Jody's Devotionals

(16) Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. It doesn’t say “to his seeds,” as though it referred to many people, but in reference to one person, “and to his seed,” who is Christ. — Galatians 3:16

Suggested Reading (Galatians 3:15-18)

I’m not interested so much in the details of interpreting this text but in the story behind it. Probably 1800 years before the time of Jesus, God made some promises to Abraham, telling him that all the nations would be blessed through him. As Paul points out in this verse, this promise didn’t see its fulfillment until 1800 years later when Jesus came, bringing the blessing of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation to the entire world.

For a small child, a wait of seconds can be a long time. They ask for something, and when it doesn’t instantly appear they start to cry. As we grow older, we get more patient. I can wait for hours for my food! For other things we wait much longer, but still we think that months or years is a terribly long time, even though it’s clearly in our lifetime.

But 1800 years? That’s a long time. And what if it doesn’t look like anything is happening? What if it seems like something completely different is taking place?

After Abraham comes Isaac, and for years his wife Rebecca is barren. When they finally do have children, one of them wants to kill the other. Jacob has to flee the land of promise. When he finally is back and has children they are driven by a famine to Egypt where they serve as slaves.

If you lived under slavery in Egypt, you might easily ask God, “When is the promise coming? We seem to be heading in the wrong direction!”

So God brings his people out of Egypt and gives them a long and complicated law. It takes serious effort for many of us to see what God was doing with Israel by giving them that law. Now there is lots of deep meaning in it, but it takes some effort to understand it, and we know from history that many Israelites didn’t really get it.

If you were living in Israel in the time of the judges, while the people forgot God for generations at a time, you might have asked God, “What is going on? Where is the promise? Have you failed?

So we come to the ups and the downs of the kings. David does great things, Solomon builds the temple, but even during his reign Israel starts to deteriorate. For every king faithful to God there are several who are not. Hezekiah reforms the nation, and then Manasseh takes it into greater sin that it had ever experienced before.

If you lived during the days of Manasseh, you might have asked God, “Don’t these revivals ever last? What are you doing? Where’s your promise? How long do we have to wait?”

Then would come Josiah, and his reformation, less than a hundred years later. “Great! Now we’re getting there,” you might tell yourself. But soon Josiah dies, Judah falls into even worse sin, Jerusalem is taken and the people go into exile.

If you’re an Israelite sitting in Babylon during the exile, you’d probably ask God what he was up to. Has the promise failed? Are we ever going to get there?

Then the people return from Babylon. Now they’re ready to keep the law, but they’ve lost their sense of mission. They’re happy just to live in Judea and keep themselves apart from the world. This situation lasted for around 400 years.

If you lived during that time, you might ask God whether there was any way that his people could be ready for the savior to come. What about the promise? Will it ever be fulfilled?

Many of us are at one of these points. We’ve lived through ups and downs in our ministries and in our churches. We’ve seen revivals, and then we’ve seen them fade. We’ve expected the soon coming of Jesus and then we’ve been disappointed. We know that God has said that the gospel will be preached in all the world and then the end will come, but we just don’t see it happening.

Count on it! Just as the promise to Abraham has been through detours, and even now is awaiting its final fulfillment through the lordship of Jesus Christ, so all of God’s promises will accomplish what God has sent them to do.

Count on it!

(1) Oh foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? You are the ones before whom Jesus Christ was openly displayed crucified! (2) I want to learn one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by keeping the law, or by hearing the message that brings forth faith? (3) Can you be so foolish? You began in the Spirit will you try to get the flesh to make you perfect? (4) Is everything you experienced in vain? As though it could be in vain! (5) Does God who gives you the Spirit and works miracles among you because you are law observant, or because of the message that brings forth faith? — Galatians 3:1-5

In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells of his determination to know nothing amongst the Corinthians but Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-3). Because of Paul’s discussion here of the “foolishness of the cross” some people get the idea that Paul liked foolish things and that the more foolish an idea might appear, the greater its spiritual value.

But the point of the foolishness of the cross is that it is a major turning point. When we come to the cross as sinners headed our own way and slaves to our own desires, the cross looks foolish. But in fact, the cross is the wisdom of God. Once you have surrendered yourself to God the cross takes on a whole new meaning. That’s how Paul can say that “. . . the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it’s God’s power” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

In Galatians, Paul talks more about foolishness, and points out the one and only cure—the cross of Jesus Christ. In fact, he expresses shock and amazement that one can even consider the possibility of turning away from the message of the cross once one has seen it (v. 4). He is astonished at the very thought!

Now the particular foolishness of the Galatians was that they had heard the gospel message, had come to faith, and yet when some folks came preaching that they must be circumcised, they seem to have forgotten about that message and decided instead to come to God via circumcision. The false teachers in Galatia wanted to make gentiles become Jews according to the law before they could be reconciled to God as Christians.

Now we don’t meet precisely the same temptation today. Few of us are seeking circumcision and trying to become Jews in order to be saved. (Note that there is a big difference between enjoying Jewish practices, feasts, and so forth, and keeping them as laws so in order to be saved.) But does Paul’s message strike home in our modern world?

I think it does. Most Christians I have met recognize that their initial salvation came through the grace of God. We realize that we can’t do anything to earn salvation. There’s no claim that we can hold against God so as to force him to pay.

But once we have been saved, we often turn from grace to striving. We think we are given the gift of salvation by grace, but then we have to sanctify ourselves. But your sanctification, your perfection, the completion of your mission and call on this earth are all to be accomplished by the gracious gift of God’s Spirit.

You started in the Spirit, don’t finish in the flesh. Let me paraphrase that. “You started by accepting God’s grace, let God finish the job in the same way that he started it.” God is a lot better at this than you are! It’s foolish to assume you can fix it all, and God has the cure—the cross of Jesus.