"The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith,
preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying,
In thee shall all the nations be blessed." Galatians 3:8
Michael Wilcock
GOD has an international view of this world. It is a universal gospel which He places before all the nations alike. It is not one choice for us and another choice for some else; it is not one choice for the Jews and a different one for the Gentiles; it was not one choice before the time of Christ and a different choice afterwards. It is always and in all places the same choice with which God confronts the nations.
Genesis 10 tells us how the single root of humanity began to be divided up into the great nationalities which have existed in our world ever since Babel. The first figure who arises after that event is that of Abraham (Chapter 12). He was the truly international man who began from the great civilisation of the ancient world in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris and who then travelled across such frontiers as there were in those days and for a time settled in Egypt, at the other end of the civilised world. He thus came to a different nation, people of a different language. He then moved up from Egypt and lived in the land of Canaan, remaining there for many, many years.
All the time, as we are told in Hebrews 11, he was seeking a homeland. Neither Ur, from which he came, nor Egypt, to which he went, nor Canaan, where he ultimately settled, was his homeland: "People who speak as Abraham spoke make it clear that they are seeking a homeland" (Hebrews 11:14). The writer goes on to say that if that was what they meant by a homeland, the opportunity would have come sooner or later for them to go there, to settle down and make it their home. In fact they were desiring a better country than Ur of the Chaldees or Egypt or Canaan. They were looking for their heavenly homeland.
So we suggest that Abraham is the international man. He belongs to all those nations since really, deeper than all of them, his allegiance was to his heavenly home. This is all summed up for us in the verse upon which we now base our study: "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8).
The Blessing that God sets before the Nations
There is one blessing which God holds out to men of every race and colour, creed and culture; it is the blessing of justification. This matter of justifying the nations represents the heart of God for His world. This fact makes us think of evangelism and the world wide spread of the Good News. But of course with Christian missions many other things have accompanied the gospel. All sorts of things have gone on under the umbrella of overseas evangelism, and very rightly so.
Think of the situation of the missionary a hundred and fifty years ago. He went to benighted corners of the globe where he found people who had none of his advantages. He often found folk who had all sorts of needs. They lived in grass huts, they had no medicines, they had no schools. So the missionaries took with them, along with the gospel, all those other benefits which they understood to be part and parcel of Christian civilisation -- and they still do. So we continue to support Christian hospitals, Christian schools and other accompaniments of the gospel, but as we do so we raise problems.
I understand that those past conditions are changing and passing away. Whereas a profound [63/64] spiritual need remains, we can no longer say that we must provide medicine or education or plumbing that at one time seemed to be part and parcel of missionary work, so we have to ask ourselves what it is that those in other lands need. Even when our western benefits are no longer wanted and people will no longer thank us for Christian civilisation's good things, what is there that is still lacking? The answer, of course, is that the great blessing still to be offered is that of justification. People need to be right with God.
The world of the Eighties is so different from the world of a Century ago, but there is still a Third World, there are still needy people, there are millions who go hungry. There are millions who have no earthly hopes or prospects, so that although the situation has changed in some respects Christians rightly are concerned for those who so badly need help. They need food. And we have so much. It is good therefore that modern Christian agencies should respond to their need with handouts.
Looking a bit deeper, however, we realise that it is not just enough to feed the hungry. We must give them the possibility and ability to learn to feed themselves, so the lorry loads of food are followed by lorry loads of agricultural implements which will enable people to fend for themselves. There are Christians who see this as their calling from God and we support them. Nevertheless we must never forget that if those needs did not exist there is still the need for the one great blessing of justification. Men need to be right with God.
Here again, there are Christian people in many parts of the world who point out that the real problem is not just lack of food, but the governments under which they have to live. It is not only the economics that are wrong, they say, but the politics. We therefore in many parts of the Third World find Christians who are greatly exercised about right-wing dictatorships and who see no other way forward than to become left-wing revolutionaries. All over the globe we have this idea of what is called Liberation Theology with Christians exercised as to whether it is right to take up arms against repressive governments who hold down the poor. I do not propose to consider this, but I do know that even if it were right for Christians to get involved in that kind of activity, the fact remains that Galatians 3:8 tells me that God wants to bring people everywhere to something beyond a full belly and political freedom, and that is the blessing of justification. Men need to be made right with God.
