Remember Abraham!

Peter Neilson September 10, 2024 6 3

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Galatians 3: 7-9 (MSG)

7-8 Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed in you.”

9-10 So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith—this is no new doctrine! And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure.

Paul “out-traditions” the traditionalists! They play the Moses card of the Divine Law; he trumps them with the Abraham card of Divine Promise. They counter with Abraham’s practice of circumcision as a mark of belonging to the Jewish people; he responds with the promise of God as a blessing to “all nations”.  They want to invite people into the fold of Israel as followers of Messiah; he opens the gate to a spacious open field for people whose lives are ordered by faith in the living God.

We need to walk slowly through this kind of writing. We are meeting Paul, the well-trained Rabbi, unravelling fundamental assumptions that underpinned his Jewish heritage. He is no longer claiming that faith in Jesus is contrary to the Jewish way. He is claiming that faith in Jesus is in line with the Jewish way — if we go deep enough into history and God’s relationship with Abraham.

Abraham believed God for the impossible — and a future beyond imagining. We believe God has done the impossible — in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, opening the way to unimagined resurrection living.

We cannot manufacture that from a mountain of good deeds and religious activity. We can only trust, receive, and enter into it — as Abraham did in total dependence on God.

We are counted among the nations that are blessed through his faith.

Prayer:

Deeper, Lord, deeper

Beneath the waves of swirling thought

And anxious activity,

Lead us, Holy Spirit, to the place

Of silent adoration

Before our God of endless Love.

    Hold silence...

Wider, Lord, wider,

Beyond the small circles of friends

And the bonds of natural affections

Lead us, Holy Spirit, to the place

Of spacious love

Before our God of the endless embrace.

    Hold silence...

Deeper and wider, Lord, deeper and wider

Till our lives reflect the image

Of the God we worship

Changed by the Spirit from glory to glory

Into the image of Jesus Christ,

our Lord and our Brother.

    Hold silence…