But for Paul something had happened. The living God had acted in person, in the person of Jesus, to rescue people from that “present age” and to launch “the age to come.” The two ages were not, as it were, back to back, the first stopping when the second began. The new age had burst upon the scene while the “present age” was still rumbling on. This was the direct effect of the divine plan by which Jesus “gave himself for our sins”; the power of the “present age” was thereby broken, and the new world could begin.
