7 Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.
Salvation through faith is tied inextricably to God’s dealings with Abraham, who lived 800 years before the time of Christ (3800 years before our time). God had made a promise to the patriarch in Genesis 12, which Paul here quotes in verse 8. God’s dealing with Abraham precedes the giving of the law by hundreds of years and therefore takes priority.
Abraham is considered the Father of the Jewish people. He was the one called out by God from pagan worship, from Ur of the Chaldeans (Gen 15:7) to the land of Canaan. God promised him three things: a land, a seed, and a blessing. He would possess a land, his descendants would become a great nation and he would be both blessed and a blessing to all the nations of the world. The Jewish people have held on to the these promises through the centuries. But in Christ the blessing part of the promise is given its proper and intended fulfillment – and that is Paul’s point here. John affirms this. God has blessed both the Jewish people and the Gentiles (non-Jews) by the coming of the Messiah, a descendant of Abraham. This blessing was extended to all the world, to “as many as received Him…to those who believed in His name” (John 1:12).
Gentile believers in Jesus Christ are described here in two ways: 1) sons of Abraham and 2) blessed with Abraham. In other words, God sees them as being related to Abraham in the most essential way, without any mention of the Law of Moses. It is all about faith and so Paul explains the Abrahamic promise as, “God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (vs. 8). That is the core message of the gospel as it pertains to the non-Jews. It is no different than for the Jews: “… the righteous will live by his faith” (Hab 2:4). Gentiles are made right in God’s eyes, not by becoming Jews and keeping the law, but by believing like Abraham believed. The result is a relationship with Abraham that the Jews had claimed exclusively for themselves.
So this truth of a faith-based justification, that is, to be made right with God, was not a new invention of Paul’s. We are believers together with Abraham, the archetype of faith. This continues to be Paul’s “go-to-the-wall” issue and we should stand with him in embracing and defending this truth at all costs.
Lord, thank You for making me right in Your eyes and putting me into good company, in the Abrahamic household of faith!
0 Comments