Galatians 3 finishes by describing the church, Jews and Gentiles alike as “Abraham’s heirs”. This is an important principle that we find in Romans 9-11 as well. The Jews saw themselves as God’s chosen people because they could trace their ethnic lineage back to Abraham, the recipient of the Covenant. They saw themselves as heirs to the promises in that covenant. However, Paul blows that thinking apart by showing that the promise was always linked to faith and not to ethnicity.
This means that we as the church today are, like the Galatian believers “Abraham’s heirs.” What does that specifically mean for us? Well, to understand what it means, we need to go back to what the promise was. We can sum up the promise under three headings, land, people and blessing. In fact, these interlock together. Abraham was promised that his heirs would be God’s people, in God’s place, enjoying God’s blessing. They would be able to enjoy life in God’s presence.
In fact, it is helpful to understand what it meant by considering the alternative. Abraham was told that those who meant him and his offspring well would be blessed but those who did not would be cursed. The choice was between blessing and curse. The people of Israel, when they entered into the promise land were offered this same choice, blessing or curse.
For Israel, curse meant depopulation, they would suffer from war, famine and pestilence, they would become unfruitful. It meant conquest so that the land would no longer be under Yahweh’s protection and rule through his chosen king. It meant exile so that the people would be removed from the land to live as slaves again as they did in Egypt. Curse then means exile and death. The curse was linked to guilt and caused shame as we see by the example of anyone being hung and exposed, dying a criminal’s death. Curse is about judgement.
We might then say that the whole point about being God’s people in God’s land was that they would be fruitful, in line with the original creation mandate and this would happen within God’s protection (the boundaries of the land) and under God’s provision.
For us as believers today, then, we if we have inherited this blessing, we should be seeking to enjoy God’s provision and the safety of his protection. We can expect this to lead to fruitfulness. Provision as spiritual blessing points us to God’s Word as our daily bread. We can expect God to speak to us. Protection means that whilst the New Testament is clear that we will experience persecution and suffering, these physical trials can not rob us of our eternal security in Christ. We have assurance. Fruitfulness should point towards the expectation of numerical growth in God’s kingdom. Individual churches may not always see growth but we know that God is building his church around the world. As we will see later in Galatians, there is also spiritual fruitfulness as believers produce the fruit of the Spirit.
There is also future blessing to look forward to. Being in God’s presence, enjoying his protection and provision is something for eternity. Jesus described his followers as the meek and poor in spirit would see God and inherit the earth. The Bible promises a new creation where evil and the curse are banished. The promise for all who believe in Jesus is that one day we will be there with him.
Faithroots 