The Uniqueness of the Abrahamic Blessing
The calling of Abraham begins with a seven-fold blessing. Bible calls it blessings of Abraham.
- I will make you into a great nation
- I will bless you
- I will make your name great
- You will be a blessing
- I will bless those who bless you
- Whoever curses you I will curse
- All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Blessedness is initially the recognition of a divine relationship. “I will bless you” is a personal word from God to Abraham. Many other blessings are corporate. Whatever Abraham thinks blessings until now, he must leave and follow God. There is a blessing in leaving the blessings of Ur.
Blessedness is also a sufficiency for whatever life may bring. Blessed not by getting rid of dangers and burdens but in strength to bear them as we see in the life of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Daniel, and Paul.
Blessedness is in the knowledge that one may become a blessing. It is not blessing for friends and curse on enemies. We rarely hear people pray, Lord, make me a blessing; everyone prays ‘bless me’.
God does not bless a person so that s/he can soak it in, but so that s/he can pass it on, ‘You will be a blessing’. Every one of God’s blessings is a call for us to bless. Our relationship to Him is not guided by our small desires but by His transcendent purposes.
The fifth blessing is the capstone: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This promise is so important that it is repeated five times in Genesis (Gen18:18; 22:18; 26:4-8; 28:14). Through Adam all the peoples of the earth were cursed. Through Abram, they will be blessed. Abram is the beginning of God’s answer to Adam.
The first eleven chapters of Genesis pose a simple question: What is God going to do to fix things? Sin, evil and death threaten the planet. Will God do anything? And, if so, what will He do? The rest of the Bible is the answer to that question (and it’s a very long answer), but it starts right here with Abraham.
“All families blessed in thee” is a principle to each of us. Every person is a possible blessing to the whole world. One family to be a blessing to all families. Every child of God is a center of blessing. A devout person is a blessing to those who can receive his influence. To be a blessing through the power and favor of God is highest honor. Blessing can only be realized and enjoyed in the exercise of faith and obedience.
To be a Christian is a blessing; a Christian has a blessing in him. The blessed life is a revelation of God. We are blessed under His guidance. When we begin with God, blessed life is just the common place, and the highway wherein we walk. God’s estimate of us is the measure of our faith. Our worth lies in our faith. The influence of Christianity on purity and happiness of families is evident from the Roman empire to the present. It reminds us of the final call in the NT “Blessed of my Father come and occupy…!” (Mt 25:34).
We cannot simply insert ourselves into a biblical text. There is a problem with claiming the personal blessing of Abraham for ourselves, expecting physical, earthly blessings. Such blessings were given to Abraham, as a specific individual in history, for a specific reason. Applying that to our life is more than bad hermeneutics; it leads to serious error. We need to differentiate between universal blessings and particular blessings.
Abraham the Pioneer
The glory of human history is its pioneers, ‘one who goes before, as into the wilderness, preparing the way for others to follow. The pioneer will have more discouragements and struggles. The greatness of the pioneer is that he goes on in spite of uncertainty and unfulfillment. He does not need assurance of quick results, if only he is satisfied that his directions correct. He does not have to perceive the end from the beginning; sees a God who sees what he cannot see. Abraham did not dispute with God and departed. His inner and outer man were relatives. Terah, his old father did not rebuke being too full of fancy, nor charged him to abide in Ur. The reason according to Heb 11:10 is that, spiritually, Abraham had built a city, a dwelling place for new hope, new purpose, new ideals. Everyone stands at a difficult obedience at the call of God. There are also people who did not aim strongly enough at anything as Lot, Esau, the rich young ruler, Nicodemus and so on. Abraham’s inner strength and happiness comes not from worldly things, but from a sense of purpose above this world. He wanted to know his God appointed destiny.
He is the beginning of the cure because he is the beginning of a line, a very long line that we will follow throughout these posts. It runs through men of great repute, like David the king, and through women of ill repute, like Rahab the harlot. It runs through religious leaders like the high priest Joshua and through pagans like the Moabite, Ruth. It runs through forgotten people like Obed and unforgettable people like Solomon. The long line runs through a young woman – almost a child – named Mary. It is through him that the promise comes to fulfillment: all the nations of the earth are blessed, and the creation itself will be cured. The end of the picture is a sanctified and glorified multitude in worship that never ends (Rev 7:9).
