Promise Fulfilled

Around 2,000 years ago, God initiated his most important act to keep his promise.

In the New Testament it says that God “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Sent by God the Father, God the Son came to earth. The Bible says that the eternal God became flesh and blood, and entered into the world as a man

God the Son left the wonderful “inside (uchi) fellowship” in God and came down to the outside (soto) world. He came in order to love those outside (soto) and invite them into “inside (uchi) fellowship” with God. This incarnate God-man is Jesus Christ.

But how do you think the people of 2,000 years ago responded? Did they accept the invitation to return to “inside (uchi) fellowship” with God?

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Promise Fulfilled

Opening Questions

If God came to earth, what would you expect that to look like?

Last time our theme was the “grace” that God shows to sinners. We saw from the book of Genesis how God did not treat Adam and Eve as their sin deserved. We noticed several ways in which God in fact blessed them undeservedly. Can you remember what those were?

Above all, God gave a gracious promise that one of Adam and Eve’s “offspring” (descendants) would finally crush the head of the serpent, fulfilling where Adam failed. This is the first promise in the Bible of the gospel or “good news”. The word “gospel” actually refers to the announcement of a great victory. The events that lead to that victory are at the center of the Bible’s story. Today, we’re going to see how God began to fulfil his promise: a promise to restore uchi fellowship with himself. To do that, we’re jumping many thousands of years ahead, to the New Testament of the Bible. The New Testament was all written in the first century A.D. Of course, the parts of the Bible we are jumping over are important too! Hopefully you can come back and read the whole Bible some day. Then you will see how the whole story fits together.

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 4:4-5

We read here that God did something in “the fullness of time”. What do you understand by that expression?
What hints do you see here that the gospel promise in Genesis has been fulfilled?

The verses in Galatians tell us that God sent forth his Son. The person who was sent is clearly a special person. Do you remember we learned before that the God of the Bible is a Trinity: one God eternally existing as three Persons in loving fellowship? The person who is sent into the world by God is none other than God himself. God the Father sent God the Son outside (soto) the heavenly fellowship but also into the world to fulfil his promise.

…the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
1 John 3:8

This verse indicates that the Son of God came for a particular purpose. Again, can you see the links with the promise God made in Genesis?
Think back to what we learned from the book of Genesis. What do you understand by “the works of the devil”?

The Bible tells us that this “Son of God” came into our world in a particular place, at a particular time in history. This is not a myth or a purely “religious” story of symbolism. We are talking about flesh and blood! The “Son of God” is the person we know as Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as the son of a Jewish carpenter, about 2,000 years ago.

One of Jesus’ close friends and disciples, John, wrote his own eyewitness account of the years he spent with Jesus. For John, Jesus’ story began long before he was ever born. He refers to the Son of God as “the Word”:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

[…] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-5, 14

What do you think John means by “in the beginning”? Why do you think this is written in kanji （初め） in the Japanese Bible, unlike in the book of Genesis, where it is written in hiragana（はじめ）?
What did the Word (the Son of God) leave behind when he became flesh?
What does this passage of the Bible tell us about what the Word (the Son of God) did?

As the my uchi-soto booklet says on page 6, John tells us literally that the Son of God “pitched his tent” among us. This has two meanings. First, the Word made his temporary home in our world. Second, in the Bible, God’s “tent” or “tabernacle” is a place where God meets with his human creatures. By describing Jesus’ “tabernacling” among us, John is emphasizing that the Creator has entered into his creation. Next time, we’ll see what happened to God in our world.

Concluding questions:

What do you make of the Bible’s claim that God was born into our world?
How do you think Jesus might win the victory over the devil promised long ago?

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.