Galatians 3:7-9

Galatians 3:7

Abraham.

"God," says the text, "preached the Gospel to Abraham." The very oath sworn to him by his Maker was, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, designed to show to the heirs of promise, down the whole stream of time, the immutability of God's counsels. God forbid, cries St. Paul, that any one should think that the law the schoolmaster who was to bring us to Christ was against the promises of God! Though the sanctions of the two covenants might be different a circumstance which does not in the least affect the moral obligation the terms on which they dealt with man were the same. This development may be more complete, more uniform, more equable, more progressive, under the Gospel than under the law; but the direction of that development was ever, if not consciously towards Christ, at least towards Christianity. The life story of Abraham must have something in it that it concerns Christians of every age to know. It illustrates

I. What faith is. Abraham to the age of St. Paul, before and above any saint in the annals of his race, was the representative of the nature of faith and its power; faith, not as opposed to reason, but as opposed to sight. It was not perfect, but it was real; it rested on the simplest virtues.

II. What it is to walk by faith. A consistent endeavour to frame the life so as to be in accordance with our convictions, so that what we are should be an expression to others of what we believe this is what the Apostle means by walking by faith, and not by sight.

III. What it is, to the eye of such faith, to see Christ's day. What is Christ's day but the measure of knowledge of the will of God which it is our privilege to enjoy, and those opportunities of access to Him which all have, though all may not use? Even to us who live in the middle of that day, the light can be called neither clear nor dark. The knowledge is partial and fragmentary; the hopes, but not the eye, enter into that which is within the veil. What does Christ do for those who consciously live in the light of this day? He lifts them up from earth to heaven; sets their affections on things above; helps them to understand what that means, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

Bishop Fraser, University Sermons,p. 1.

References: Galatians 3:10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 174.Galatians 3:10. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 72.Galatians 3:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 814; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 567. Galatians 3:11; Galatians 3:12. Homilist,2nd series, vol. i., p. 237.