Gal. 3:14 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.
From Genesis to Revelation, the entire Bible as the Word of God speaks about the same thing.
When God created man in Genesis 1 and He stated the purpose for creating man in Gen. 1:26, we see this purpose being fulfilled all throughout the Bible. When God called Abraham and made him a promise, we see the fulfillment of that promise all throughout the Bible.
God speaks only one thing and He does only one thing: what is in His heart and what He has purposed. He wants to gain man and be one with man to the extent that man is in God and God is in man for God to be expressed and represented through man.
When God made a promise to Abraham concerning the seed and the land, He had in mind the same thing, the fulfillment of His purpose. The only One who can fulfill God’s purpose is Christ. The only “thing” that God gives us is Christ.
What God desires is that His Christ would be wrought into us to become the very fiber of our being so that we may live in Christ and by Christ for God’s expression and representation on the earth.
God didn’t have in mind merely a physical piece of land when He promised the good land to Abraham; God wanted to give Himself to man in Christ for man’s enjoyment and experience as the good land.
The only reason God used the all-inclusive type of the good land of Canaan promised to Abraham is that this land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ who has become the compound life-giving Spirit as the bountiful supply for those who believe into Christ (Gen. 12:7; Gal. 3:14; 1 Cor. 15:45; Phil. 1:19).
Today we as believers in Christ have Christ as the Spirit with our spirit, and this all-inclusive Christ as the Spirit is the good land for us to be bountifully supply to live Christ and experience Christ.
God is not merely “working on man”; He is working Himself into man to be the all-inclusive life-giving compound Spirit as the bountiful supply, the good land, for man’s enjoyment and experience – for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. All we can say to that is, Hallelujah for God’s purpose and for including us in such a glorious matter!
The Blessing of the Land Promised to Abraham is the Blessing of the Promised Spirit (Gal. 3:14)
When a non-Jew unbeliever reads the book of Genesis he may take it as “the beginnings of the history of the people of Israel”, since it talks about God calling and blessing a particular people whose forefathers were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
God called Abraham and made him a promise that He would bless him, make him a blessing to all the nations, give him a land, and give him a seed. The blessing of Abraham is not merely the people of Israel as God’s chosen physical people on earth but it is Christ Himself, the One who fulfilled God’s promise.
Through His redemption by the cross, Christ fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham, and now in Christ all the nations are blessed – whether Jews or non-Jews. Through His death and resurrection, Christ became the Spirit, and this Spirit includes and is compounded with Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, death, resurrection, ascension, and descension.
It is this Spirit, a compound Spirit, that is the blessing given by God to Abraham for all the nations to be blessed. God promised Abraham that God Himself, after passing through a long process, will become the blessing for all the nations.
To Abraham right there and then, the physical aspect of the blessing was the good land (see Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; 26:3-4) – which land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ allotted by God as the portion of the ones who believe into Him (Col. 1:12).
In Gal. 3:14 we see that the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. The all-inclusive Christ has become “the Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17), the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, who is now with the spirit of the ones who believe into Christ (1 Cor. 6:17).
The blessing of the promised land is the blessing of the Spirit who today is with our spirit. God is not after physical things; God is Spirit (John 4:24), and when He promised the good land to Abraham He actually had Christ as the Spirit in mind and in view.
The Compound Spirit in our Experience is the Good Land with a Bountiful Supply for us to Enjoy
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 (see Gen. 12:7; Deut. 8:7; Gal. 3:14).
The seed God promised to Abraham is Christ, the Messiah. The land God promised to Abraham is also a type of the all-inclusive Christ who has become the life-giving Spirit with a bountiful supply. The blessing God gave to Abraham is the blessing of the Spirit (Gal. 3:14).
“The Spirit” who is the blessing of Abraham and the reality of the good land in our experience is not merely the Holy Spirit; it is the consummation of the process Christ went through when He was on earth.
From eternity past, God Himself is Spirit – this is the essence of His substance. But through incarnation, God put on humanity and human living. Through death and resurrection, these elements were also added into God. The consummation of the process through which Christ passed through is “the Spirit”, the compound Spirit typified by the compound ointment in Exo. 30:23-25.
This “compound Spirit” includes Christ’s divinity, His perfect humanity, His uplifted human living, His all-inclusive and all-terminating death, His life-imparting resurrection, and His glorious and victorious ascension. No human being has ever raised himself from the dead to live forever, but Christ did, and now He is the Spirit to impart Himself into us today.
When we received Christ at the time we were born again, we received the all-inclusive compound Spirit as the reality of the good land with our spirit. God went through a long process to become the Spirit, and right now this all-inclusive life-giving compound Spirit is with our spirit to be the bountiful supply for us to enjoy Christ and experience Christ as the good land (see Phil. 1:19; Gal. 3:5).
How can we, Gentile people, partake of and enjoy the blessing given by God to Abraham, the one called by God? It is by faith and in the spirit. The blessing of the gospel promised to Abraham by God is the processed Triune God as the Spirit, and we can enjoy this blessing as a bountiful supply to meet all our needs and enable us to experience and enjoy Christ – in our spirit!
When we see that God went through a process to become the all-inclusive compound Spirit to be the bountiful supply of the Spirit with our spirit, all we can say is,
Hallelujah for our spirit! The good land promised to Abraham is today in and with our spirit! The blessing of Abraham is the all-inclusive compound Spirit with our spirit! Praise the Lord for the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ with our spirit! Hallelujah for the process God went through to become the life-giving, compound, all-inclusive, consummated Spirit to be the full realization of the good land promised to Abraham – and such a One is with our spirit today! Lord, keep us in our spirit today, enjoying all the riches of the good land in the Spirit with our spirit!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Andrew Yu’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Galatians (msgs. 15, 17), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Genesis (2), week 4 / msg 4, The Land for the Fulfillment of God’s Purpose.
- Further reading: Enjoying Christ as the good land (via holdingtotruth.com).
- Hymns on this topic:
# Let’s take the land! The land that God has given us; / In all our living, Christ can be so much: / To take this land, we have th’ equipment that we need— / The blood, the Word, the Spirit, and the church. (Hymns #1247)
# Lift your eyes up and look from where you are. / When you see the Christ, our all-inclusive land, / Then we walk in this blessed land, enjoying all we see, / Getting saved eating milk and honey. (New song on the all-inclusive land)
# What He is: He’s the Spirit. / He’s the all-inclusive Spirit. / He’s our everything; He’s our all in all. / He gives life to us whene’er we call. / He’s the Spirit! Wonderful! (Hymns #1103)
# Oh! Vast Unmeasured Portion, / Oh! Bountiful Supply, / In light the saints enjoy Thee, / And Thou dost reign thereby. / Within the Father’s bosom / Beloved Son Thou art; / The sweetness of the Godhead / To us Thou dost impart. (hymn on the bountiful supply of the Spirit)
About aGodMan
“…Anyone who is not in the spirit will eventually be a dividing factor. During the past fourteen years in the United States, there have been few of these divisive ones among us. But I must admit that there has been a small number who refused to turn to the spirit. We knew them well, and we knew their way of living. It is a fact that they would never turn to the spirit, but always remained in the mind. Even in prayer they continued to exercise their mind, not their spirit. It was almost as if they did not have a spirit but had only an analytical mind. Hence, I became clear that sooner or later these brothers would be divisive. Eventually, the situation turned out to be just like this. Although we tried our best to avoid it, this was the eventual result because they never turned to the spirit. Today’s Christianity has been divided because of one thing—people are not in the spirit.” Witness Lee “Young People’s Training”