The Gospel According to Abraham

Reflection on Galatians 3:8; Genesis 12:3

I woke up this morning pondering a recent teaching in our Sunday sermon series on Galatians. This week, something in Galatians 3:8 stopped me in my tracks:

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)

Read that slowly. The gospel was preached beforehand — to Abraham.

The very message Paul was defending against the Judaizers in the first century was not new. It was not innovative. It was not Paul’s invention. It was as old as the patriarch himself.

If we are going to understand the New Testament, we must embrace the whole counsel of God. The new covenant cannot be rightly understood apart from the old. The Gospel did not begin in Bethlehem. It did not begin at Calvary. It was announced centuries earlier to Abram.

To see this, we must return to Genesis 12 and God’s call to Abram.

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:1,3)

Joshua later reminds Israel of their spiritual roots:

Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates… and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River… (Joshua 24:2–3)

Abram came from Ur of the Chaldeans — a center of worship for the moon god Nanna (Sin). Whether Abram himself actively practiced idolatry, we are not told. But this we know: when God called, he obeyed and his response was immediate. At seventy-five years old, he left everything familiar and set out on a 1,000 to 1,200-mile journey into the unknown.

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. (Genesis 12:4)

That is faith. But what exactly was the “gospel” preached to him? It was this:

In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:3)

From the beginning, God’s redemptive plan was never confined to one ethnic nation. Israel was chosen, yes — but chosen as the instrument through which blessing would flow to the nations, to every tribe and tongue.

Paul makes this explicit:

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith… (Galatians 3:8)

Not justify by works. Not justify by law. Nor by circumcision or ritual.

Justify by faith.

Abraham did not discover God or earn his way into God’s favor through works. Why God chose Abram, we are not told. Grace is not explained; it is revealed. God called Abraham. And when God called, Abraham believed.

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. (Galatians 3:6; cf. Genesis 15:6)

This declaration predates circumcision. It predates Sinai. It predates the Law entirely.

That matters.

Paul’s entire defense of the Gospel in Galatians rests here. Salvation has always been by grace through faith. The Law was never a ladder by which man could climb to heaven. It exposed sin; it could not cure it.

Even under the Law, David understood this:

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:16–17)

Ritual without repentance never satisfied God. The Law pointed beyond itself — to a righteousness that could not be achieved by sacrifice, but received by faith.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith… not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9)

Abraham stands as the first person in Scripture explicitly declared righteous by faith alone.

He could not rescue himself from the pagan culture of Ur. Just as Lot could not ultimately rescue himself from Sodom, so too Abram depended entirely upon the call and promise of God.

This is the Gospel.

A salvation so great that Israel could not contain it. God loved Israel — but His redemptive purpose always extended beyond her borders.

Paul reminds his readers:

So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (Galatians 3:9)

And he caps off this thread in the chapter’s final verse,

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:29)

Jesus was a physical descendant of Abraham, as shown in Matthew’s genealogy in the opening of his Gospel. But we who entered into salvation by grace through faith are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. It is not enough to be of Jewish descent or Abraham’s patriarchal lineage. One becomes an heir of Christ through spiritual adoption — secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and received by faith through grace.

That is why Paul speaks so sharply to the Galatians:

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse… (Galatians 3:10)

If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:9)

To modern ears, that sounds severe. But the Gospel was at stake.

To add works to grace is not a minor theological adjustment. It is a distortion of the very promise given to Abraham. The Judaizers were not merely suggesting a helpful supplement (Jesus + works); they were undermining the Gospel itself — replacing Christ’s finished work with human effort, as though His substitutionary sacrifice were insufficient.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:11-12)

The promise never hinged on: “Obey perfectly and be justified.”

The promise was freely given to all who would “Believe.”

Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ (Galatians 3:6)

May we walk in that same faith — resting not in our performance, not in ritual, not in religious heritage, but in the finished work of Christ, the true offspring of Abraham, through whom the nations are blessed.

The Gospel is not new.
It is ancient.
Older than Sinai.
Older than the Law.

And it has always been for those who would receive it — not by works, not by tradition, not by lineage, but by faith.