Let’s look more closely at the several covenants God made with Abraham —
Many descendants
(Gen 15:5 ESV) 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Faith counted as righteousness
(Gen 15:6 ESV) 6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
The Promised Land
(Gen 15:7 ESV) 7 And he said to him, “I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”
Father of many nations
(Gen 17:4 ESV) 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.”
God to be the God of Abraham’s descendants
(Gen 17:7-8 ESV) 7 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. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
Circumcision
(Gen 17:10-11 ESV) 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
All nations blessed through Abraham’s seed
(Gen 12:3 ESV) 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
(Gen 22:17-18 ESV) 17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring [seed] shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Fulfillment
Now, contrary to the dispensational view of the world, God did not abrogate this covenant in Moses or Jesus. Rather, Jesus fulfills the covenants. We’ve seen this in the preceding post. It’s also true in this analysis.
Many descendants
Of course, all Christians are spiritual descendants of Abraham. John the Baptist makes clear that God isn’t limited by the laws of natural descent!
(Mat 3:9 ESV) 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”
And Paul explains that all who have faith are “sons of Abraham” —
(Gal 3:7-9 ESV) 7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 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.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Faith counted as righteousness
(Rom 4:1-13 ESV) What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. 13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
It’s a long passage, but it’s important. Paul argues that God granted righteousness to Abraham because of faith, and that this promise belongs to all who have faith, not only the circumcised. After all, Abraham himself was not circumcised until long after his faith was counted as righteousness.
The Promised Land
We take God’s promise to Abraham to be the inheritance of the Promised Land, but Paul interprets the promise as apply to the “world” (Rom 4:13). After all, God had promised to bless “all the nations of the earth” through Abraham (Gen 22:18). This theme is picked up by John Mark Hicks in an excellent post that I could profitably copy in full here (but you should click on the link and read it at his blog instead). The gist of the thought is that, as all nations are grafted into Israel, the “inheritance” and the “land” becomes the entire earth, indeed, the entirety of Creation.
(Mat 5:5 ESV) 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Jesus paraphrases David —
(Psa 37:11 ESV) 11 But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.
— assuring us that the “land” becomes the “earth” in Christ. In Christ, all are invited into Abraham’s lineage, and the inheritance is expanded from Palestine to include the entirety of the earth.
Father of many nations
At first glance, we read this promise as referring to the Edomites, Ishmaelites, etc. who descend from the physical body of Abraham. But we find in Christ that the promise is fulfilled in all the nations.
(Gal 3:8-9 ESV) 8 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.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
God to be the God of Abraham’s descendants
God promised Abraham that “I will be their God” — and this promise echoes throughout the Bible.
(Gen 17:8 ESV) 8 “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
(Jer 24:7 ESV) 7 I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.
(Jer 31:33-34 ESV) 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
(Jer 32:38-41 ESV) 38 And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.
(Eze 11:19-20 ESV) 19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
(Eze 37:23 ESV) 23 They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
(Eze 37:26-28 ESV) 26 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
(Heb 8:10 ESV) 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
I’ll not dwell at length on the many prophecies that echo Abraham and that are fulfilled in Jesus. Rather, the thought is that God will not only be the God of his redeemed people, but he himself will transform their hearts to be obedient so that his Kingdom can be established forever.
Circumcision
God’s covenant with Abraham required circumcision, not as a condition of salvation, but as a sign of the covenant. But by the time of Deuteronomy, God was speaking of circumcision of the heart.
(Deu 10:15-16 ESV) 15 Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.
God declares to the Israelites that he has elected and chosen them, and so they should respond by circumcising their own hearts. But later in the book, God predicts that the Israelites will abandon him. He says that he will nonetheless preserve a remnant loyal to himself. For these —
(Deu 30:5-6 ESV) 5 And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. 6 And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
In short, God will honor his promises to Abraham, and he will do it by changing the hearts of the people himself. You can’t help but notice the parallels with the prophecies in Jeremiah and Ezekiel quoted above. God will change the hearts of the people so that they will love God.
Paul interprets these passages to conclude —
(Rom 2:28-29 ESV) 28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
Thus, those to whom God gives his Spirit are the truly circumcised, because the circumcision that matters the most is circumcision of the heart. This is not a matter of obedience, but a gift given by God to those with faith in his Son.
All nations blessed through Abraham’s seed
David understood the meaning of the covenant —
(Psa 22:27-28 ESV) 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. 28 For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
As did Isaiah —
(Isa 2:2-3 ESV) 2 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, 3 and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
and Jeremiah —
(Jer 3:17 ESV) 17 At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the LORD, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart.
and, of course, Paul —
(Gal 3:8-9 ESV) 8 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.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
What the prophets did not put together was that the nations would be blessed through faith. The Jews assumed the nations would submit to the Law of Moses, forgetting that God was ultimately fulfilling his promises to Abraham, not the terms of the Mosaic law.
Conclusion
This post is too long already, but you can see that the covenants of God with Abraham and the fulfillment of those covenants address the very conflicts and plot points that we saw earlier in the scriptures. And we see that part of God’s plan for repairing us cracked eikons is found in the coming of the Spirit. Since man is broken, man cannot fix himself. No number of commands and requirements will be enough to un-break humanity. No, that’s a task too big for man. Only God himself can handle it.
