One of the greatest truths in Scripture is that as a believer, you belong to Christ. You are more than an object that He owns; you belong to Him as a “son” (Gal 3:26). Ethnicity doesn’t matter, nor does gender or economic situation. When people come to God by faith in Jesus Christ, they are placed on an equal footing. As God said elsewhere, “Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; And let the rough ground become a plain, And the rugged terrain a broad valley” (Isaiah 40:4). He is the great Leveler.

What is our response to this? “The brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position; and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away” (James 1:9–10). We all join the ranks of Abraham’s descendants, humbling in the eyes of the world but exalting in view of God’s promise.

Consider for a moment the import of this thought. Nearly 3800 years ago God called Abraham out of a pagan culture and revealed Himself as the one true God, re-establishing monotheism in a world that had strayed from the truth. He made the epic promise to Abraham to, among other things, bless him and also the world through him. Everything following that has been and continues to be a working out of that promise. Salvation through Jesus Christ is a direct result of God’s commitment to Abraham.

Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob are the Jewish people and they occupy a privileged standing before God. Though they have been oppressed through the years, God sees them as special. They are His chosen people, they belong to Him. Others, in order to know and be rightly related to God, needed to either covert to Judaism (that is, become a proselyte) or at least be favorable to the God of Israel (sometimes called a “God-fearer”).

But now through faith in Christ we have an equal standing before Him. And in the context of the book of Galatians, Gentile believers now “belong” to God, in the same way that Jews belong to God; believing Gentiles do not need to become Jews.

One tangible result, and a big one, is that Gentiles (in fact, all Christians), share in the inheritance that once belonged only to the Jews. But now, since the promise applies to Gentiles as well as Jews, the inheritance is shared by all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.