God promised to bless Abraham (v. 2). This blessing consists of the blessings of God’s creation and redemption, including all that God wants to give man—God Himself and all that He has in this age and in the age to come. According to Galatians 3:14 this blessing is the promise of the Spirit: “That the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Since the Spirit is God Himself, this means that God promised that He would give Himself to Abraham as the blessing.
God not only promised that He would be a blessing to Abraham but that Abraham would be a blessing to all the families, all the nations, of the earth (Gen. 12:3). In His calling, God turned from Adam to Abraham. This means that He gave up the adamic race. However, in His promise God made another turn from Abraham to all the families of the adamic race through Christ, the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:14). Hence, the adamic race can be gained by God again. God not only gave Himself to Abraham as a blessing, but He also made Abraham a blessing to all the pitiful people of the adamic race. In this way, all the called ones from among the Gentiles have been brought back to God and have gained God as their blessing.
According to Galatians 3, God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3 was His preaching the gospel to Abraham. The three items of God’s promise were to make Abraham a great nation, to bless him, and to make him a blessing to all the families of the earth. The contents of God’s promise are exactly the same as the contents of the gospel. First, the preaching of the gospel opens with the words, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” (Matt. 3:2). The kingdom of the heavens refers to the great nation promised by God to Abraham. Second, after a person repents for the kingdom, he needs to believe so that he may have eternal life, which is in the Spirit. The blessing promised to Abraham in Galatians 3:14 is the promise of the Spirit. The third item of God’s promise to Abraham is this blessing. God said, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3).
God promised to make Abraham a great nation and to bless him. The nation is a matter of dominion to represent God, and the blessing is a matter of image in the Spirit to express God. Hence, in God’s promise we see His eternal purpose. God’s promise to Abraham implies His eternal purpose, which is for man to express and represent Him (1:26-27).
Genesis 17:15-21 contains a definite promise concerning Isaac’s birth. It is definite because the name Isaac was mentioned by God, and his mother was designated. Up until this point God had promised that He would give Abraham a seed and that Abraham would bring forth the seed, but God had not mentioned that the seed would be out of Sarah. Neither had He said that the seed would be named Isaac. In these verses, however, God promised in a definite way that the seed would be Isaac and that Isaac would be born of Sarah.
God promised to give Abraham the land (15:18-21; 12:7; 13:14-15, 17; 17:8). Abraham needed a place to live in and to live on. Hence, the land was a place for God’s people to live in and to live on. The land was also a place in which Abraham could defeat all his enemies so that God could have a kingdom on earth. Moreover, the land was the place where God could have a habitation for His expression. Thus, there are five points concerning the land: it was a place for God’s people to live, a place to provide for their living, a place where God’s enemies could be defeated, a place where God could have His kingdom, and a place where God could have a habitation for His expression. Eventually, the kingdom of God was established, the temple was built for God’s habitation, and the glory of God was manifested in the land.
In Genesis 22:17 God blessed Abraham with the multiplied seed, saying, “I will surely bless you and will greatly multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens and like the sand which is on the seashore.” God blessed Abraham with two categories of people, one likened to the stars of the heavens (15:5) and the other to the sand on the seashore, which is also likened to the dust of the earth (13:16). According to this prophecy, Abraham’s descendants are of two categories, one heavenly and the other earthly. We, the Christians, are the stars, the heavenly descendants of Abraham, and the genuine Jews, God’s earthly people, are the sand, the dust. The sea signifies the world corrupted by Satan, and the dust is of the earth created by God. Although the Jews are an earthly people, they are not the dust under the sea, but the dust, the sand, on the seashore. They are separated from the corrupted sea, Satan’s corrupted world. However, the stars are not only separated from the corrupted world but are also heavenly.
God’s promise to multiply Abraham’s descendants is sown as a seed in Genesis 22. This seed, having passed through the development of the whole Bible, will eventually be harvested at the end of Revelation. The New Jerusalem is composed of the twelve tribes of Israel, representing the Old Testament saints, and of the twelve apostles, representing the New Testament believers. The people represented by the apostles are the heavenly stars, and those represented by the twelve tribes are the sand on the seashore. These two peoples will eventually be built together into the New Jerusalem. Hence, the New Jerusalem will be the ultimate consummation of Abraham’s seed.