ear Friends,

Good morning!  As we poke through the great argument of Galatians, it’s good to remind ourselves that the constant purpose of Paul’s work is to lead us to Jesus.  No one, including the least informed of the gentiles, is too simple or uninformed to learn about Jesus.  No one, including the most learned Pharisee, is too advanced to be brought to Jesus.  It’s in the relationship with Jesus that we are justified.  From the Godward side of the God –man relationship, God declares us worthy to be before Him once we are in Christ and Christ is in us.  From the manward side of the God-man relationship, we find that as we relate with our savior and grow in our love and knowledge of Him, we fall in love with God and our being begins to grow in grace because of the influence of Jesus on us.  So what Paul is all about is replacing what had been the role of obedience to the law with the relationship with Jesus.  How are you going to change a sinner who could never tolerate the direct presence of God into a creature who will thrive in God’s company now and forever?  Paul had tried to get the job done by obeying the Holy Laws.  Now He offers this relationship with Jesus as the basis of justification.  Within that context, his relationship with the law shifts radically, as we have been reading. 

Today we get just one verse, because it is a pause-and–sum-up verse, such as Paul often uses in his letters.

14He redeemed us in order  that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

God is all about keeping His word.  He has given His word that through Abraham all nations will be blessed.  Why God did that we will find out when we study Genesis, where all of that is revealed, but for now we only need to get that God declared that He would bless Abraham and then that through Abraham all nations would become blessed – that is, people everywhere would be restored to a saving relationship with Himself.  How is God going to do that?

At first, people thought that “Through Abraham” was a literal, biological deal.  He was old and childless but then he and Sarah conceived and had Isaac, and Isaac and his wife had twins – Esau and Jacob – and then Jacob had twelve sons, and the plan was off and running.  Israel kept multiplying and growing until there were huge multitudes of them enslaved in Egypt, and then God set them free and they came into Palestine and became a great people, all from this one elderly couple.  Surely all the people of the nation across all the centuries were the descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and sands on the beach that God had promised Abraham. 

But no, the promise was even more extravagant than that!  The promise was that peoples everywhere would be blessed through Abraham.  And that, clearly had not happened. All over the rest of the world, no one knew about Abraham; no one, far more significantly, worshipped Yahweh.  The blessing that comes through Abraham is the blessing of faith in Yahweh – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and David and the prophets.  By the time of Paul, 1,800 years after Abraham, no one outside of Israel is receiving the blessing of Abraham. 

What was keeping the blessing of Abraham – a phrase which clearly means the relationship with God as revealed to Abraham – from the rest of the nations?  The answer, Paul saw, was the Law.

The Law – which had protected and defined the people of Israel, which had preserved them in the face of the temptation to become like all the other peoples, had also confined their faith in God within the borders of the country.  For the Law had become far more than just the Ten Commandments.  It had become a whole complex system, a way of being you had to be born into and have constantly explained in order to understand and work.  And if, therefore, you had to follow the Law, the Torah, in order to receive the blessing of Abraham, then in order to know the true and living God you would have to become physically part of Israel, for only in Israel was the whole Law understood and followed.

But now God has acted to change things.  One has appeared who says, “Before Abraham was, I am.”  That is, Jesus claims to take priority over Abraham himself.  Whoa! What does He mean?  The relationship with Abraham’s God is now going to become a possibility to those who have lived outside the Torah.  In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God Himself is going to become accessible to everybody. 

that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus

See what a huge statement that is?  That is why, says Paul, God has redeemed him and his missionary friends.  There is something wondrous, mysterious, amazing about Jesus.  That something is that when you tell people about Him and they receive Him, they start relating with His Father, with God as He revealed Himself to Israel, right away.  But there is more going on even than that!  Paul continues,

so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

What had been the effect on the first followers of Jesus of coming to know Him?  They were all Jewish people, many thousands of them.  What happened to Peter and John and Mary and Joanna and the rest of them?  They became very charged up, liberated, worshipping Jewish people.  They would have said, “we received ‘the promise of the Father.’  We’ll learn all about that when we study Joel.  All through the Old Testament, as the law grows in its complexity and influence, helping to sustain the people and doing its own work, something else is happening with Israel.  People are seeing individuals, especially  prophets, both men and women, arise who have a special anointing from God, a spirit resting on them, which empowers them to know God and to speak forth His word.  And they begin to long for that Holy Spirit to come upon them all.  Soon prophecies come that promise that that Spirit will one day be poured out on all.  And that promise, sometimes called the promise of the Spirit, sometimes called the promise of the Father, came true at the end of Jesus’ ministry in a climactic event known as Pentecost.   Thousands of people were just drenched in the Holy Spirit and became passionate, liberated worshippers.  They were so amazing in their faith that thousands more Israelites piled in, wanting this vibrant relationship with God for themselves.  And now, says Paul, all of this is immediately available, even to people who have never followed Moses, who have been schlepping along in pagan idolatry.  It’s all available to whoever comes to faith in Jesus.  He has seen them change before his very eyes. 

so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Isn’t this stuff just amazing?  And did you know that the promise of the spirit is for you as well? 

Love,

Jeff