If it is right to be concerned for the oppressed, what about the oppressors? Don't they also have spiritual needs? The Christians' business is to utter the prophetic word which speaks to the one on top as well as to the underdog; that which speaks to the right-wing as well as to the left-wing, to the "haves" as well as to the "have nots", challenging them in the name of Christ. That is certainly an area in which perhaps Christians ought to be getting more involved with the world than they have done. The heart of the Christian gospel is still this matter of justification, of whether a man in his spirit is or is not right with God. We must never be deflected from the central message of the gospel that God wants to justify men. We cannot avoid the other issues of our fellow men's needs, but we must always keep in view that the greatest need in God's sight is that the barrier between men and Himself shall be bridged.
Some years ago I ministered at a church in Maidstone in Kent, not far from the North Downs. It never ceased to amaze me that wherever I travelled around in that town, every bend in the road and every crest of a hill brought me within sight of that line of hills. The hills were all around that town down in the valley of the Medway. I could not fail to see them. In the same manner, wherever we move or wherever we look, the main feature of the landscape wherever we go is the need for a man to be right with God. You cannot miss it. When all other needs have been met, this need remains universal.
The Faith which God sets before the Nations
The blessing is the same for anyone in the world, irrespective of where they live. Then so is the means of obtaining that blessing the same for everyone. What God wants to do is to justify the nations by faith. Faith is universally possible. There are some matters in Scripture which are not easy to interpret or understand. Peter himself remarks that his dear brother Paul sometimes [64/65] wrote things in his letters which were hard to understand. Of course there are depths in Christian doctrines that we may never penetrate until we get to glory. It is, however, a great principle of Scripture that those things which God means everyone to know He has caused to be made unmistakably clear. We may be sure that if God wants it to be it is clear. And any truth preached in our churches which has to be dug up from the depths and takes a great deal of explaining is, by that very token, much less important.
Do you notice how God so often uses basic pictures that anyone can understand to illustrate His truth? He compares great spiritual realities to water or bread or light, things that anyone in any culture can perfectly well understand. Now the nationalities do have different characteristics. Although Paul preached an international gospel, he began his message at Athens by indicating a special feature of the Athenians, saying, "... I see how very religious you are" and really meaning that they were superstitious. In this they differed, perhaps, from other nationalities. There are differences between people but nevertheless, so far as the basic principle of faith is concerned, every nation can equally be said to choose to believe. This is open to all. Anyone can believe.
It is certainly clear that anyone can exercise unbelief. In Romans 1, where Paul sets out very clearly the unbelief of men, he remarks that they suppress the truth (v.18), they know God but give Him no honour (v.21), they exchange the truth of God for a lie (v.25) and they refuse to acknowledge God (v.28). Anybody can exercise unfaith. The opposite is also available to all men. In the last analysis anyone can say "No" to himself and commit himself to God. This is that which God sets before all nations, the turning from oneself and casting oneself hopelessly upon God.
Knowing our weakness God has given us a living example of a man of faith. He does not explain faith in theological terms and in some abstract way, but gives all the nations equally the one example of Abraham. Abraham was accepted by God for his faith, which all can imitate. James Strachan rightly says, "Had Abraham won God's favour by his extraordinary merits, he would have been no example to his posterity." There were so many good things said about Abraham that might have commended him to God, but if that had been the case then not only his descendants after him but everybody else in the world would have been able to protest that they could never live up to that standard.
But it was not like that. All the great qualities to be found in Abraham counted for nothing in his search for justification with God. The one thing that mattered, even in his case, was that he turned from himself and cast himself on his Lord. That, anyone can imitate. So we are to be encouraged; faith is possible to all. Now of course we have to translate the gospel into other people's ways of thinking and speaking. That is one of the great enterprises of the missionary movement. But what is to be translated is always the same. The heart of the thing, what we are now considering, is the simple message that what is needed is faith, faith in the Christ of the gospel.
