Chapter # 3 Paragraph # 2 Study # 10
February 19, 2012
Dayton, Texas
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Thesis: The impact of the "blessing of Abraham" is always going to, eventually, boil down to the love/faith realities in those to whom it (He) has been given.
Introduction: In our last study, we attempted to establish that the attribute of "unity" in God is the reason we have a redeemer. God created a unity in the human race that was a mirror of His own, and He recreates that unity in the redeemed at the point of faith. We are as much "one" with Christ as we were with Adam with this difference: in the first Adam, we were totally passive in respect to what came upon us; in the Last Adam, we possess in respect to what we love and believe.
This evening we are going to look a bit further into Paul's claims regarding the impact of Christ's behavior as the Redeemer Who became a curse for us. He claims that Christ's action had a specific intention driving it. Our quest is to attempt to understand just what we can "expect" in respect to that intention.
- I. The Stated Intention.
- A. Paul claims that at least one of the points to Christ's redemptive activity was to extend "the blessing of Abraham" to the non-Israelite nations.
- 1. This should not have been the surprise to Israel that it turned out to be because God had told Abraham two specific things about "the nations".
- a. In Genesis 12:3 God clearly says that "all of the nations of the earth" would participate in the blessing of Abraham.
- b. In Genesis 17:4 God just as clearly says that Abraham will be "the father of a multitude of nations".
- 2. Thus, the extension of the blessing of Abraham to the non-Jewish nations was an intention of God from the beginning.
- B. Paul claims that this "extension of the blessing" had, as its essence, "the promise of the Spirit".
- 1. This is a significant claim in that specific mention of God's Spirit is not to be found in any of the words of God to Abraham.
- 2. The movement by Paul from "blessing" in Genesis 12:2-3 to the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit is legitimate even though it seems, at first blush, to be a real stretch.
- a. Legitimacy is found in two indisputable realities.
- 1) Nothing stands alone in the universe of the God of Unity.
- 2) Every utterance of God and man has undeclared, essential, attendant meanings.
- 3) Specific revelation of meaning by the inclusion of specific words only brings focus to the issue involved in the utterances; it does not eliminate anything that is involved in the meaning as given.
- b. As a major "point of fact", there is no such thing as a "blessing" that does not include the active involvement of God's Spirit in this world.
- 1) There are "relative" degrees of "blessedness" (from a "drink" to a "well" to an "inner spring of water"), but two things mark them all: they have origins in eternal Truth as well as eternal consequences (Note Matthew 10:42 and Mark 9:41).
- 2) In terms of any significant level of "blessedness", God's Spirit is decidedly at the core.
- c. Thus, it was no stretch at all for Paul to "see" that God has always intended that His "blessing" to man was to find its core in His very presence in that man.
- II. The Derived Implications.
- A. Are split between time and eternity.
- B. Have few underwritten results.
- C. Stand only by the principle that Paul lays out: "through the faith".