“so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Galatians 3:14, ESV)
It is now November and we are getting ready for Christmas. In the old days, or let us say some time ago, they made Christmas tree lights with bulbs in series. If one bulb went out the entire string would fail. When this happened, we would go through a tenuous process of removing and replacing bulbs one at a time until we found the one bulb that was burnt out. It was quite a pain in the neck.
In the space time continuum in which we live there are many things like this. Things are connected sequentially. Consider our earthly lives for instance. Every human life begins at conception, which is followed by birth, then physical growth to maturity. Any skip in the process means that physical life ceases.
Our God is a God of perfect order. When we read the Bible, we see a beautiful continuity of His plan. If we look at the individual parts of the plan without the context of the whole, we fail to see how awesome and infinitely great our God is. Without the full perspective, we can fail to see how our God has perfectly connected every aspect of His redemptive plan. We might mistakenly get the idea that His covenant promises are somehow isolated and disjointed, but they are not. His covenant promises and His providential works throughout history are all perfectly and orderly connected in His great redemptive plan.
Paul here highlights the connection of two major covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the New Covenant.
The first is the covenant that God made with Abraham.
“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”” (Genesis 12:2–3, ESV)
This is the promise that that extended the blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles.
The second, that we directly see is the New Covenant spoken through Jeremiah and echoed again through Ezekiel.
““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. . . For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33, ESV)
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:25–27, ESV)
This covenant looks to the Holy Spirit indwelling every true believer.
The connection between these covenant promises is Jesus Christ. It is in Him that every believer is blessed and incorporated into the covenant promises given.
Yet there is a third covenant connection. It is the Davidic Covenant.
“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” (2 Samuel 7:12–13, ESV)
It is our connection to the King of Kings. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God. In Him we are connected to royalty. We are part of a Royal Priesthood.
Paul gives us one word that explains the connection between believers and the blessings of these promises. As mentioned before, it is “faith.” Believers partake of these tremendous blessings by faith in Jesus Christ alone. All the promises of God find their connection in Jesus (1 Cor 1:20) and we join in them by faith.
Renewing the Heart 