A common topic in debates is why did Christ come when He did? My whole life I've been ready to explain this, but I haven't quite had the passage at the tip of my tongue to base it correctly in theology.
Here it is:
Galatians 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: 4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7 Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Galatians 4 also provides us with another very important observation:
8 Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
Which is a great reference back to the Old Testament.
Deuteronomy 32:16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.
17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
And even more succinctly here:
Psalm 95:5: “For all the gods of the Gentiles are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.”
1 Corinthians 10:20: “No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
Again, the pagan practices of foreign people are often directed towards that which is not just "not God," but that which is actually outright antagonistic to God. Reason being, those which are spiritual and have powers that are properly ordered will direct everything to God and not seek worship from others.
The third and perhaps most important thing that Galatians Four gives to us is found in the last section of the chapter.
I will post liberally from it and allow it space to breathe:
19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
20 I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.
21 Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?
22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.
29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.
31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.
This really jumped out at me as it was being employed by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his Homilie on the Song of Songs.
Let's hand it over to St. Gregory of Nyssa and his Preface to the Homilies on the Song of Solomon:
For the grand apostle, when he says that the law is spiritual ( Rom 7:14), is including the historical narratives too under the heading “law,” because the whole of the divinely inspired Scripture is law for those who read it. Not only through its explicit commands, but also through its historical narratives, Scripture affords a teaching that guides those who pay careful heed to it toward knowledge of the mysteries and toward a pure life. The apostle, moreover, does the work of interpretation in accordance with what gives him satisfaction in his search for what edifies, though he does not concern himself with the label that is to be assigned to a type of exegesis. Rather the contrary. At one point, when he is about to transpose the biblical narrative so as to unfold the economy of the covenants, he says that he is changing his manner of speech (Gal 4:20),3 | but then, aft er he has mentioned the two sons of Abraham, born to him of the maidservant and the free woman, Paul designates his way of understanding them an “allegory” (Gal 4:24). And again, when he has been recounting certain events of the biblical history, he says: “They happened to those people as types” but “were written for our admonition” (1 Cor 10:11). Or again, when he has said that the threshing ox should not be muzzled, he adds: “God’s concern is not for oxen,” but “these things were surely written for our sakes” (1 Cor 9:9–10). Also there is a place where he calls dimmer understanding and partial knowledge a “mirror” and an “enigma” (1 Cor 13:12), and again he says that the movement from corporeal to intelligible realities is a turning toward the Lord and the removal of a veil (2 Cor 3:16).
By all these diff erent modes of speech and names for intellectual discernment, the apostle is pointing us to a single form of instruction: one ought not in every instance to remain with the letter (since the obvious sense of the words often does us harm when it comes to the virtuous life), but one ought to shift to an understanding that concerns the immaterial and intelligible, so that corporeal ideas may be transposed into intellect and thought when the fleshly sense of the | words has been shaken off like dust (cf. Matt 10:14).
This moreover is why he says, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6), for frequently the narrative, if we stop short at the mere events, does not furnish us with models of the good life. How does it profit the cause of a virtuous life to hear that the prophet Hosea got himself a child by sexual malfeasance (Hos 1:2) and that Isaiah went in to the prophetess (Isa 8:3), if one stops short at the literal sense? Or what do the stories about David, in which adultery and murder have agreed together in a single crime (cf. 2 Kingdoms 11), contribute to the virtuous life? But if an account is found that gives an incontestable indication of how these events fi t into the history of salvation, then the word of the apostle will be shown to be true: “Th e letter kills” (for it contains examples of evildoing), “but the Spirit gives life” (for it transposes a meaning that is incongruous and discordant into a more divine sense).
Truly, profound words for us when we consider the interpretation of the Bible.
There is plenty more that St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote concerning this topic, but I advise you to read it for yourself in this free PDF.
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