Great lives are trained by great promises. A call of God sends its trumpet tone into us. It is a call to closer communion; a call into loneliness. Often, we dare not to be alone. We will not leave traditional views. The call to faith is not to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. On the altar some fragment of self-life has to be offered. It is a blessed journey of sacrifice. God never calls men making them less than they are. His calls are upward; towards fuller light, purer joy. Our life is an expression of Divine influence.
Blessing for the whole world Through the Cross
Galatians 3:1-4:31 is the major section of the book and has the main theological argument of Paul. Apostle Paul explains in Galatians 3:13-14 that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. That highest ‘blessing’ which came upon Abraham can only be obtained by us at the foot of the Cross! This is the Gospel, which was first preached to Abraham and promised to all the families of the earth.
He criticizes the church in Galatia that you are foolish in mixing the message of God’s grace to Moses’ gospel. Crucifixion is the center of Paul’s understanding of Jesus. The cross delivers from this present evil age (Gal 1:4) and terminate the lordship of the law, which is our life (2:19-20; 4:5). The People are bewitched when their eyes are off the cross as the center of Christian life. Their new behavior was so strange with the liberating message. But Galatians pervert and confuse the gospel with the law for easy salvation. In the cross every statement must be tested, each teaching corrected or confirmed. The cross is an objective fact of history before it becomes a subjective fact of experience. Men across the centuries, as did the Galatians, often get their eyes off the cross and follow contrary gospels.
Blessings by Faith
Lack of faith is the only sin God cannot forgive. Faith is part of his equipment to battle in life.
Man is incurably a religious creature, but he is immature until he possesses a faith that is strong enough to master his mind. It is disputed whether faith is the instrument or the accompaniment of hearing. Isaiah asks at the unbelief of the people “Who has believed our message?” (Isa 53:1). There is no higher privilege for mortals than the gift of Holy Spirit. Since Galatians received this gift through believing the gospel and not by obedience to the law, they must give importance to faith than the law. The Holy Spirit is received by faith; the final salvation depends on faith. It is a believing hearing that welcomes the gospel and leads the hearer to entrust himself to Christ. The Spirit took the place of Torah as the life element of the Christian.
Faith is the response, the answering of God’s knock on a person’s door. The grace of Christ is the knock. Humans do not have the power to believe in Christ; they have only the power to reject Christ. The God who does the knocking will not force his hand, yet not only asks for his response but demands it. ‘No’ and ‘Yes’ are opposite sides of the same coin. God of the universe takes time to knock my little life, stands and waits for me to answer. Think of the eternal Christ at my door. I must be important, significant, and worthwhile to him. The least I can do is to open the door. God cannot be a better friend than each man permits Him to be. Even Christ is limited by an attitude that declines to respond. “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Mat 13:58). More people responded to the knock of the cross. The cross is Christ’s strongest, most insistent and most eternal knock at the door. On the cross He uttered, “I thirst” and His greatest thirst was thirsted after. Human mood in the NT is not aspiration but acceptance. There is no reaching out of human heart in search for God, but experiences the awareness of the touch of God on him. Faith is not an attainment through self-discipline but acceptance through self-surrender.
The Failure of the Law
There was an early Jewish doctrine of 3 epochs-the age of chaos, the age of the law, and the messianic age. Paul’s Jewish education had taught him that the law would be abrogated with the advent of the messianic age. The Law did not prevent sin but convinced humans that they were so bad that nothing could save them Except mercy through Christ. The law had only fading glory from the beginning (2 Co 3:13). The law as a way of salvation was bound up with nationalistic customs; but faith was God’s way for all (Rom 3:21-25). Abraham stands righteous simply by virtue of his faith in God, and not by virtue of meritorious achievement before God. The spiritual attitude of a person, who is conscious that in himself he has no strength, and no hope of a future, and who nevertheless casts himself upon, and lives by, the word of God which assures him a future, is the necessarily and eternally right attitude of all. Abraham was saved through faith four hundred and thirty years before the law.
