THE BLESSING 3 (THE BLESSING OF ABRAHAM)

Think with me for a moment please. Jesus became a curse for us, redeemed us from the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Him, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith? What is it about the blessing of Abraham that is so vital for the Gentiles (non-Jews) to have that Jesus would sacrifice everything for us to have it? The law came with its blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 28), so Jesus could have redeemed us from the curse of the law and qualified us for the blessing of the law; but rather, what He qualified us for is the blessing of Abraham.

What is the blessing of Abraham? The few times the bible recorded what God said to Abraham in blessing him, it details such things as fruitfulness, multiplication, greatness & dominion. The few times the bible describes the blessedness of Abraham, it talks about his wealth and greatness. In a way, these things are the results of the blessing that God put on Abraham, but what is the blessing itself?

Yes, the blessing is that thing that God puts on a person, giving him the ability/power to prosper, to be healthy; to enjoy such things as Abraham evidently enjoyed. The blessing, however, goes deeper than that. For example, Romans 4 describes what it means to be blessed, using Abraham as a model: blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (Romans 4:3&6-8). According to Romans 4, a blessed man is one unto whom God imputes/credits righteousness without works; one whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered; a man to whom the Lord WILL NOT impute/credit sin. This is what Abraham enjoyed. Despite not being righteous in behaviour by God’s standard, God declared him righteous simply because he believed God when God said “so shall your seed be” (Genesis 15:5). Ultimately, the seed He spoke of was not just Isaac or the other physical descendants but rather Christ. Abraham believed what God said about the seed (Jesus), God accounted it to him as righteousness.

This same way, when Jesus became a curse for us on the cross, He redeemed us from the curse of the law and qualified us for the blessing of Abraham: He made it possible for us to be declared righteous without having done anything to deserve it. Now, simply by believing what God has said about Jesus, we have righteousness credited to our account & no sin held against us. The blessing of Abraham is not really in the silver & gold but in the simple truth that an undeserving sinner is declared righteous simply by believing in the seed, Jesus. How then does this translate to the wealth & fruitfulness & greatness seen in Abraham?

Having legally declared man righteous through Christ Jesus, God can then legally give to him His very own nature, the life of God in his human spirit. This life is the very thing that makes everything work. Where there is life (eternal life), there is health, strength, wealth, fruitfulness. All these are the things we call blessings, they are a result of the blessing, they are a result of life. Psalm 133:3 calls the blessing “life forevermore”. Eternal life - the life of God in us, literally, is the blessing. That is why Galatians 3:14 mentions the blessing of Abraham and the promise of the Spirit in the same breath. The promise of the Spirit (the indwelling of God’s Spirit in mortal man) is the one thing that every man under the law needed but couldn’t have, but we have through faith in Christ Jesus. Hebrews 11:39 makes us understand that even Abraham (before the law) didn’t receive this promise, he only enjoyed a measure of what is called the blessing. For us under this covenant, we have the fullness of what was promised to Abraham, the completeness of what Abraham only tasted. We have the blessing, the very life of God in us; the promise of the Spirit, fully downloaded!

That is why Paul said in Romans 8:1 – the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin & death. The solution to the law-curse is the life that Jesus brought. This life is mediated through the Holy Spirit indwelling us, giving life to our spirits and even to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:10&11). He who has the Son has the Spirit of the Son (the Spirit of Christ) dwelling in him and therefore has life (Romans 8:9; Galatians 4:6 & 1John 5:12). That’s why the Holy Spirit is the agent of the blessing, because He’s the agent of life! If we have become one with Him, we have become one with life, we have become one with the blessing (1Corinthians 6:17). The blessing is not just on us, but in us. We carry the blessing, to spread it far as the curse is found. We carry the life of God, to spread it far as death is found! Death reigned through sin, now life can reign through righteousness, or as Romans 5:18 puts it: we who have received abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign as kings in life through Jesus Christ!

This is the blessing of Abraham, not because Abraham enjoyed the fullness of it, but because it was he to whom it was first promised, and to his seed (Christ). It is the promise that the prophets and kings of old saw by the Spirit, desired to have, but God reserved it for us, that they without us should not be made perfect (Hebrews 11:40). Don’t ever wish you were like Adam or David or Elijah or any of the saints of old. Come on, God has reserved the best wine for last. God has kept the best for us!

It is the blessing that we carry, the promise that we have received. It is the life that the Father wants every man to receive & enjoy. Enjoy the fullness of it, live in the fullness of it, live blessed!