Continued from Part 3
Galatians 3:17 tells us that the law which came 430 years after the promise to Abraham cannot annul or cancel the promise which God had made to him and his seed. You see, the law that the Israelites were given that conditioned either blessing or curses was given long after God promised a blessing to Abraham. That law cannot add conditions to the promise God gave him. God won’t hold Abraham and his seed accountable to the law in order to receive his blessing. That would be adding terms to a contract already ratified by himself.
The question arises though as to what this has to do with us. God had made these promises to Abraham and his seed, so where do we fit in, and why should it matter?
To answer this I’d like to jump down to Galatians 3:26 and 29 and put them together. Basically God is saying that we are sons of God by faith in Christ. If we are Christ’s then we are heirs according to the promise. He had summarized this earlier in verse 14. “…that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” The blessing of Abraham… That blessing is ours! That means when God made the promise to Abraham and his seed, the seed he is referring to is us– those who have believed in Christ. Galatians 3:29 says it explicitly: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
The Christian answer then is that God blessed Abraham and his seed unconditionally. The law that came later could not cancel or add conditions to that blessing otherwise God would have been a liar in making such promises to Abraham. If I’m a Christian, I am an heir of that blessing because I am part of Abraham’s seed. That means that the promise that I am a recipient of, supersedes and precedes the giving of the law. There’s nothing in the keeping or the not-keeping of the law that can affect my status of blessing given by the promise of God. If I am required to keep the law in order to be blessed, God would be breaking His promise to Abraham, and by extension, to me. There is no curse hanging over the Christian. Let your mind and spirit think on this!
I need to add an additional thought here that I see I have failed to mention. The blessing we are referring to is a spiritual blessing. And that means, don’t miss this, it grants us all of the blessings of the New Covenant. I can’t go into all of that here, but a key component of that covenant is the complete and permanent forgiveness of trespasses and sins. Those who receive by faith the salvation God offers through Christ, are forgiven of every sinful thing they have ever done or ever will do! God removes all of our sins, casts them into the depths of the sea, never to be remembered against us again. And this blessing, including complete forgiveness, comes through faith, and does not depend in any way, shape, or form on how well we keep God’s commandments.