God's countermovement

At the human level, the Christ-event is a matter of discontinuity and reversal; it is God’s counter-movement to the human condition, moving believers from ignorance to knowledge ([Gal] 4:9), from curse to blessing (3:13—14), from slavery to adoption (4:1—7). What arrives at “the fullness of time” is not a development from preceding epochs of human history, but the reversal of previous human conditions. On both an individual (1:12–17; 2:19-20) and a global level (3:15–4:11), it represents not continuity, but interruption, transformation, caesura, and miracle. It is not a “shock” at the end of a “many-staged” plan, but God’s counter-statement to the previous conditions of the possible, a new creation in the midst of the present evil age (1:4; 6:14-15).—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 412 (emphasis original)