us. The Son
of God became the son of a woman; from His mother He drew a true and
complete humanity in body and soul. The humanity which He received was
sufficiently kindred with the divinity which received it to make it
possible that the one should dwell in the other and be one person. As
born of a woman the Son of God took upon Himself all human experiences,
became capable of sharing our pure emotions, wept our tears, partook in
our joys, hoped and feared as we do, was subject to our changes, grew as
we grow, and in everything but sin, was a man amongst men.
But the Son of God could not be as the sons of men. Him the Father
heard always. Even when He came down from Heaven and became the Son of
Man, He continued to be 'The Son of Man which is in Heaven.' Amid all
the distractions and limitations of His earthly life, the continuity and
depth of His communion with the Father were unbroken and the
completeness of His obedience undiminished. He was a Man, but He was
also the Man, the one realised ideal of humanity that has ever walked
the earth, to whom all others, even the most complete, are fragments,
the fairest foul, the most gracious harsh. In Him and in Him only has
been 'given the world assurance of a man.'
The other condition which is here introduced is 'born under the law,' by
which it may be noted that the Apostle does not mean the Jewish law,
inasmuch as he does not use the definite article with the word. No doubt
our Lord was born as a Jew and subject to the Jewish law, but the
thought here and in the subsequent clause is extended to the general
notion of law. The very heart of our Lord's human identification is that
He too had duties imperative upon Him, and the language of one of the
Messianic psalms was the voice of His filial will during all His earthly
life; 'Lo! I come, in the volume of the Book it is written of Me, I
delight to do Thy will and Thy law is within My heart.' The very secret
of His human life was discovered by the heathen centurion, at whose
faith He marvelled, who said, 'I _also_ am a man under authority'; so
was Jesus. The Son had ever been obedient in the sweet communion of
Heaven, but the obedience of Jesus was not less perfect, continual and
unstained. It was the man Jesus who summed up His earthly life in 'I do
always the things that please Him'; it was the man Jesus who, under the
olives in Gethsemane, made the great surrender and yielded up His own
will to the will of the Father who sent Him.
He was under law in that the will of God dominated His life, but He was
not so under it as we are on whom its precepts often press as an
unwelcome obligation, and who know the weight of guilt and condemnation.
If there is any one characteristic of Jesus more conspicuous than
another it is the absence in Him of any consciousness of deficiency in
His obedience to law, and yet that absence does not in the smallest
degree infringe on His claim to be 'meek and lowly in heart.' 'Which of
you convinceth Me of sin?' would have been from any other man a defiance
that would have provoked a crushing answer if it had not been taken as a
proof of hopeless ignorance of self, but when Christ asks the question,
the world is silent. The silence has been all but unbroken for nineteen
hundred years, and of all the busy and often unfriendly eyes that have
been occupied with Him and the hostile pens that have been eager to say
something new about Him, none have discovered a flaw, or dared to 'hint
a fault.' That character has stamped its own impression of perfectness
on all eyes even the most unfriendly or indifferent. In Him there is
seen the perfect union and balance of opposite characteristics; the rest
of us, at the best, are but broken arcs; Jesus is the completed round.
He is under law as fully, continuously and joyfully obedient; but for
Him it had no accusing voice, and it laid on Him no burden of broken
commandments. He was born of a woman, born under law, but he lived
separate from sinners though identified with them.