When we seek to establish or defend any point of Christian truth, our ultimate appeal must be to Scripture. People in our culture often appeal to experience, but experience can be deceptive or misinterpreted. We need a solid foundation of objective truth, such as Paul builds on here. We now consider Galatians 3:6-9 Blessed with believing Abraham.
1. The faith of Abraham
‘Consider Abraham’ (v6) might seem to be an odd change of approach, but Paul has planned his argument carefully. Abraham is the great father of the faith and Paul’s opponents probably appealed to him do defend insistence on obedience to the law as necessary for salvation. As Paul shows, however, Abraham is the perfect example of salvation by grace through faith. In the case of Abraham, ‘He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness’ (v6). Paul is citing Genesis 15:6, which asserts the centrality of faith for a right standing before God. Abraham ‘believed God’ when he trusted the promise of ‘seed’ – going back to the promise in Genesis 3:15, fulfilled in the saving victory of Christ. It was not that God accepted Abraham’s faith as a substitute for obedience (thus turning faith into a kind of ‘work’ that Abraham supplied). Faith was the God-given channel that conveyed God’s justification to believing Abraham. His faith had no merit contributing to salvation. Paul also destroys the legalism of the Judaizers in Romans 4:11 which shows that Abraham believed and was justified before circumcision was even commanded.
2. The children of Abraham
Note the unity of the plan of salvation – ‘those who believe are children of Abraham’ (v7). It is by faith that Jews and Gentiles are admitted to the Covenant of Grace. There has only ever been one way of salvation. Being ‘Abraham’s seed’ is not a matter of physical descent but of spiritual kinship by faith (see v29). Paul continues to oppose the legalists in the Galatian churches. He stresses that belonging to the seed of Abraham is not a matter of law keeping or receiving circumcision, as he spells out in Romans 2:28-29 – ‘a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code’. The glorious principle is stated in v9 ‘So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith’, and receive the same salvation.
3. The hope of Abraham
What Paul says about justification by faith, such as Abraham experienced, means that this blessing is equally for Gentiles. Thus we read in v8 ‘The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith’. This had always been God’s plan, and there is no other hope for Gentiles. Note the surprising words ‘The Scripture…announced the gospel in advance to Abraham’ – quoting the promise of Genesis 12:3. This was explained further in Genesis 22:18 ‘In your seed all nations on earth will be blessed’. As Paul knows full well, that ‘seed’ is Christ (v16). Here is the gospel in the Old Testament, the good news of justification by faith in Christ. It is available to Jew and Gentile without distinction, as God gathers an innumerable multitude of saved sinners (Revelation 7:9).