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In Galatians 3:1-22 Christ is unveiled as the seed of Abraham. According to Genesis 22:17-18a the Lord promised Abraham, “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; and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” In this prophecy we have the promise that Abraham’s seed would be a great blessing to all mankind, for all nations would be blessed through his seed.
This prophecy was repeated to Isaac in Genesis 26:4 and again to Jacob in Genesis 28:14. These three verses are not three prophecies but one prophecy of Christ as the seed of Abraham. The fulfillment of this prophetic word is not only in Matthew 1:1, which says that Christ is the son of Abraham, but also in Galatians 3:16, which says, “To Abraham were the promises spoken and to his seed. He does not say, And to the seeds, as concerning many, but as concerning one: ‘And to your seed,’ who is Christ.” Christ was born as a descendant of Abraham, born of the chosen race. Therefore, He was the seed of Abraham.
As the seed of Abraham, Christ in His humanity blesses all the nations with the gospel of Christ (vv. 8-12, 16). He has brought God to us and us to God for our enjoyment of God’s blessing. He brings blessings to the nations. Whether Jews or Gentiles, all will be blessed in Him (Gen. 22:18a). As we will see in this message, Galatians 3:14 indicates that the blessing is the Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God. When we receive the Spirit, we receive the Triune God as eternal life to be our blessing. Through faith in Christ, we have received the Spirit. The Spirit is also called the Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29). When the blessing that God gave to Abraham comes to us, it is grace; this grace is the seed of Abraham. Since Christ is now the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), He is not only the seed who inherits the promises but also the blessing of the promises to be inherited by us.
According to Galatians 3:16, Christ is the seed of Abraham, the Heir who inherits the promises. Here Christ is the unique seed who inherits the promises. Hence, in order to inherit the promised blessing, we must be one with Christ. Outside of Him we cannot inherit the promises given by God to Abraham. In God’s eyes Abraham has only one seed, Christ. We must be in Him that we may participate in the promises given to Abraham.
According to Galatians 3:14, the promise given to Abraham was that God Himself would come to be the seed of Abraham, and this seed would be a blessing to all the nations by becoming the all-inclusive Spirit for mankind to receive (1 Cor. 15:45b). God’s blessing of Abraham eventually issued in Christ as the unique seed in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed (Acts 3:25-26; Gal. 3:16). All the believers in Christ, as members of the corporate Christ (1 Cor. 12:12), are included in this seed as the heirs of God’s promised blessing (Gal. 3:7, 29).
As the seed of Abraham, Christ in His humanity was crucified and became a curse on our behalf to redeem us out of the curse of the law. Galatians 3:1 mentions that Jesus Christ was crucified. Verse 13 goes on to say, “Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse on our behalf; because it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone hanging on a tree.’” Christ as our Substitute on the cross not only bore the curse for us but also became a curse for us. The curse of the law issued from the sin of man (Gen. 3:17). When Christ took away our sin on the cross, He redeemed us out of the curse of the law.
Through his fall, Adam brought us all under the curse; as fallen descendants of Adam, we the sinners were under the curse. The origin of the curse is man’s sin. God brought in the curse after Adam’s sin, saying, “Cursed is the ground because of you” (v. 17). The sign of the curse is thorns (v. 18). For this reason, after Adam’s sin, the earth brought forth thorns.
However, the curse was not altogether official until the law was given. The law now declares that all the fallen descendants of Adam are under the curse. In other words, the curse is carried out through the law. This means that the law administers the curse. Therefore, the curse is related to the law of God; it is the demand of the righteous God upon sinners.
Whereas the law condemns us and makes the curse official, Christ through His crucifixion has redeemed us out of the curse of the law. On the cross He was even made a curse for us. Therefore, the curse that came in through Adam’s fall has been dealt with by Christ’s redemption.
When Christ bore our sins, He also took our curse. The crown of thorns indicates this (John 19:2, 5). Since thorns are a sign of the curse, Christ’s wearing a crown of thorns indicates that He took our curse on the cross. Because Christ was cursed in our place, the demand of the law was fulfilled, and He could redeem us from the curse of the law.
Not only did Christ redeem us out from the curse; He even became a curse on our behalf. This indicates that He was absolutely abandoned by God. God forsook Christ economically and also considered Him a curse. On the cross Christ accomplished the great work of bringing us out from the curse of the law, working to bear our sins and to remove the curse.
