The blessing of Abraham.--That is, the blessing pronounced upon Abraham and to be fulfilled in his seed.

Through Jesus Christ.--Through the relation into which they enter with Christ by embracing Christianity.

We.--The Apostle and his readers, whether Jews or Gentiles.

Receive the promise of the Spirit.--A special outpouring of the Spirit was to be one of the characteristics of the great Messianic manifestation. (Comp. Joel 2:28-29; Acts 2:16-21.) The promise is said to be "received" by the generation on which it is fulfilled, not by that to which it is given. The same phrase occurs in Acts 2:33; Hebrews 9:15. . . .

(1) that, though not as yet actually admitted, yet in the Divine purpose, and in the ordering of the conditions of the case, they might have come in, - the door was open, though the threshold not actually crossed; and

(2) that their admissibility may be supposed to have been in the Divine counsels the prerequisite condition of the Holy Spirit being imparted, it not being fitting that the Spirit should be given so long as the Law was, so to speak, standing there, authorized to debar from this, the most essential portion of "Abraham's blessing," any who were partakers of Abraham's blessing. In the three passages referred to as favouring the construing of the two clauses as co-ordinate, we have not as here two different results, but one and the same, only in the second clause more fully described. The second view seems, therefore, the more probable one. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ (ἵνα εἰς τὰ ἔθνη ἡ εὐλογία τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ γένηται ἐν Ξριστῷ Ἰησοῦ: so most recent editors read, in place of Ἰησοῦ Ξριστῷ); that upon "the nations" might crone the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus. The phrase, εἰς τὰ ἔθνη... γένητα, is illustrated by the use of γίγνεσθαι εἰς, "arrive at," or "accrue to," in Acts 21:17; Acts 25:15; Revelation 16:2. For the preposition εἰς we may also comp. Romans 3:22, "Unto (εἰς) all and upon (έπὶ) all." By τὰ ἔθνη, as the whole context shows, the apostle means in particular "the Gentiles," the non-Jews, as such. At the same time, the phrase is evidently used, as found ready at hand in the passage cited by him in ver. 8, "In thee shall all the nations (ἔθνη) be blessed," which passage also suggested the notion of "the blessing of Abraham." It had therein been foretold that all the nations should, by exercising the faith of Abraham, obtain the same blessing; and (says the apostle) we see now by what method the benefit has been brought to them. "In Christ Jesus;" not merely by him; the blessing is, so to speak, immanent in Christ. both procured by him and obtained by the nations through their coming by faith into union with him. Comp. Ephesians 1:6, 7, "His grace which he freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved; in whom we have our redemption;" Colossians 2:10, "In him ye are made full;" and the like. "The blessing of Abraham." The expression, being drawn from the passages in Genesis in which the Lord assures Abraham that "he would bless him," and that "in him all nations should be blessed," must be taken to import the Divine good will and whatever benefits would therefrom result. Men arrive at t is "benediction" by being justified; but justification is only the entrance into it, and not the whole blessing itself. It is styled Abraham's blessing, as having been emphatically declared to have been possessed by the patriarch, "the father" of all who should thereafter receive it. That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (ἵνα τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ Πνεύματος λάβωμεν διὰ τῆς πίστεως). The pronoun "we" points, not to the Israelites as such, nor to Israelite believers in particular, but to those who were viewed as God's covenant people. These had hitherto been Abraham's natural seed only; and had also hitherto been under the Law. But the time had come when they were to receive the full "adoption of sons," and therewith the Spirit of God's Son (Galatians 4:5, 6); which, however, could not come to pass until the Law, "the yoke of slavery," had been cleared out of the way, opening the gate to God's benediction to all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles. The Law and the Spirit could not coexist. Where the Law had sway, there was tutor-ship (παιδαγωγία) and slavery. Such, it is true, was needed, so long as the Spirit was not there; for moral beings, forming a people of God's, must be under some Law; and, if there was not a law written on the "fleshy tables of the heart" by God's Spirit, there behoved to be one embodied in an outward code of ordinances, which should coerce men's frowardness and keep them under discipline. But when this outward code had been taken out of the way," nailed to Christ's cross," then the people of God could not be left without the Spirit - the Spirit of holiness, as well as, or rather, because also, the Spirit of adoption; which accordingly was forthwith imparted, the sole condition of the bestowment being their living obedient faith, felt and by baptism professed, in Christ and in God. Comp. Ephesians 4:13-18, as containing a full presentment of these facts relative to the introduction of the new covenant, and in the same order of sequence. Thus the apostle has triumphantly returned to the thesis from which he had started in the two first verses of the chapter - Christ crucified, and the receiving of the Spirit without works of the Law. "The promise of the Spirit" is the Spirit which had been promised; the word "promise" here denoting, not as in Hebrews 11:33, the word assuring a subsequent bestowment, but as in Luke 24:49 and Hebrews 11:39, the bestowment itself. The apostle points not merely to such passages of the Old Testament as had definitely fore-announced the outpouring of God's Spirit (Joel 2:38; Isaiah 44:3; and the like), but the whole "kingdom of God," or "world to come," whose blessedness therewith came.

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