Blessing for All People, Come

BY Melanie Rainer

Abraham’s story is a picture of the gospel within the life of a normal nomadic tribesman who lived thousands of years before Jesus. 

Abraham’s wife Sarah was barren, and they longed for children—and for the cultural and economic security a son could provide. A son guaranteed a future and a continuation of Abraham’s family line. Abraham and Sarah faced a barren future with the reality of her barren womb. 

But God appeared to Abraham and promised him something only God could provide: a son. In doing so, God promised Abraham a hope for his future. God promised these blessings not just to Abraham but to the generations. God said, “I will make you the father of many nations. … I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations. It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you” (Genesis 17:5,7). 

Abraham had nothing to count for his future but faith, believing that God was who He said He was and would do what He said He would do. And then it happened: a son, born to Sarah, the beginning of God’s promised blessing to the whole world through Abraham. The promised blessing we do not deserve and cannot earn—the true gospel—was shown in Isaac and then embodied fully in the true-and-better Isaac, Jesus. 

Isaac unlocked a future for Abraham and Sarah, and Jesus unlocks a future for all of us who believe in Him. The Jewish leaders in John’s Gospel did not understand that faith is a gift for anyone who believes, and that Jesus, like Isaac with Abraham and Sarah, provides a future for everyone who cannot secure their own. Sin makes our hearts barren, unable to earn the future that comes from reconciliation with God. Faith in Jesus, the promised blessing and hope for our future, brings us to God. 

In Galatians, Paul honors Abraham’s faith by explaining that faith like Abraham’s makes anyone—Jew or Gentile—reconciled to God. In Paul’s letters, written thousands of years after Abraham received a son, we learn the full impact of the promised blessing for the whole world. The future hope of a reconciled relationship with God is available to anyone—not just generational descendants of Abraham but to everyone who calls upon Jesus’s name and believes that He is the Son of God. 

Abraham’s story teaches us the gospel, the hope rooted in something we cannot provide for ourselves: Jesus. This is the good news, the blessing for all people, the incarnated Christ who came at Christmas. Blessing for all people, please come again.