The Abraham Paradigm (No Other Gospel #11)

Galatians 3:1-5 is an exhortation. Paul reminds the Galatians of their past and exhorts them not to slip away, pointing out that they had experience with the gospel that should have acted as a safeguard against the false ideas of the Judaizers. Now he moves to more doctrinal matters. The gospel is of faith, not of the law, and so he shows us here what is the blessing which God has placed on faith. And to do this, he looks at Abraham. Abraham was an important person to Paul because he was the example of a man who lived by faith. Nearly every time Abraham is mentioned in the New Testament it is in connection with his faith. But Abraham was also very important to the Jews. They were very proud of their heritage as children of Abraham. No doubt in talking to the Galatians, the Judaizers had made a point of playing up the fact that they were children of Abraham. And so Paul takes their own playing ground away from them by using Abraham as an example of faith, not of the law. This passage ties directly into the last passage, which ended with Paul speaking of how the ministry among the Galatians had been through faith and not through the law...

Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. (Galatians 3:6-9)

To understand this passage, we have to understand who Abraham was. Abraham was the son of Tarah, and he was chosen to receive the call of God to come out of his home country and go into the land of Canaan, which he would afterward receive for an inheritance. Genesis 12:2-3 tells God's promise to Abraham: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Note that Abraham is 75 years old at this time, though this is still early enough in history that the process of aging seems to have been slower. He and his wife and their nephew and servants left Haran and traveled to Canaan.

Abraham traveled to Canaan, wandered around a little, went down to Egypt, came back, wandered around some more, fought off an entire empire of enemies who kidnapped in his nephew, and wandered around. Abraham was very wealthy with a large establishment for somebody who lived as a pilgrim in a foreign country, but he had no children. By this point, he had to be in his eighties and his wife was also advanced in years. And they had no children. This is hard for us to understand in our day--since for us children are more often seen as an inconvenience than a blessing. But in the ages of the Old Testament, having children, having someone to carry on your line and your name, was very important. To go to the grave childless was a great tragedy. But for Abraham, it was more than that, because God had given him a great promise, and that promise specifically related to his children. “I will make of thee a great nation” is a meaningless promise to a man with no children.

In Genesis 15, God appeared to Abraham in a vision, promising him protection and reward from God himself. And Abraham, not unreasonably, pointed out that there was a problem in God's promises to him--that he still had no children. Genesis 15:5-6 tells God's answer to this objection and who Abraham reacted to it: “And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”

What does that mean? To get to the truth of this, I think, we need to take a step back and think about the story of Abraham and specifically of God's promise to him. We can picture Abraham sitting down and balancing the budget of his life. God had given him a promise that he would become a great nation in the land of Canaan. But if Abraham had started reckoning up the odds of this happening, the prospect wouldn't have been especially bright. He could have set up two columns, one of negatives and one of positives. On the negative side, he could put several things: his lack of children, Sarah's barrenness, and her age. He had no children and every indication was that he was going to have any--a fairly fatal objection to someone starting a great nation. But Abraham did have servants who could have been his heirs. And he would later have other children, though not by Sarah. But even then, there were still more problems. Not only did he not have any children to inherit his land, but he also didn't have any land for them to inherit. He was a pilgrim who never owned more than a scrap of ground. But even worse than that, the land his children (which he didn't have and couldn't have) was already possessed by the Canaanites. This wasn't an empty wilderness just waiting to be claimed. Very fierce and recalcitrant people were already firmly settled there. These were all the things that stood against the idea of Abraham becoming a great nation. Those were the things that Abraham could put in the Negative Column. What could he put on the other side? What was there that he could put in favor of his goal being fulfilled? Really, there was only one thing: faith. All Abraham had to balance all these negatives was his faith in God's promise.

Now, at first glance, these columns seem very off-balanced. On one hand, we have a number of very definite, concrete realities. These weren't just worries in Abraham's head. These were objective facts. If Abraham had gone to a tactician or a career advisor and told them that he was planning on becoming a great nation and then listed all the things standing against him and the one thing in his favor--which was faith--then they would have politely advised him to reconsider his career choices.