Revelation is not by flesh and blood (Mat 16:17). Flesh here refers to relying on inadequate resources, the law (Gal 3:3). According to John 3:6 ‘born of flesh is flesh; born of the Divine Spirit is human spirit’. No flesh is justified by the deeds of the law; it is by the deed of Christ on the cross that justification comes to flesh (Rom 3:20). A Christian must begin in the Spirit and grow in the Spirit and mature in the Spirit and end in the Spirit (Gal 3:3). Some who leave the church may not be worthy to come back again as they have ended in the flesh.
A curse was believed to be a living entity which generated a poisonous atmosphere all around its victim. The curse of the law is the curse pronounced on the law-breaker in Deut. 27:26. Deut. 21:23 states that cursed are those hang on a tree. From this curse Christ has redeemed His people, by becoming a curse on their behalf (Deut. 21:22; John 19:31). Christ enduring the cross was His supreme act of obedience to God Rom 5:19 and that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19). The curse which Christ became was His people’s curse. The cross planned by those that hated Jesus, remains the strongest means of ending hate; made by evil, it delivers from evil, made in fear, it saves from fear. The cross was made to kill, but God made it the instrument to remove hatred and pride from our heart. Christ became a curse, which means, He submitted to the curse pronounced by the law. Now we are free from both its demands and its curse.
The term redeemed is drawn from the commercial world, purchasing things, buying back a captive. The essential idea is that all are slaves to sin under the curse of the law; Christ paid the price of freedom; those trust in the ransom price is set free. Because Christ was sinless, He can die on behalf of sinners and absorb their curse. And because He was divine, He could perfectly satisfy the justice of God (Rom 3:21-26). Now the curse is over and can receive the Holy Spirit. Those live under the law inherit a curse now. But to the Jews, the Messiah enjoyed the unique blessing of God, whereas a crucified person, died under the curse of God. The identification of the crucified Jesus with the Messiah was a blasphemous contradiction to the Jewish expectation.
Blessings of Abraham Gen 22:18.
Paul introduces his distinctive understanding of the program of salvation in Galatians. The history of salvation begins with Abraham, to whom the gospel was preached in advance (Gal 3:8), and reaches its climax in Christ. Between the promise to Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ, came the age of the law, because of transgressions (Gal 3:19), but the law lacks any direct or effective relevance to the saving work of God. Now everything depends not on Israel’s history but solely on faith. Paul has changed his doctrine of salvation after becoming a Christian. The true salvation-history is Christian salvation history. Gentiles occupy a special place in salvation-history as promised to Abraham that through you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
Having believed the gospel and got righteousness and they are Abraham’s sons. When Jews wish the highest possible well-being, they wish, ‘May you be like Abraham’. Thus, Abraham and his descendants were to bless and be a blessing, and all mankind would acknowledge themselves beneficiaries of the overflow of their prosperity and happiness. God’s kingdom, for which the world had been created, belonged to Abraham and his heirs.
The blessing of Abraham (the blessing promised to Abraham) is the blessing which Abraham possessed and enjoyed during his lifetime, together with the ever-increasing blessing promised to his descendance, and to all mankind. The law makes the distinction between Israel to whom it was given and the Gentiles. The substance of the promise is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The curse is transformed into a blessing.
The blessing (promised) of Abraham in relation to the NT is three blessings: justification by faith, sonship to Abraham by faith, and reception of Holy Spirit by faith (Mat 3:11). Mat 8:11 tells that many from east to west join the blessings of Abraham (Gen 12:3). “The sons of the kingdom” is the Semitic term for national Israel. Jesus condemns Israelites in John 8:39-58, “If you were sons of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham”. Abraham is father of believers, not ethnic Israel (Gal 3:7).
What is this “seed” of Abraham that would bless all peoples? The answer is found in Galatians 3:16: “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ.” Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and saw it, and was glad?” It was in the lively exercise of faith and hope, as grounded on the “seed” promised in the text, that he was filled with holy joy, while he looked forward to the time, when this glorious Savior would appear in the world to be a blessing to it.
The first covenant was made on the basis of faith and fellowship between God and Abraham, and was never recalled. Can God deny Himself and make of none effect his own covenant? (Gen 17). God used Jeremiah to prophecy on establishing the New Covenant. The New Covenant would make it possible for God to deal directly with humanity without any intermediary person or nation (Jer. 31:31-33; 50:5). The promise in Gen 17:4 You shall be father of multitude of nations, refers to gentile believers (Rom 4:17).
