Prayer and God’s Promises for the NationsSample

Abraham’s Offspring, Heirs of God’s Promise

There’s no misprint: today you’ll reread the last part of the previous day’s Genesis text. God’s promise to Abraham, “through your offspring [literally, seed] all nations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). God the Father remains unbound by time and doesn’t forget His promises to his children. God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants, according to Paul, reached two thousand years ahead to a part of the Roman Empire located in present-day Turkey.

Two millennia after Abraham believed the Lord’s promise to bless other nations through him, and years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul carried God’s promise forward to the Galatians. The Galatian church consisted largely of Gentiles who had found faith in Christ. Law-obsessed teachers confused the young church, however, by adding Jewish dietary laws and other rules that the non-Jewish Galatians supposedly needed to observe to truly follow Christ. 

Paul’s letter to the Galatians implores them to connect the dots between their faith and God’s promise. They’re God’s children “through faith,” not through any law. As people belonging to Christ, Paul said, they were “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). The Galatians’ faith, as timeless to their Father as Abraham’s, meant that these Gentiles were part of Abraham’s promised offspring. Paul draws a direct line between the Galatians’ status as children of God through faith and their identity as Abraham’s spiritual seed, or offspring, heirs of a two-thousand-year-old promise.

Now four thousand years out from Abraham, we believers of all backgrounds—including those from different religions, social strata, and genders—can relish our joint status in Christ. We’re all descendants of the faith of Abraham, heirs of the promise. 

Ask the Lord to make His promise come true for us as believers and for all the peoples of the earth. Pray that the worldwide body of believers, as Abraham’s seed, would multiply and in turn bless all nations on earth with God’s Good News.