The Gospel Beforehand to Abraham

Part 1 of the Abrahamic Administration of the Covenant of Grace

There is a difference between the way in which grace was shown to Adam in Genesis 3, and later to Noah in Genesis 6 through 9, as opposed to this opening up of an era with Abraham in Genesis 12.

Roberts says of this:

The two former federal administrations from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham were but the daybreak, or day-dawning of the Covenant, but this from Abraham to Moses was as the bright sunrise of God’s Covenant and promise in Christ.1

In a sense, we will only look at two concepts—the parties and the promises—but we are going to view that first on the surface of the text of Genesis 12 and then go under that surface with the help of Paul in Galatians 3.

We must recall the principles of the analogy of faith: Scripture interprets Scripture, and we interpret the less clear passages in light of the more clear. This also implies, as Augustine knew, that the New is in the Old concealed and the Old is in the New revealed. So here are our four points: (i.) the parties on the surface; (ii.) the promises on the surface; (iii.) the promises at the depths; (iv.) the parties at the depths.

The Parties on the Surface

The simplest identity of the parties to what we call the covenant of grace is this: God and Abraham. We have seen one reason why there is a more profound answer than that. This had to do with the covenant of redemption in which Jesus Christ is the ultimate receiving party.

The call of Abram is crucial. His original name is said to mean “exalted” or “high” father; which, we will recall, was changed by God to Abraham, meaning “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:5).2 It is significant that seven times in the Genesis account, God personally visits Abraham to make promises—first, the initial call (12:1), which Scripture later specifies as “The God of glory [appearing] to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran” (Acts 7:2); second, “the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh” (12:6); third, in Canaan, “after Lot had separated from him” (13:14); fourth, after the battle of the kings, when he experienced doubt, “the LORD came to Abram in a vision” (15:1); fifth, “When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram” (17:1); sixth, in the form of the three visitors, “by the oaks of Mamre” (18:1); and seventh, on Mount Moriah after holding back the sacrifice of Isaac (22:15-20). In all seven of these instances, divine promises were made to this one man.

A subsequent episode in the history of the covenant people looked back to the origins of this father. That is when,

Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods (Josh. 24:2).

In other words, Abram was a pagan. Abram was not a Jew or even a Hebrew. Not yet. Abram was a Chaldean and God created a separate ethnic distinction on the spot—but God did so by his effectual call, and in the form of a call that we might easily dismiss as mere historical background: “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Gen. 12:1).

As with Noah, this covenant administration has an immediate party and an implied party. There is Abraham and there is his offspring. Here is where this is said:

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you (Gen. 17:7).

O. Palmer Robertson speaks of a genealogical principle or seed concept,3 whereby God fulfills His ultimate promise through families: “ To your offspring I give this land” (Gen. 15:18). Naturally this applies to royal lines within that national line. To David we read,

I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom (2 Sam. 7:12).

Not only does God bless in a genealogical line, but He also curses in such a line:

I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me (Ex. 20:5).

What we might call an “extreme” or “extravagant” version of the seed promise is made in Deuteronomy 7:9,

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God twho keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.

Likewise, “He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations” (Ps. 105:8). What does one do with this idea? It may seem to some that this seems false on the face of it, even about the most saintly characters of the Bible.

Robertson comments that,

According to this Scripture, it is to a thousand generations that the covenant promise extends. This reference to a thousand generations implies an eternal covenant. But it suggests more. The genealogical emphasis contains the idea of eternal succession. Never will the line of the faithful be cut off completely. In every generation the line of God’s covenant people shall be maintained.4

Ultimately even genealogy circles back to typology. In other words, the seed principle is not ultimate except insofar as Christ primarily is considered that seed, and the elect secondarily are considered. We will come back to how Paul treats that in Galatians 3.

The Promises on the Surface

There were seven promises to Abraham in all.

1. A great nation (Gen. 12:2).

2. Blessed to be a blessing (Gen. 12:2-3).

3. Your name great (Gen. 12:2).

4. The land (Gen. 13:15).

5. Innumerable offspring (Gen. 13:16, 15:5, 17:5-6).

6. Kings from his line (Gen. 17:6).

7. An everlasting covenant (Gen. 17:7, 13).

Ultimately, at the core of all of the covenant blessings was God Himself. This comes in the form of promises like this: “I will be your God” (Ex. 6:7; cf. Jer. 7:23; 11:4; 30:22; Ezk. 36:28). Robertson calls this the Immanuel principle.5 There are various ways that this is said:

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you … and I will be their God (Gen. 17:7, 8).

Not coincidentally it features as a description of the new heavens and new earth:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God (Rev. 21:3).

Since the first tangible glimpse of these promises that Abraham saw was the land itself, we will focus on that here. This shows up in the call itself before it does in the promise. The “land of Canaan” (Ex. 6:4) is called by many names in Scripture, most notably “the land of promise” (Heb. 11:9), but also “the good land” (Deut. 4:21), “the holy land” (Zech. 2:12), “the land of the LORD” (Hos. 9:3), “your land, O Immanuel” (Isa. 8:8), or described as “a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:8), or simply “the rest and … the inheritance” (Deut. 12:9).

