THE ONE TRUE GOSPEL
Meditations in the Epistle to the Galatians
Galatians 3:6-9
THE EXAMPLE OR EVIDENCE FROM ABRAHAM

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THE APOSTLE is battling in this letter to convince the Galatians of the fatal error that had crept into their lives. This error is one of utmost seriousness for the church today. We may not know the particular way that this error was manifest in Galatia, but we have our own examples of this error, and our own fatal attraction for the error just as the Galatians had. As we have already seen, Paul battles with urgency because he knows that if the error is not corrected and expelled, the eternal welfare of souls are at risk.

THE ARGUMENT PAUL INTRODUCES

The error Paul is fighting is the error of introducing our own effort and meriting in some way into our salvation. In Galatia it had crept in under the guise that faith was defective unless the rules and ceremonial of the Jewish faith were added. Without this addition of the Jewish culture, the false teachers told the Galatians their faith was only second best. Paul is eager to point out that adding these religious works was really the element that very much introduced what is second best.

Abraham was recognised as the father of the Jews and of the Jewish faith. Paul asks the Galatians to consider his Christian life. How was he blessed by God and reconciled to God. Paul points out that God came to Abraham on more than one occasion, and promised that God was going to bless him and his people yet unborn through the promised seed or child that would be born. This was the birth of Christ. Abraham was told that all nations would be blessed through him because out of his family in due time a Saviour would be born. How much Abraham was able to understand in New Testament terms may have been relatively small, but he believed in the promise of God of acceptance and being justified from all his sins, and he was saved because he believed the promise of God. He was justified before God by faith.

The point Paul is making is that Abraham had none of the subsequent Jewish religious life and ritual, which was mainly given much later when the Israelites were travelling through the wilderness of Sinai, yet even without all this religious action, which the Galatians were being told was essential by those who had come and taught the Galatians after Paul had left them, Abraham was completely and fully reconciled to God, and knew no diminishing of the blessings of God. He was fully reconciled to God, and God deprived him of no blessing.

So Paul brings an evidence from the life of Abraham that annihilates the error the Galatians had been deceived into believing.

UNDERSTANDING THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM

We must now look carefully at what Paul says about Abraham's faith in these verses before us, so that we may properly understand what that faith was. The way Paul expresses himself is not as clear as perhaps we would like, or that has certainly been my feeling as I have read these verses.

The first thing to notice is that it is righteousness that Abraham needed. He was credited with righteousness. Paul says "He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness". This implies that before this Abraham did not have righteousness that made him acceptable to God. Everyone born into this world suffers from the same problem. To be accepted by God we must have righteousness of life that satisfies God's requirements for righteousness, and this we have not got naturally, and we have no means on our own of gaining such righteousness.

Next we must notice that God, by gift, bestowed righteousness upon Abraham. It was credited to him. He had none to start with in the bank of heaven, and then by credit from God he had sufficient righteousness.

How did Abraham receive this credit of righteousness. The words of the scripture text may lead us to believe that it was credited on the merit of his faith as Paul says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness". There have been some evangelicals that have said, that because God knew we were unable to live up to the glory of God because of our sinful and corrupt natures, God graciously lowered the standard, and changed the rules so it may be made as easy as possible for us to merit salvation. These people then go on to suggest that God only requires us to believe on him. This actually is another example of our meriting salvation by our works. The work which this teaching now requires us to do is to believe.

This, however, is not what Paul means. This can not be the truth because God cannot lower his standards. He must require perfect righteousness for acceptance before himself. Nor is this idea of lowering the requirements to merely faith any more secure for us, for such is our weakness that even true believing is beyond our own strength.

When Paul says Abraham believed God, and when we read this in Genesis, what is being said is that Abraham believed the promise of God, and it is the promise of God which provides for us the righteousness we need. Believing the promise was simply accepting in faith that God was going to provide for Abraham's salvation. The promise was that in the seed of Abraham, that is a special person born from his family according to the flesh, that he, and all who believed the promise also, would be blessed. The person was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and as the New Testament reveals, and the subsequent prophecies after Abraham in the Old Testament also, Jesus was to live and die for his believing people, and so provide the righteousness we all require to be right with God. When Abraham believed, he was credited with this righteousness because he believed the promise of God concerning it.

