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As the seed of Abraham, Christ was made a curse for us “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”—Gal. 3:14:
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The blessing of Abraham is the blessing promised by God to him for all the nations of the earth—Gen. 12:3.
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This promise was fulfilled and this blessing has come to the nations in Christ through His redemption by the cross—Gal. 3:1, 13-14.
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The context of Galatians 3:14 indicates that the Spirit is the blessing that God promised to Abraham for all the nations and that has been received by the believers through faith in Christ—vv. 2, 5:
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The physical aspect of the blessing that God promised to Abraham was the good land, which was a type of the all-inclusive Christ—Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; 26:3-4; Col. 1:12.
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The Spirit is the compound Spirit, who is God Himself processed in His Trinity through incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and descension for us to receive as our life and our everything—Phil. 1:19.
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Since Christ is realized as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17), the blessing of the promised Spirit equals the blessing of the good land; actually, the Spirit as the realization of Christ in our experience is the good land.
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Our spiritual blessing for eternity will be to inherit the Spirit, the consummation of the processed Triune God as our inheritance—Gal. 3:14.
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In the new heaven and the new earth in the New Jerusalem, we will enjoy the processed Triune God, who is the all-inclusive, consummated, life-giving Spirit—Rev. 22:1; John 7:37-39.
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Today our Christian life is a life of receiving the Spirit through faith—Gal. 3:2, 5, 14.
Morning Nourishment
Gal. 3:2 This only I wish to learn from you, Did you receive the Spirit out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?5 He therefore who bountifully supplies to you the Spirit and does works of power among you, does He do it out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?
The Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God having gone through many processes in Christ. This life-giving Spirit is the blessing of the gospel. The blessing of the gospel is the processed Triune God reaching us as the Spirit. In this compound, all-inclusive Spirit are all of Christ’s person and process, including His divinity, humanity, crucifixion for Him to accomplish redemption, resurrection for Him to give life to us, and ascension for Him to be the Lord of all (Rom. 8:11; 2 Cor. 3:18)….The Spirit is everything to us to live the Christian life….If we have the Spirit, we have God, man, redemption, and forgiveness of sins. The Spirit is our God, our Father, our Lord, our Redeemer, our Savior, and our Shepherd; the Spirit is our life, our life supply, our righteousness, our sanctification, our transformation, and our redemption. The all-inclusive Spirit is the processed and consummated Triune God given to us as the blessing. We should praise the Lord that we have received the Spirit as such a blessing and may enjoy Him all the time through eternity. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3293-3294)
Today’s Reading
Galatians reveals the way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit—the aggregate of the all-embracing blessing of the full gospel of God: by God’s revealing of Christ in us (1:16a; Eph. 1:17; Gen. 13:14-18; Eph. 3:8, 19); by our receiving of Christ out of the hearing of faith (Gal. 3:2); by being born according to the Spirit and by being given the Spirit of God’s Son into our hearts (4:29b, 6); by putting on Christ through the baptism that puts us into Christ (3:27); by being identified with Him in His death so that it may be no longer we who live but He who lives in us (2:20); by living and walking by the Spirit (5:16, 25); by having Christ formed in us through travail (4:19); by sowing unto the Spirit with the desire and aim of the Spirit in view, to accomplish what the Spirit desires (6:7-8); by boasting in the cross of Christ and living a new creation (vv. 14-15); and by enjoying the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with our spirit (vv. 17-18).Through Adam’s fall the human race was brought under the curse, but God promised Abraham that in his seed the nations…would be blessed. Christ has fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham….Christ as the seed of Abraham has redeemed us out of the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Him. Christ died a substitutionary death on the cross to deliver us from the curse brought in by Adam. Then in resurrection Christ, who was the unique seed of Abraham as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit is the transfigured descendant of Abraham, the seed of Abraham, dispensed into us to make us the sons of Abraham, the corporate seed of Abraham, those who can receive and inherit the consummated Spirit as the blessing of Abraham (3:7, 14; 4:28)….Before we believed into Christ and were saved, we were cursed under the law….As the seed of Abraham, Christ brought to us the processed and consummated Triune God as our blessing for our enjoyment. The all-inclusive Spirit, who the all-inclusive Christ as the seed of Abraham has become, is the aggregate of the all-embracing blessing of the full gospel of God in Christ for the divine dispensing according to the divine economy. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3294-3295)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1965, vol. 3, “The Spirit in the Epistles,” ch. 5; CWWL, 1965, vol. 3, “Christ as the Spirit in the Epistles,” ch. 4; CWWL, 1966, vol. 2, “The Divine Spirit with the Human Spirit in the Epistles,” ch. 6