In His creation of man, God intended that man might enjoy God as his blessing. But through the fall of Adam, man lost God as his blessing and enjoyment. Not only so, since man did not know that he was totally fallen, incurable, and hopeless, he tried to please God by his own effort. This forced God to decree the law in order to expose man’s fallen condition. Knowing that man could not keep the law, God gave man the law, not for him to keep it but for man to realize that he is utterly fallen and hopeless.
Here we need to see that before decreeing the law, God promised Abraham a blessing: Out of him would come a seed who would be a blessing not only to his own house, his race, but also to all the nations, all the Gentiles. With Adam we have sin and the curse, but with Abraham we have God’s promise. The background of this promise was the curse upon mankind. Because mankind was under a curse, man’s direction was downward. But God came in, called Abraham, and promised that in his seed, all the nations — mankind under a curse — would be blessed.
Yet the children of Israel did not realize that God’s intention was not for them to try to keep the law but to bring them back to the promise given to their forefather, Abraham, through the law. Because the children of Israel did not see that the function of the law was to expose their fallen condition and to restore them to the promised blessing, they tried to keep the law, thereby coming under the curse of the law (Deut. 27:15-26). The children of Israel, being fallen in nature, surely did not measure up to the law; thus, they were cursed under the law.
Through His incarnation Christ came as the seed of Abraham, and through His crucifixion Christ died on the cross to be a curse on our behalf. In doing so, Christ removed the curse from all those who believe in Him. Through His work on the cross, Christ became a curse on our behalf and redeemed us out of the curse of the law so that the blessing God promised to Abraham would be bestowed on all those who believe in Christ.
In Galatians 3:10 Paul says, “As many as are of the works of law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law to do them.’” If we try to keep the law, we will be in the flesh and automatically come under the curse, for those who are of the works of the law are under the curse. Instead of trying to keep the law, we should thank the law for exposing us and then bid it farewell. We should leave the law and go to Christ and to the cross.
Christ as the seed of Abraham was crucified and became a curse on our behalf to redeem us out of the curse of the law in order that we might receive the Spirit as the blessing of the gospel promised to Abraham, the promise that all the nations would be blessed in Him. Galatians 3:14 says, “In order that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” This verse combines the promise of the Spirit with the blessing of Abraham. The blessing of Abraham is the blessing promised by God to Abraham (Gen. 12:3) for all the nations of the earth. This promise was fulfilled and this blessing has come to the nations in Christ through His redemption by the cross. The context of Galatians 3:14 indicates that the Spirit is the blessing which God promised to Abraham for all the nations and which has been received by the believers through faith in Christ. The Spirit is the compound Spirit, who is God Himself processed in His Trinity through incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and descension for us to receive as our life and our everything. This is the focus of the gospel of God. The physical aspect of the blessing that God promised to Abraham was the good land (Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; 26:3-4), which was a type of the all-inclusive Christ (Col. 1:12). Since Christ is eventually realized as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17), the blessing of the promised Spirit corresponds to the blessing of the promised land. Actually, the Spirit as the realization of Christ in our experience is the good land as the source of God’s bountiful supply for us to enjoy.
In Galatians 3:14 the blessing of the promise is the Spirit, and in verse 16 the promises were made to Abraham’s seed, who is Christ. On the one hand, the Spirit is the all-inclusive Christ. On the other hand, the Spirit, as the blessing of the promise, was given to Christ as the seed. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we received Him as seed, as life. This seed is the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, the reality of the good land. The Christ whom we received as the seed is the Spirit typified by the good land. Christ came into us as the seed, but as we live by Him, He becomes the land (the all-inclusive Spirit), which is our portion. This is the fulfillment of God’s word to Abraham that through his seed the blessing of the gospel would come to all the families of the earth.
Our blessing is God Himself, who is embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit to be dispensed into us for our enjoyment. In the universe only God Himself is a blessing; all else is vanity of vanities (Eccl. 1:2). Even the entire universe cannot compare with our Triune God. If we have God, we have the blessing. However, God becoming our blessing involved a process. Just as food must be cooked to become our blessing, God had to be “cooked” in order to be our blessing. Before passing through a process, God was a “raw” God. By passing through a process, God became the “cooked” God to be our life and life supply. This God in His totality is the processed, consummated, all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling Spirit. He as the wonderful Spirit is the blessing from God to us. The blessing of the gospel is the Spirit, the sum total and the aggregate of the processed Triune God.
