Prayer: Lord, we look to You for Your teaching, Your instruction, Your guidance, even Your interpretation of Your Word. We need You to teach us, to guide us into Your light. Lord, do cleanse us and anoint us and render us much help that we may know You through Your Word. Amen.
This message concerns the way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit—the aggregate of the all-embracing blessing of the full gospel of God—in the book of Galatians. It is Galatians that tells us that the blessing of the full gospel of God is the promised Spirit (3:14). This promised Spirit, when He comes to us in His consummation, is the life-giving Spirit. According to Paul's interpretation, the promise God gave to Abraham was the blessing of this life-giving Spirit. We need to spend some time to see the logic by which Paul said this. Paul was very logical doctrinally, spiritually, and economically according to God's plan.
The book of Galatians presents to us the very Christ who is the threefold seed in humanity. He was the complete God in eternity. Then He came in to promise something to the fallen race, beginning with the first couple, Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15). I believe that He directed this promise particularly to the wife, Eve, because Eve very much regretted what she had done. She was the one who spoke to the serpent, and as a result the serpent damaged her and also her husband through her. Therefore, she was fully responsible for that mistake, which led to man's fall (2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14). After the fall, the complete God as Jehovah came from heaven down to the earth to the garden of Eden, seeking the fallen sinner: "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9). That was the first visit for the purpose of preaching the gospel. Then God gave them the promise. That promise was the first preaching of the gospel. In that promise, in that first preaching of the gospel, the complete God made a promise to the couple, especially to Eve, by cursing the serpent (v. 14). The first preaching of the gospel was the pronouncing of a curse. When God was cursing the damaging serpent, He promised the damaged persons that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head (v. 15). In the entire Bible of sixty-six books there is such a reality as the seed of the woman. This is not a small thing. In Galatians 4:4 Paul purposely said that the Coming One, Christ, was born of a woman. This indicates that Paul knew what God had promised in Genesis 3:15. Paul knew the Bible, the Old Testament; therefore he said, "God sent forth His Son, born of a woman."