I've been talking about the blessing a great deal lately. Is there a blessing for those of us living about four millennia after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The New Testament would answer that with a definite, "Yes." One day Peter and John were going up to the temple where they saw a paralyzed beggar outside. They healed the beggar in the name of Jesus, and the people looked at them in amazement. Peter and John were quick to say, "Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness, we had made this man walk?... And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed.' When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways" (Acts 3:12, 25-26). The Jewish people have been a great blessing to the entire world, but the greatest blessing is Jesus Christ. All people have been blessed because salvation from sin and its eternal penalty are available to every person on Earth. And while an overwhelming majority of people will still choose to go to Hell (Matthew 7:13-14), people from all over the world make up the entirety of those who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior since the church began. Not only has the promise to bless Abraham been fulfilled, but it also continues to be fulfilled to this day.
Does God give the Holy Spirit and work miracles because of obedience to the law? Of course not! It happens when people believe the message about Christ. Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith (Genesis 15:6). The real children of Abraham are those who put their faith in God. The Old Testament looked forward to the time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of our faith. God proclaimed the good news to Abraham during his life that we studied when he said, "All nations will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22:18). So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith. But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse. Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the written commands in God’s Law Book (Deuteronomy 27:26). No one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. It is through faith that a righteous person has life (Habakkuk 2:4). Faith is very different from law, which says, “It is through obeying the law that a person has life" (Leviticus 18:5). But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. Anyone who was hung was cursed in God's sight (Deuteronomy 21:23). Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:5-14).
Abraham's blessing is many things, but its foundation is Christ, and its primary focus is people being made right with the Father through Christ. That righteousness with God opens up many doors of benefit for the believer, such as the healing discussed in these two paragraphs, but those are the icing on the cake. The "cake" is righteousness with God through faith in Christ's sacrifice alone, not in any good works of your own (Ephesians 2:8-9). Abraham's blessing is for all who have faith in God would accomplish through Christ's sacrifice. You access it and are saved when you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You are made right with God by believing this in your heart. You are saved by openly declaring your faith (Romans 10:9-10). I received Abraham's blessing on December 20, 2000, when I openly announced Jesus as my Lord and believed in my heart that God resurrected him.
Only those who have faith in Jesus Christ are God's children. We "put on" Christ the same way someone puts on new clothes when we are united with him in baptism. God does have a specific plan for Israel and a specific plan for the Church, but righteousness with God only comes through Christ. Among those of us who have been baptized into Christ, there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, or male and female. Those in Jesus Christ are one (Galatians 3:26-29). What more tremendous blessing could there possibly be?
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