Paul's words never cease to find difficulty entering the doubting hearts of Christ's true believers. We normally do not perceive ourselves as weak and ungodly, and therefore cannot really perceive the fullness of Christ's work for us, much less consider how God also chose the perfect time for this work. It is precisely the force of the words "weak" and "ungodly" which bring out to us the sovereign prae or "beforehand" in Christ's work, through which we are transferred outside of us from darkness into His light.

But what do these words signify, and how do they connect to our daily experience? Paul wants to be concrete, but does require of us some simple abstraction – the abstraction of faith! He asks us to think of ourselves outside of our baptism, or outside of Christ; that is, the Lord asks us to think of ourselves as we were in our past, or as we were abstracted from His call and guiding hand. What were we? We were weak and ungodly, enemies of God's truth and absolutely powerless to change our lot. Weakness and ungodliness mark everyone's beginning in life.

Yet the sovereign prae of the gospel has gone over us! God was and remains first in our lives! Even before we were born or experienced anything concerning our own sinfulness and powerlessness, Christ died for us. At a certain fixed point in history, long before our birth, God sent His Son to die on the cross, and no man can erase this dramatic and earth-rending event and its implications from our history. For Christ did not die only to decide at a later date who might benefit from His death. Rather, before He died, He knew those for whom He died. We were chosen in Him and set apart to live even though the sentence of death lay upon us. A perfect substitution has taken place in Him. He stood in our stead, and paid for the sins on His own. In addition proclaiming the definite reality of this substitution payment, Paul announces the love of God for His church. For Christ has died for us at the right time! He gave Himself for us at a point when it was clear that we could not in any way save ourselves. He was there at that point where death had fully engulfed us.

And so deep is the wisdom of God that the right time for us turns,out to be the right time for every believer. Our experience of God's prae is complemented by the reality of it for the whole church. When Jesus came on earth, no one recognized Him or honoured Him according to His origin and deeds. The light had entered the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it. He was the Emmanuel, God with us! Yet both Jews and Gentile put Him to death. Jerusalem did not recognize the day of her visitation, compare Luke 19:44. All were lost in weakness and ungodliness. Our guilt comes to its apex in the murder of Jesus Christ. What greater crime can we commit against God? And who would dare deny his share in this crime? Here the weakness and ungodliness of us all is clearly portrayed.

Yet the marvel of God's love is that this event did not take place in order to bring us into condemnation. Rather, the death of Christ proclaims amnesty both to the Jew as well as the Greek! That is the glorious and unexpected reversal coming over the world in the death of Christ. Rather than act according to the deed perpetrated, God institutes the time of delay! Just at that point where all men clearly stand under condemnation, the LORD God proclaims release from judgment, and forgiveness of sins in the Son. He chooses the right time. For the death which confirms and proves man's guilt is at the same time the death which forms the perfect and acceptable sacrifice to God. So He announces salvation to all who believe in Him!

Yet if the number is fixed before hand, how can we be sure we share God's love? How do we really know that this text speaks to us? Paul later states that God commends His love to us in the fact that Christ dies for the ungodly. The announcement of the perfect work of the Son includes the appeal to all who hear of it, the appeal to repentance and faith. He was there at the right time, for you and for us all! The fixed number of those for whom Christ died includes and incorporates the apostolic mission and the open proclamation of the gospel today.

For the LORD has always been there at the right time. He is always first in our life, so that we can only say: "The Word in season, how good it is!" He came first at baptism, and He has always proven Himself first in His wondrous deeds of salvation in the lives of His children. He delivers His own just when they come to realize that they have no other helper. He answers the cry of those who acknowledge their distress, and have nowhere else to turn. So He shows His sovereign prae, and evokes in us all the doxology of praise to the God who loved us at the right time, the God who acted and delivered us through grace at the right time. For He came to us while we were yet sinners. That is our confidence for years to come!