Roberts mentions four basic ways that the Scripture commends this land to His people and the reader: (1) God’s peculiar choice of that land; (2) God’s special eye, care and more immediate providence over it; (3) the singular wealth, plenty, and fruitfulness of it; and (4) God’s special presence therein.6

The Promises at the Depths

The exact language used in Galatians 3:8 forces an awkward conclusion about the Genesis account for anyone who would divorce the promises to Abraham and Israel from any fulfillment that includes the Gentiles. Note the words of Paul: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed” (Gal. 3:8). He could have said that God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, or an angel did, or even a prophet. But no—it was the Scripture that preached and even foresaw. Technically speaking, we would call this figure of speech a personification. The upshot is this: Something in that Scripture, something in the text of Genesis—not some private revelation Abraham had on the side—something in the words that you and I can read, is the gospel.

Another important place in the Genesis record itself is the verse quoted by Paul and James concerning Abraham’s justification. It was immediately after one of the promises mentioned above, namely about his offspring, that we read, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). Clearly Paul saw this as the most foundational text grounding the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as he used it in this way in Romans 4:3 and Galatians 3:6. As we will see when we look at conditions of even the covenant of grace, James’s use of the same verse in the context where he highlights works makes the same point.

If we review those seven promises again, we will see that we have no need to choose between whether they are fulfilled literally or spiritually as is often conceived. On the contrary, all are fulfilled literally—first proximately and typologically, and then in their ultimate fruition.

Here are the seven again, this time with something of a New Testament counterpart.

1. A great nation (Gen. 12:2) — “But you are … a holy nation” (1 Pet. 2:9).

2. Blessed to be a blessing (Gen. 12:2-3) — “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to vthe whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

3. Your name great (Gen. 12:2) — given a new name (Rev. 2:17)

4. The land (Gen. 13:15) — “the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world” (Rom. 4:13).

5. Innumerable offspring (Gen. 13:16, 15:5, 17:5-6) — “a great multitude that no one could number” (Rev. 7:9).

6. Kings from his line (Gen. 17:6) — “so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see” (Isa. 52:15).

7. An everlasting covenant (Gen. 17:7, 13) — “the Lord God will be their light, and lthey will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5).

About both the depths of the promise and the depths of the parties, we note that the genealogical principle is not ultimate, and one must avoid two ditches. One ditch is the modern individualism that refuses to come to terms with God’s dealing through families and people groups; but the other ditch is to settle into the seed theme as if it were ultimate—and to move from left to right in pride and materialistic considerations alone. There is vertical divine election above and beyond the genealogical line. There is God constantly upsetting the natural birth order throughout the Old Testament.

The Parties at the Depths

As one reads on in Galatians 3, the unity of the gospel promise from the Old to the New turns to the unity of the people group who are recipients of that promise. First, right before and after those words about the gospel to Abraham:

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith (Gal. 3:7-9).

He adds, almost parenthetically, to aspects that we do not have any express language of in Genesis: “so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14). Finally at the chapter’s end, Paul concludes,

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:27-29).

In another of Peter’s early sermons recorded in Acts, he says to the people in Jerusalem,

You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness” (Acts 3:25-26).

Here we have the punchline to Peter’s preaching to be the fulfillment of the covenant promise to Abraham, focusing especially on the blessing to the nations, and in the next breath adding that this Jesus was sent “to you first,” hinting at the Gentiles ingrafting as part of that promise. We may recall the expression “all who are far off” (Acts 2:39) in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost a chapter earlier. This was to extend the Abrahamic blessing to the Gentile God-fearers who had assembled with the Jews that day. That is an expression we will return to when we look at the covenant sacraments in a future week. For now, we note that Paul uses this same expression in his letter to the Ephesians: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13). Just before this, he makes an interesting statement:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (vv. 11-12).

The two crucial phrases that I want to focus on are these: “commonwealth of Israel” and “covenants of promise.” What is the logic of Paul here? The Gentiles were previously strangers or foreigners or excluded from these two designations; implying, of course, that now they are not. But this is only another way to say that the Gentiles who believe in Christ are also parties to the covenants of promise and even the commonwealth of Israel. Clearly Paul does not mean that Gentiles are ancient citizens of that Davidic kingdom that had been wiped out by Babylon in 587 B.C.; nor did he even mean that they are temporary citizens of that smaller scrap of Roman territory in Judea until it would be wiped out in 70 A.D. What then does he mean? What is this “city” or “country” or “kingdom” going by the name “Israel” that believing Jews and Gentiles are now fellow citizens of? That is a question that the subsequent lessons will begin to give an increasingly fuller answer about. For now, let us at least grant that the sum of these promises to Abraham, the New Testament calls “the gospel” and extends to all believing Gentiles together with believing Jews in Christ.

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1. Roberts, God’s Covenants, II:15

2. Nehemiah 9:7

3. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 35.

4. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 37.

5. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 46.

6. Roberts, God’s Covenants, II:24-25.