O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.” Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.”Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:1-14).
The Jews were proud of the fact that Abraham was their flesh and blood ancestor. And, because of their connection to Abraham, they were special. God says as much; God says that Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than the stars in heaven.[1] Abraham believed the LORD and the LORD accounted Abraham’s faith in the LORD’s promise for righteousness. After the Children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, were rescued from bondage in Egypt and were preparing to enter the Promised Land, God calls these people holy; they were chosen by God to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.[2] God did not choose them, however, because of anything they had done; He didn’t choose them because they were more numerous than other nations; He didn’t choose them because of their wealth or military might: But because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.[3]
So, the physical connection to Abraham was important to the Jews, particularly the Pharisees. They thought of their ancestry in terms American Express would appreciate: Membership has its privileges. They thought that by their physical connection to Abraham they enjoyed special status with God. What they did not understand was it wasn’t any work or physical characteristic that set Israel apart. It was faith in God’s promised redemption and in His Promised Redeemer. Abraham was justified before he received the sign of circumcision, by faith.[4] The promise that Abraham would be heir to the world was not to him or his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.[5] So the important connection with Abraham was not with him physically, having his blood running through your veins, but rather having the same faith in you, taking hold of those same promises of God. This is why John the Baptist would see the Pharisees and say: “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.[6] They had the same blood as Abraham, but not the same faith, and so they were not children of Abraham.
Jesus says the same thing. He shows up doing things only God can do; He forgives sins. He tells people that He is the Messiah and demonstrates the proof of His claim through Holy Scripture and by performing miracles that the Jews expected the Messiah, who was the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, to do. He teaches in the synagogues, pointing to messianic scriptures and applying them to Himself, like when He read the scroll of Isaiah and was rejected at Nazareth. Their response to Jesus proclaiming the year of the LORD’s favor was to try and throw Him off a cliff.[7] Jesus is consistently rejected by the leaders of the Jewish nation, the very people who were supposed to recognize Him, but instead gloried in their own works and flesh. “You search the scriptures,” Jesus says to the Pharisees, “for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. [8]“ Because they rejected Him, because they did not have faith in God’s Word and promise, they were no longer children of Abraham. They were children of their father, the devil.[9] They were branches, broken off the True Vine, withered and unable to bear any fruit, fit only to be gathered into the fire and burned;[10] Their physical lineage doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that they are related to Abraham by blood; the righteous shall live by faith. And, as many as walk according to this rule, that of boasting not in the flesh but in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to them, peace be upon them, and upon the Israel of God – all believers in Christ, regardless of their physical ancestry; This is the new, or more accurately, the true Israel of God, the household of faith.[11]
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