So we come to that grand, original, simple architype -- Abraham. What the New Testament does is to use three verses to bring together the three important parts of the story of Abraham; they are "in you shall all the nations be blessed" (Genesis 12:3); the second is "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6) and the third is again "In you shall all the nations be blessed" (Genesis 22:18). These represent three great stages in the experience of this man or faith, and they are an example to all of us. God spoke to him (Genesis 12), he believed God (Genesis 15), and he acted upon it (Genesis 22).
The first stage is that God gave him the promise. It was the Word of God. He had nothing to go on, for as yet he had no son. But it was the promise of God. The second stage is that he believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6). This is a verse which is quoted three times in the New Testament, being taken up again and again to speak of the response of faith which Abraham made. The third stage shows us Abraham proving his faith by obedience. As James reminds us, in his quotation of Genesis 15:6, Abraham did what he was told, in spite of [65/66] all appearances and perhaps his own better judgment. Against all merely human considerations, he understood that this God in whom he trusted was speaking to him, so he obeyed, and in doing so proved that his faith was genuine. Abraham is the example which God sets before all the nations.
God still speaks to day. He tells us to believe on His crucified and risen Son. We hear, we obey, and we too are counted righteous. We take the gospel to others, and as we do so we pray, "Lord, speak, cause men to believe and then move them to act upon their belief." And day by day it is happening all over the world. It may seem strange that as we talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ, God should turn us back to the Old Testament for the shining example of how we are to be justified by simple faith, but this is His Word to the whole world. What men everywhere need is justification.
The Gospel that God sets before all the Nations
It is fascinating that in the middle of Galatians 3:8 we are told that the Old Testament Scripture was preaching the gospel beforehand. It is one gospel. It is one Scripture. It is one revelation. God has the same message to man all through time. The fact that it became explicit, so making us understand for the first time who Jesus was when He came into the world at Bethlehem is neither here nor there. It is the same gospel through all history and it is a gospel which God sets before all the nations.
It is the gospel of the cross and the resurrection. In fact it is true that by the time he came to die Abraham had not received the whole fulfilment of the promise made to him. But he had seen it afar off (Hebrews 11:13) and greeted it. He understood as much as he needed to understand of what the promise was going to be, as the Lord Jesus vouched for when He said, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad" (John 8:56).
I wonder what it was that Abraham saw. He saw the day of Jesus Christ. I think it may have been on Mount Moriah when he was about to offer Isaac and in the nick of time saw the substitute which God had provided to take the upraised knife. Some versions say that Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh because the ram was provided (Genesis 22:14) but it might equally mean "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen". It would not at all surprise me if from that moment to the end of his life Abraham had more than an inkling of what the gospel of a substitutionary sacrifice was going to be.
He knew nothing of Bethlehem. Indeed Bethlehem was not so much as thought of in his day. He did not know about Galilee and about the coming of a son born to the wife of a carpenter there. But he knew that God was going to do something by which he, Abraham, could be made right with God, and that that provision had something to do with an animal which was offered on an altar. On Mount Moriah he saw it. It was the gospel, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This, then, is God's gospel for the whole world. But we should note that even as Abraham grasped it for himself, he was told that it was also for others.
There are things in the Bible which might seem to make the Jewish faith an exclusive affair. Wanting what was for the Jews to be only for the Jews, Israel tried to keep isolated. But we have to say that whenever Israel built walls about itself and tried to keep itself to itself, it was not being true to the spirit of Abraham. The very thing which set the Jews apart and made them God's own distinctive people, separate from the rest of the nations, was not meant by God to be selfish exclusivism but the most expansive liberality. The same is true in our case. When God's Word comes to us and we respond in faith, we are challenged to pass it on to others. The gospel if for all the nations.
God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,
I have something good for you, Abraham.
What is it, Lord?
What is it, Lord?
It is justification, Abraham. You can be right with Me and belong to Me.
Justification, Lord, how do I get it?
By faith, Abraham. By believing. Forsake all else and take Me.