By Faith

“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26)

In this whole section of his letter to the Galatians, Paul explains how God’s promises to Abraham also belong to us because of faith. (Galatians 3:15-29) God’s promises to Abraham were four hundred and thirty years before the Law. So, the Law didn’t affect the promise. The promise was that the Gentiles would be made right with God, through him. “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” (Galatians 3:8) And it would be through an everlasting covenant. Everlasting means eternal. And if it’s eternal, then it’s divine and from God because if it were made by man it would dissolve at the death of the man. So, when God speaks to Abraham and tells him the promise is for his seed, He’s not talking about Isaac. He is talking about an eternal seed, Jesus. And the promise is that He would be our God eternally. (Genesis 17:7) And today, centuries later, He is our God and our Father. And we are His children through faith in Jesus, Abraham’s eternal seed. “So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.” (Galatians 3:9)

And it’s through faith, not genealogy or any manmade covenant. “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” (Romans 4:13) Hundreds of years before the Law, God’s grace, unmerited favor to Abraham fulfilled a promise because Abraham believed God. “Therefore, it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,” (Romans 4:16).

To understand the depth of the faith Abraham had that affected us eternally, we remember that Abraham had no children at the time.  He and Sarah were far beyond the age of having children. Yet because God made a promise to him, he believed God. “Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.” (Romans 4:18) That is why God was so pleased with him.  “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

As God’s children, we live by faith. We live by what God has said and promised, even if with our natural eyes we don’t see it.  God doesn’t live and move in the natural.  His realm is the spiritual.  “His kingdom come.  His Will be done as it is in heaven.” His will is done in heaven already.  May it be done here on earth, manifested in the natural.  And it is done by our faith, believing when we don’t see it in the natural because we believe it is done already in heaven. “ (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)” (2Corinthians 5:7) The things on this earth are temporal, they are not eternal.  The spiritual things are more real because they are eternal. So, faith in what we don’t see is greater than whatever we see in this natural temporal world. “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2Corinthians 4:18)

How does that work?  We believe God rather than man. The doctor says you won’t live past ten years (as was told to me when I was 21 years old and am now 75 years old).  But the Word of God says different. (Genesis 6:3; Psalms 90:10) Any curse (and by curse, I mean anything negative spoken to you, about you and of you) is nullified by our faith in God’s promise in His Word which is divine, from God and eternally God’s Will in heaven. It takes the kind of faith Abraham had in God and in His Word.