To be honest, I’m not really ready for Advent—that season of preparation for the coming of Jesus. It doesn’t seem like it should be that time already. So it’s a good thing we have regular rhythms of remembrance, or I would forget. 

This year, I’m still pondering my recent study of Galatians. The apostle Paul mentions Jesus’s birth only once:

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman [Mary], born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Galatians 4:4–5

I discovered this verse while studying for and writing my book, Favored Blessed Pierced: A Fresh Look at Mary of Nazareth. It is the only reference to Mary, Jesus’s mother, outside of the Gospels and Acts.

Paul wants his readers to know that at just the right time Jesus was born to a human mother. So he is 100% human. But he is also God’s Son. So he is 100% divine too. Jesus came to earth to redeem us from bondage to religious rule-keeping so that God might adopt us as his children with all the rights of a firstborn son and heir. 

While we celebrate Jesus’s birth at Christmas, we cannot separate it from the reason he came nor his promises for the future. 

Join me here as I look at each of the traditional Advent themes—HOPE, PEACE, JOY, and LOVE—found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Today we start with HOPE.

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Advent 1: HOPE

During any given slice in history, I wager that hope wanes. For no matter how hard we try, we just can’t get everything right. Yet common hope offers us little more than wishful thinking.

Conversely Christian hope is full assurance without any hint of doubt (Rom 8:24–25), a confident expectation of things to come.¹ We hope because Jesus, our Savior, was born of a woman, to redeem us and adopt us. Because we are declared righteous through faith in Jesus (Gal 3:6).

But Paul’s only mention of hope in his letter to the Galatians looks forward, not back:

For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness.

Galatians 5:5 CSB

Paul has already taught that we don’t have to earn God’s acceptance. We receive it when we believe that Jesus died for our sins and rose again (1 Cor 15:3–4). So when Paul says we wait for the “hope of righteousness,” he means we look forward to the full, perfect expression of the righteousness we currently possess. Author Timothy Keller puts it this way: “Paul is saying that we can live today in light of our certain, guaranteed, future glorification and welcome by God into His arms.”²

During Advent, we don’t simply remember our Savior born years ago to save us from our sins, but we also celebrate the hope of his future return when all things will be made totally right.

This Advent, let’s wait eagerly by faith, with the Spirit’s enabling, for the future perfect expression of our current relationship with God. Let’s “hope for righteousness” because our future with God is certain and because “he who promised is faithful” (Heb 10:23).

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1. “Hope in Scripture is not wishful thinking but a confident, Spirit-wrought expectation that God will fulfill every promise He has made in Christ. It rests on the character of God (Heb 6:18) and is secured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3). While faith looks back to the finished work of the cross and love acts in the present, hope stretches forward toward the consummation of redemption (1 Cor 13:13).” —https://biblehub.com/greek/1680.htm ↩︎
2. Timothy Keller, Galatians for You, 135. ↩︎