Faith is, on the face of it, a small and worthless thing. And in a sense, it is. There is no intrinsic value in faith. Faith is like a check. A check is just a piece of paper with printing on it. Slightly high-quality paper, perhaps, but still not worth very much. But we realize the real value of a check does not lie in the paper or the ink, but what it represents. If written by the right person from the right bank it could be worth millions of dollars. Faith is like that. It has no value in itself. But if faith is in the right thing, it can be far more valuable than anything in this world, because it puts itself in contact with riches far beyond itself. We see that with Abraham. All Abraham had was faith. But he had faith and held to that faith and as a result, to this day, his descendants cover the earth to an innumerable extent and do in fact possess the very land in which Abraham was a stranger. These columns are off-balanced, but the balance is in favor of faith, not of the obstacles.

That establishes a certain principle regarding faith. To understand its relation to Galatians, we have to think of something else.

We know that all men have sinned. The Bible and human experience both attest to this fact, that there is none righteous, no not one. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. Because of sin, there is a break in the relationship between God and man. And if that is true for everyone, that was true for Abraham. Once again, we can think of a positive and negative column. On the negative column, standing against Abraham was the fact that he was a sinner. And because of this fact, there was a separation, a break between him and God.

Yet the New Testament describes Abraham as being a friend of God. The Old Testament pictures God literally and even physically entering into a covenant with Abraham. Somehow the problem of sin was dealt with. But how? What could Abraham put in the Positive Column to counteract the problem of sin? A godly family? That wouldn't count for anything and, besides, he came from a family of idolaters. Though he was a descendent of a godly man--Noah--his immediate family seemed to have worshipped other gods alongside the true God. (See Joshua 24:2) Circumcision? No, because that rite wasn't given until much later in Abraham's life and was clearly a result or symbol of the relationship he already had with God rather than the ground of it. Membership in the Mosaic Covenant or obedience to the Mosaic Law? Obviously not, since Moses wouldn't even be born for hundreds of years. But while the Mosaic Law wasn't given yet, God had given some laws. It was already quite clear that murder and adultery were wrong, for instance. So was it by carefully obeying these laws that Abraham got into a right relationship with God? No, since, as we've already seen, that doesn't work and, anyway, there isn't anything in the text about that. No doubt Abraham was a righteous man who did try to follow the law as he knew it--with a few specific, regrettable exceptions--but that wasn't the grounds of his relationship with God. There was only one thing that Abraham could put in the positive column here. Genesis 15:6 tells us what it was: “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”

Everything was against Abraham having a legitimate heir and becoming a great nation, and yet he believed God and that faith outweighed all the obstacles, so everything was against Abraham being forgiven of his sins and becoming reconciled with God, yet he believed God and that faith outweighed all the obstacles. Abraham's life was one of faith and so his life was also one of righteousness and he was the friend of God. I'm honestly not sure if Genesis 15:6 is speaking in general as a sort of summary of Abraham's life or whether it was at that exact moment that Abraham's faith (already present and active) finally took hold completely. But in any case, the point is the same. What allowed Abraham to have a right relationship with God; what allowed Abraham to be the father of a great nation; what allowed Abraham to be the man he was--was not the law, was not works, but faith.

And if that was true for Abraham, it is also true for us. Notice the first two words of Galatians 3:6: “EVEN AS.” The way of salvation is the same for us as it was for Abraham. Not to ignore the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, not to deny that there are changes between then and now, but the fundamental point remains the same--now as then the only way to a right relationship with God is through faith.

J. H. Zelley wrote this prayer: “Bless me, Lord, and make me a blessing.” (Praise and Worship #38) That is what happened to Abraham. Genesis 12:2-3 records God's promise to Abraham: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” He received blessings from God, but he would also become a source to others. Paul saw this as being an early gospel, an early promise of the fact that God was opening salvation to all people of the earth--for the blessing which came through Abraham was for all families of the earth, and not just for the children of Abraham.

But what was the blessing of Abraham? How did Abraham find either the son which was the sum of his promises or a right relationship with God? Through faith. That is why Paul says “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.” When the Jews were making a boast of being the children of Abraham, Jesus responded: “If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.” (John 8:39) Remember, I've said before, in Hebrew thought, to be the son someone means to be like them. Paul is saying the true sons of Abraham aren't those who are biologically his descendants, but those who are characterized by the same thing Abraham was; his true sons are those who are like him.

But what was the thing that characterized Abraham? Obviously, it wasn't just the physical or genetic properties that he passed on to his literal descendants. It wasn't the law or the covenant. It was faith, the faith which was the secret of his right relationship with God. That is why Abraham, though thousands of years before Christ, can be connected to the gospel, because the gospel is of Faith, not of the Law.