This is another updated and reposted piece from an old series of posts examining the purpose statement that scripture gives us regarding the death of Christ.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3-5 ESV)
These verses tell us that the purpose for Christ’s giving of Himself for us is “to deliver us from the present evil age.” It seems like a straightforward statement, one that should be easy to understand — except for that little phrase “present evil age.” Obviously, Paul is not using age to refer to simply “a period of time,” but is getting at something else. But what, exactly?
I went to Herman Ridderbos and Paul: An Outline of His Theology for help. If you’ve read Ridderbos, you know he can be difficult to understand, but I think I got enough to be at least a bit closer to grasping what “age” means in this statement from Galatians. I am borrowing liberally from Ridderbos in the next paragraphs.
Paul uses the word age to speak of a whole way of life, and in the case of “the present evil age,” it’s the way of life outside of Christ. This would make it roughly equivalent to the way Paul uses the word “world,” too. In Ephesians 2, he uses the two words, aeon (age) and kosmos (world) together:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—(Ephesians 2:1-2 ESV)
The word translated “course” is aeon, just like the word “age” in the verses from Galatians we are looking at. Paul is, in effect, saying that we once walked according to the age of this world. And you can see from the context that he is refering to the former life of believers, the life they once lived, a life characterized by the rule of Satan. He uses the the word flesh this way also, to mean not simply the physical body, but the whole realm of the life of sin.
In Paul’s writings, the present age, the world, and flesh, are used to refer to the way of life of those who are not in Christ, who are ruled by sin. These contrast with a new age, a new creation, and new life in the Spirit — or the way of life that comes by union with Christ.
One of the purposes of Christ’s death is to rescue us from this present evil age—or the rule of Satan and sin. Elsewhere, Paul writes that Christ’s redemption transfers us from Satan’s kingdom to Christ’s kingdom:
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son … (Colossians 1:13 ESV)
Through Christ’s death for us, we are freed from bondage to our old way of life and brought into the new creation that is life governed by the Spirit. This deliverance from the present evil age (or the rule of sin) is one of the purposes of Christ’s death.