The promise of descendants
Abraham is also promised that he will have descendants. God says, “I will make of you a great nation,” in Genesis 12:2. The promise implies that the people will be a righteous people because Abraham is told that this great nation will make his name great. The people called by Abraham’s name can only make his name great in the earth if they are a righteous people in the eyes of God. In other words, this statement refers to quality as well as quantity. Righteousness is what makes a nation great, not merely its large population (see Proverbs 14:34).
Abraham will be a blessing to the earth because the nation that flows from him will be a blessing to all the earth. Again, this enforces the prediction that the nation coming from him will be righteous. In biblical thinking, the unrighteous are cut off from the earth (see Psalm 37), but Abraham is promised the exact opposite—descendants who make his name great!
THE PROMISE TO THE NATIONS
Abraham also receives a promise for the nations of the earth. In Genesis 12:3, God promises him that all the nations of the earth will receive blessing through His plan to make a great nation from Abraham’s descendants. The first two promises are specific to Abraham’s natural descendants, but it is important to recognize that God promises, from the beginning, that His plan for Abraham will be a great blessing to all the nations. Galatians 3:8 and other New Testament passages tell us that this blessing is the offer of salvation to the Gentiles.2 The idea, then, of gentile salvation is not a new idea originating in the New Testament. Instead, we find it right here in the original promise made to Abraham.
God is going to bring blessing to all the people of the earth, every tribe and tongue, in the process of fulfilling the first two promises He made to Abraham. From the beginning, God is committed to the nations, and their salvation and Israel’s salvation are deeply intertwined.
THE WARNING OF CONTROVERSY
Having then made these three promises to Abraham, God says something interesting. He tells Abraham that He “will bless those who bless” Abraham and curse those who dishonor him (Genesis 12:3). Dishonor is translated curse in the New American Standard Bible and treats you lightly in the New English Translation. A curse as a consequence serves as a sober warning to Abraham that God’s plan is going to be controversial in the nations. There will be individuals who agree with and bless God’s plan by blessing Abraham, and there will be those individuals who curse or treat Abraham lightly because of how God chooses to fulfill His three promises to him.
Because this verse ends with, “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” it indicates that the salvation of the nations will ultimately be connected to how they relate to Abraham or to God’s plan to fulfill all three promises. The nations are warned it will be easy to take offense at God’s plan; however, they are also told that blessing God’s plan through blessing Abraham is the way to receive the blessing that will flow through God’s plan to them—to all the nations of the earth. This is the very same thing the apostle Paul said when he told the gentile believers in Rome to not be arrogant toward the unsaved Jewish people (see Romans 11:20, 23–27).
All three promises are tied together and will be fulfilled together. The nations will receive blessing and salvation in the way God accomplishes His plan to make the Jewish people a great people who permanently inherit a land and who, by way of receiving their promises, will bless the nations. The Jewish people cannot receive their full inheritance unless the nations come into the blessing of salvation, but the nations cannot receive their full blessing without the Jewish people receiving salvation and a land inheritance.3 These three promises are three strands of one cord. God will not fulfill only one without the other. All three of them must be fulfilled, and because of the way they are interdependent all three will come to their complete fulfillment at the same time.
Right there, in Genesis 12, we find the three core promises that drive God’s redemptive plan: 1) Abraham will have descendants who will become a righteous nation, 2) those descendants will permanently inherit a land, and 3) the nations will receive blessing and salvation through the process. These three promises become the foundation of God’s mission in the world and are reiterated throughout the biblical narrative.
In Galatians, Paul tells us plainly that Abraham received the essence of the gospel in Genesis 12.
And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” (Galatians 3:8)
Paul tells us that Genesis 12 predicts both justification by faith and the salvation of the Gentiles. Note carefully how Paul makes his case about the salvation of the Gentiles. He does not apply Abraham’s first two promises to the Gentiles; instead, he notes the promise to the Gentiles was always in the covenant made with Abraham, as was righteousness by faith. Paul recognizes God was intentional from the beginning of His redemptive work to plainly state that the Gentiles would receive great blessing from His covenant with Abraham. Since Paul recognizes the promise made to the Gentiles as a literal promise, then it makes sense for us to take literally the other promises to Abraham’s descendants as well—especially in light of Abraham’s encounter with God in Genesis 15.