The Lord's Gospel - Part 14

In this part, we continue our detailed examination of the promises made to Abraham by looking closely at those promises involving the gifting of Canaan to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting possession, establishing God’s covenant with Abraham and his seed in their generations as an everlasting covenant to be their God, describing Abraham’s seed as numerous as the stars in the sky, anointed as father of many peoples, and so on. We compare the references to Abraham’s seed to Paul’s explanation of the meaning of Abraham’s seed in the context of promises made to Abraham. See Galatians 3:16. We review why no Jew would believe that Abraham’s seed referenced in the promises could refer to all Abraham’s natural descendants. Clearly, the seed of Ishmael, Esau, and the six sons of Abraham and Keturah would be excluded from the covenant promises though all were natural descendants of Abraham and likely even bore the sign of circumcision. Instead, it was the one seed of Jacob, aka Israel, through which the covenant promises were passed. However, Paul argues that the one seed was not the seed of Jacob, but the seed of Christ, though Christ had no physical descendants.
In the next part, we will take a deep dive into the letter to the Galatians and discuss the Old Testament passages that refer to the seed of Christ as support to Paul’s argument made in opposition to the false teachings of the circumcision party, who clearly did not understand the Lord’s Gospel of the kingdom of God as well as Paul.