Our spiritual blessing for eternity is to inherit the Spirit, the consummation of the processed Triune God, as our inheritance. In the new heaven and new earth in the New Jerusalem, we will enjoy the processed Triune God, who is the all-inclusive, consummated, life-giving Spirit (Rev. 22:1; John 7:37-39). Even today, the most enjoyable thing to us is the indwelling Spirit.
In the full gospel of God, in Christ we have received not only the blessing of forgiveness, washing, and cleansing; even more, we have received the greatest blessing, the Triune God — the Father, Son, and Spirit — as the processed, all-inclusive life-giving Spirit dwelling in us in a most subjective way for our enjoyment. Oh, what a blessing that we can enjoy such an all-inclusive One as our daily portion!
The blessing of the gospel promised to Abraham is the all-inclusive Spirit, the Spirit compounded with Christ’s divinity, His humanity, His human living, His all-inclusive death with its effectiveness, His powerful resurrection with its life power, and His ascension. This compound Spirit is the Spirit spoken of in John 7:39, the Spirit which was not yet until Jesus was glorified. In this verse the Lord told the disciples that the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. The Holy Spirit was there, but the all-inclusive, compound Spirit was not yet, because by that time, when Jesus spoke those words, He had not yet been glorified; that is, He had not yet been crucified and resurrected (Luke 24:26). It was through His crucifixion and resurrection that Christ became a life-giving Spirit, the compound Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God.
The all-inclusive compound Spirit is typified by the holy anointing oil, a compound ointment of olive oil and four spices in Exodus 30. A hin of olive oil was compounded with four spices to produce the holy anointing oil, the holy ointment. The four spices — myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia — were compounded with the oil to become a compound ointment. In typology oil signifies the Spirit of God, and the compound ointment, the oil blended with four spices, signifies the compound Spirit. Through a compounding process the oil became an ointment. Before Exodus 30 this compound was “not yet,” but after Exodus 30 such an ointment was definitely in existence. In like manner, before Christ was crucified, resurrected, and glorified, the Spirit as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit was not yet (John 7:39). But through the process of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection the Spirit of God, typified by the oil, became the compound Spirit, typified by the ointment.
The significances of the ingredients of this compound anointing oil are as follows. Flowing myrrh, a spice used in burial (John 19:39), signifies the precious death of Christ (Rom. 6:3). Fragrant cinnamon signifies the sweetness and effectiveness of Christ’s death (8:13). Fragrant calamus, from a reed that grew upward in a marsh or muddy place, signifies the precious resurrection of Christ (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1; 1 Pet. 1:3). Cassia, used in ancient times to repel insects and snakes, signifies the power of Christ’s resurrection (Phil. 3:10). Moreover, since the number four signifies the creatures (Ezek. 1:5), of which man is the head (Gen. 1:26), and the number one signifies the unique God (Deut. 4:35; 1 Tim. 2:5), the four spices signify the humanity of Christ in God’s creation, and the one hin of olive oil signifies the unique God with His divinity. Thus, the blending of olive oil with the four spices signifies the compounding, the mingling, of God and man, of divinity and humanity, in the compound Spirit (cf. Lev. 2:4). Furthermore, the measure of the four spices, being the three complete units of five hundred shekels each, the middle five hundred shekels being split into two parts, signifies the Triune God in resurrection, the second, the Son, being “split” by His death on the cross. Since in the Bible five is the number for responsibility (Matt. 25:2), the five elements in the compound ointment and the three units of five hundred shekels of the four spices signify the Triune God in resurrection as the power, the capacity, for bearing responsibility. Based on the above significances, the compounding of the four spices with the olive oil to make an anointing oil signifies the mingling of the above mentioned elements with the Spirit of God through the process of Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to produce the compound Spirit. Before Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, the Spirit of God did not have these elements. But after Christ’s resurrection these elements were compounded into the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God became the Spirit, the compound Spirit symbolized by the compound ointment.
The Spirit is the consummation of the processed Triune God given to us as the blessing of the gospel. When presenting the real blessing of the gospel, Paul does not list many items such as peace, joy, and forgiveness of sins; rather, Paul speaks only of one person — the Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God. The Bible reveals that our God is triune (Matt. 28:19). The Father planned, and Christ the Son created the universe through the Spirit (Eph. 1:9; Gen. 1:1-3; John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2, 10; Psa. 102:25-27). One day God came in incarnation to be a man named Jesus; He became a God-man, God living in a man. He was the Son with the Father by the Spirit (John 8:29; Matt. 12:28); the entire Trinity was embodied in Him (Col. 2:9). After approximately thirty-three and a half years of human living, He went to the cross. When He died on the cross, He was dying as the Son with the Father by the Spirit. On the cross He was dying not merely as the Son of God in the human flesh; rather, the entire Triune God was involved in His crucifixion (Heb. 9:14). For this reason, Acts 20:28 tells us that God obtained the church with His own blood, that is, with the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:7). Although many Christian teachers dare not say that God died on the cross, Charles Wesley recognized this and said in one of his hymns, “Amazing love! how can it be / That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). After His death on the cross, He was buried. Then on the third day He came out of Hades and the tomb and was resurrected. On the one hand, as a man, He was raised by God from the dead (Rom. 8:11; Acts 2:24, 32; 10:40); on the other hand, as God Himself, He rose from the dead (10:41; 1 Thes. 4:14). According to 1 Corinthians 15:45b, in His resurrection Christ as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit who gives life (2 Cor. 3:6). That Christ is the life-giving Spirit is confirmed by 2 Corinthians 3:17, which says, “The Lord is the Spirit.”
The life-giving Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. The Triune God — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit — has passed through processes to be consummated in the Spirit. Hence, the Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God having gone through many processes in Christ. This life-giving Spirit is the blessing of the gospel. The blessing of the gospel is the processed Triune God reaching us as the Spirit. In this compound, all-inclusive Spirit are all of Christ’s person and process, including His divinity, humanity, crucifixion for Him to accomplish redemption, resurrection for Him to give life to us, and ascension for Him to be the Lord of all (Rom. 8:11; 2 Cor. 3:18). If we have the Spirit, we have everything and we are short of nothing. The Spirit is everything to us to live the Christian life. The Christian life is altogether the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit. If we have the Spirit, we have God, man, redemption, and forgiveness of sins. The Spirit is our God, our Father, our Lord, our Redeemer, our Savior, and our Shepherd; the Spirit is our life, our life supply, our righteousness, our sanctification, our transformation, and our redemption. The all-inclusive Spirit is the processed and consummated Triune God given to us as the blessing. We should praise the Lord that we have received the Spirit as such a blessing and may enjoy Him all the time through eternity.
Galatians reveals 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: by God’s revealing of Christ in us (1:16a; Eph. 1:17; Gen. 13:14-18; Eph. 3:8, 19); by our receiving of Christ out of the hearing of faith (Gal. 3:2); by being born according to the Spirit and by being given the Spirit of God’s Son into our hearts (4:29b, 6); by putting on Christ through the baptism that puts us into Christ (3:27); by being identified with Him in His death so that it may be no longer we who live but He who lives in us (2:20); by living and walking by the Spirit (5:16, 25); by having Christ formed in us through travail (4:19); by sowing unto the Spirit with the desire and aim of the Spirit in view, to accomplish what the Spirit desires (6:7-8); by boasting in the cross of Christ and living a new creation (vv. 14-15); and by enjoying the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit (vv. 17-18).
In summary, through Adam’s fall the human race was brought under the curse, but God promised Abraham that in his seed the nations, which had been brought under the curse, would be blessed. Christ has fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham. If Christ had not come as the seed of Abraham, there would have been no way for God to fulfill His promise to Abraham. Moreover, Christ as the seed of Abraham has redeemed us out of the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Him. Christ died a substitutionary death on the cross to deliver us from the curse brought in by Adam. Then in resurrection Christ, who was the unique seed of Abraham as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit is the transfigured descendant of Abraham, the seed of Abraham, dispensed into us to make us the sons of Abraham, the corporate seed of Abraham, those who can receive and inherit the consummated Spirit as the blessing of Abraham (3:7, 14; 4:28). The blessing promised to Abraham comes to us through Christ’s redemption; now in Christ all the nations will be blessed. The curse has been taken away, and the blessing has come. Before we believed into Christ and were saved, we were cursed under the law. Having believed into Christ, we are no longer cursed; we are blessed through Christ in His humanity as the seed of Abraham, and we are blessed with the consummated Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God (3:13-14). As the seed of Abraham, Christ brought to us the processed and consummated Triune God as our blessing for our enjoyment. The all-inclusive Spirit, who the all-inclusive Christ as the seed of Abraham has become, is the aggregate of the all-embracing blessing of the full gospel of God in Christ for the divine dispensing according to the divine economy.
