Galatians 3:8
8 And [de] the scripture, [graphe] foreseeing [proeido] that [hoti] God [theos] would justify [dikaioo] the heathen [ethnos]
through [ek] faith, [pistis] preached before the gospel [proeuaggelizomai] unto Abraham, [Abraam]
saying, [hoti] In [en] thee [soi] shall [eneulogeo] all [pas] nations [ethnos] be blessed. [eneulogeo] KJV-Interlinear
8 And the Scripture, foreseeing
that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to
Abraham, saying, "All the nations shall be blessed in you." NASB
In many passages, there are recorded conversations,
visions, dreams and so forth wherein God communicated to various persons.
In Gen. 15, God spoke with Abraham. In Rom. 9:17, it is stated that the scripture
spoke of Pharaoh, ‘For this purpose did I raise you up.’
In these and many other passages, the term
scripture is in reference to the word of God in whatever form it was in at that
time.
Moses wrote all of the first five books long after
Abraham lived and certainly after the Israelites had left Egypt. The scriptures as we know them, did not exist
in Abraham’s day or even in Pharaoh’s day, but certainly and even in Job’s day
there was communication and information handed down from parents to children
from the time of Adam and Eve, which constituted the communications of
scripture from God.
Thus, the term scripture here is a reference to the
collective body of information that has been available throughout history. Scripture is truth. And whether written, spoken or just out there
like gravity or the stars, scripture is the sum total of truth that is in
existence, whether you know it or not.
And here, the specific scripture or truth was
present in Abrahams time, stating clearly that all peoples can and will be
saved by means of faith.
Adam was saved by means of faith. Enoch was saved by means of faith. Noah was saved by means of faith, and
certainly Abraham was saved in that same manner. All of these and many more lived prior to
Moses and the actual recording of the Law, which Law so many traditional Jews
looked to as their written authority for substantiating their position in salvation
by works.
And yet for generations from the time of Adam, many
millions were saved by faith without the existence of a written Law, and certainly
without the existence of the practice of circumcision. Abraham was not circumcised when he was
born. He wasn’t circumcised until he was
one-hundred years old. And that is
enough to bring any grown man to tears, but it has nothing to do with
salvation.
In Abraham all would be saved. And that applies to two concepts.
First it applies to his method of being saved,
namely faith, such that all who believe as he did, will be saved. So Abraham’s faith is the documented record
of salvation which applies to all of humanity.
And second, it applies to the line of the Messiah,
down from Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob and so forth, which effectively eliminates
all other candidates or want-to-be’s for messiahship.
But here our topic is works, and here our topic is
the pattern of salvation by means of faith and by no other means.
You cannot work for your justification. You cannot
earn your justification. And you
certainly do not deserve your justification.
It is the sole work of Christ, and the sole gift from God, through
grace.
