Dr. Couch, I find Galatians 1:4 a very interesting verse. Do you agree?
ANSWER: Absolutely! It reads: Christ "gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father." In the Greek text "deliver" (exaireo) means "to pluck out, to draw out, to rescue, to deliver." The gospel is a rescue, an emancipation from a state of bondage. It is a rescue from the power of the ethical characteristics of the present age, notes Wuest. Age is the Greek word aionos which Trench defines as follows:
All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral or immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale!
Wow! What a mouthful! But right on! Wuest goes on and writes:
It is that particular phase of human society, the one which our Lord found existing when He came the first time, which He will still find existing when He comes the second time, and which will be displaced by a new order of things in the Millennium.
We believers cannot fully figure out the horrible environment we exist in. We are living in a moral degenerate sewer of filth and immorality! And, unfortunately, we even participate in it but don't fully recognize it for what it really is! Our final redemption will make all of this clear!
Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch
