Are You a Child of Abraham?

I love the God of the Gospel. And I love the Gospel of God. It’s the Good News, the Great News and the Best News. God forgives! God delivers! God sets us free!

The New Testament makes it clear that those who believe the Gospel become children of Abraham. How come? Because Abraham also believed the Gospel.

What? Wait! Hold on a minute! What did I just say? Abraham believed the Gospel? How could Abraham believe the Gospel if he lived two thousand years before Jesus came?

Well, Paul says in Galatians 3:8 that Abraham had the Gospel preached unto him when God prophesied blessing upon all nations through his seed.

And who was Abraham’s seed? Paul tells us that it was Christ (Galatians 3:16).

Jesus was the true fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. When Christ was on earth He told the Jews that Abraham rejoiced to see His day (John 8:56). Amazing! Abraham had Christological eyes.

So Abraham believed that God would send a Blesser to all nations. But he didn’t just believe in the sending God but also in the resurrecting God. This is what Hebrews 11:19 underlines so powerfully.

Referring to the sacrifice of Isaac, the author of Hebrews writes that Abraham believed, “that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from where he also received him as a figure”.

The figure, of course, pointed to the coming resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Once again, Abraham was a pre-Christ Christian. He knew that God could raise up Isaac (symbolic of the Lord Jesus) from the dead.

This shows that Abraham’s faith was not a mystical, New Age type of cloudy faith; but a very concrete kind of faith in a very concrete kind of God.

It was a faith that believed in God the Sender and God the Resurrector. In other words, it was a Gospel-drenched trust in the goodness of the Lord.

Abraham loved the God of the Gospel. And Abraham loved the Gospel of God. He thought it was Good News, Great News and the Best News.

That’s why I’m his son. And that’s why you are too. Hallelujah!