Galatians 3:6-9 (NIV)
Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Just as he did in Romans 9:6-9, Paul points the Galatians back to Abraham, the spiritual father of all God’s people, and to the faith by which he was saved, faith that was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham wasn’t saved by obeying God’s law. The law had not been given and wouldn’t be given for nearly 500 years. And he wasn’t saved by circumcision. He had a covenant relationship with God for at least 24 years before God commanded him and his descendants to be circumcised.
The Judaizers had a generally correct concept, which was that those who were saved by faith in Jesus became the people of God, spiritual descendants of Abraham. Their error was in putting the cart before the horse, dictating that a person had to become one of God’s people before they could be saved (a spiritual impossibility), and mistaking circumcision, the outward sign of the Old Covenant for the Jewish people, for the inward act of being grafted into God’s people (the spiritual reality).
Instead, it is those who have faith in God and in what He has done through Jesus, who trust in His work and who receive salvation by grace through faith who are His New Covenant people, whether those people are Jews or gentiles. No amount of external surgery will make a person one of God’s own, and no lack of that external surgery can keep the faithful heart from being accepted by God.
Paul points out that God had foreshadowed this new reality in His promise to Abraham, that all nations (the Hebrew word is the word for “gentiles”) would be blessed through him, through his faith, not through his circumcision, which came a long time after that promise.
Father, as simple as this way of salvation is (You made it simple for us!), it is dissatisfying for some. There is something in our corrupted hearts that loves to be able to congratulate ourselves for the good things that come into our lives. We rebel, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, over “charity” or grace, things that come to us without our own effort, without a cost to us. And that even applies to salvation. Many would like to be saved on account of at least some small action or sacrifice on their own behalf that makes their salvation real, whether it is circumcision, joining a church, or doing some good work. But You make it clear that the only thing that we can do to be saved is to have faith that the gift has already been paid for in full. All we can do is receive it gratefully. Thank You that You made it simple, and thank You, too, for giving us the grace that we need to receive it as it is given: freely and fully. Amen.