This means of salvation is totally and eternally secure to those who believe, because their salvation depends on this perfect righteousness of Jesus which is credited as theirs. It can never be lost, whatever the variations in the believers level of living. The faith which receives this blessing is not a work meriting this gift, but simply an expression that we trust in the Saviour's righteousness worked for us, and in his righteousness alone. In fact the faith we have is enabled by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Thus the hearing of faith is the one and only true gospel, and alone saves. By introducing other works we dishonour the promise and suggest that the work of Jesus for us is defective or insufficient, and so is a sort of blaspheme.

THE MESSAGE FROM ABRAHAM

The message which Paul wants to impress upon the Galatians, and upon all of us as we read his letter, is that what God did for Abraham is what he had always planned to do for all who are saved.

In verse 7 Paul explains that the true Jew, that is the true child of Abraham, is one who believes unto salvation as Abraham did. He is telling the Galatians that the teaching that they had been seduced with, which suggested that somehow they fell short of the true descendants of Abraham because they did not keep the Jewish ritual and ceremony, was false. Here is the indication that it was always God's purpose that the true Israelite was not one who was a Jew by physical birth, but one who was a spiritual Israelite by spiritual new birth. The true Israelite is the one who has the same faith as Abraham.

It is in verse 8 however that this point is explained by Paul, and it is the unassailable argument that he is making. In the salvation of Abraham by faith in the promise of God in Christ is a demonstration and example of what was always God's way of saving sinners, and that this is the only way. Paul explains that when Scripture says that "All nations will be blessed through Abraham" it is not only a declaration of the Saviour to be born from the human line of Abraham, but also Abraham, in the way he believed, would be preaching to everyone all down history, and telling them of the true and one and only effective way to be saved. Abraham, by his example, reveals God's one wise plan for the saving of sinners.

From this Paul in the 9th verse points out that only those who believe as Abraham did are justified by God. These only receive the blessings which Abraham received. This is so important because the blessings given to Abraham are the full saving blessings of God, and there is no other true blessing.

CONCLUSION

In closing this meditation it is perhaps a good thing to dwell again upon the perfection of the way of faith, which the Galatians had been bewitched into believing was imperfect.

We have ingrained into us by the original covenant that God made with humanity in Adam, that our doing and working is the means by which we gain acceptance before God. Adam was put on probation under this covenant of works. The terms of the covenant for him was reduced to the easiest form. Being created holy and without any desire to sin, it was easy to live as God wanted him to live. God simply gave him the one prohibition as a test of his obedience and allegiance. It was that he was not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam found this single rule too hard to keep even when he had only holy desires and pure love for God. However it is because of this original covenant we imagine that we can win God's favour by our works of righteousness.

It is very hard for fallen humanity to give this conviction up. It is all the wisdom we have without divine revelation in the Bible. It is very hard in our sinfulness to renounce our pride in thinking we can earn our salvation. To come to the point of accepting that there is nothing worthy of merit before God in our fallen state is so very hard for us to accept. Our pride is offended, and because of this pride we have a false wisdom that the only way God will accept and save us is our own good works. We feel we must earn our salvation and our place in heaven.

If Adam failed to keep the covenant of works and gain salvation thereby when he was without sin and had no desire to sin, how much less have we any ability to gain our salvation by our own endeavours at goodness now that we inherit a fallen and sinful nature.

Because of these considerations the way of works to be saved gives no security and leaves the soul in doubt. How often do we hear this expressed as people talk of hoping that all will be well at the last day, and that somehow the scales of God's justice will tip in their favour at the judgement. They don't know they are saved or safe, they just have a vain hope that they will be. It is because of this insecurity that all religion which relies of human doing in anyway, find they have to reduce the standards of God, and/or invent some fiction in the after life to make up for failure in the present life. These are vain imaginings as they have no foundation in the Bible, and are just the ideas of men.

The hearing of faith is totally secure because God has planned that it should be so. It is totally secure because God in his love sent Jesus into this world as a man to take our place, and as our substitute and representative, to meet all the requirements for righteousness that God's justice demands. As we are credited with this righteousness worked by Jesus, we are wholly justified before God forever. We know that we are heirs of heaven. This is the wonderful wisdom, mercy, grace and love of God towards us.