SEED OF ABRAHAM

The Lord Jesus Christ is the focus of all prophecy and the centre of all history. He is the One for whom all things were created, Col. 1. 16. And in Him all things will find their fulfilment, Eph. 1. 10. It is never Christ and something else. Not Christ and the law or Christ and the flesh but it is Christ and Him alone. Salvation is in Him and He is grasped by faith and we need nothing else. As the famous old saying goes, ‘I have Christ; what want I more?’.

In the garden it was the ‘seed’ of the woman who would bruise the serpent’s head, Gen. 3. 15. Then it was the promised seed of Abraham, as opposed to the seed produced by the works of the flesh. For in Isaac was the covenant established, Gen. 17. 21. The seed was further identified as from Judah, the tribe from whom the sceptre would not depart, Gen. 49.10. This was further narrowed many years later to ‘the son of David’, 2 Sam. 7.12. Isaiah prophesied that the promised One would be born of a virgin and thus would be Immanuel - God with us, Isa. 7. 14. The ‘seed of the woman’ was not to be Abel, Isaac, Solomon or any other famous patriarch or potentate. In each of these promises there was but One person ever before the face of God, even His beloved Son.

Then one day an angel came to Mary, a virgin, espoused to Joseph, and announced that she would be the mother of One who would be called the son of David and the Son of God, Luke 1. 31-35. Matthew’s gospel begins by telling us that he is writing of the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The promised Messiah had come, and in Him would be fulfilled the promises and the types of the Old Testament. This is Abraham’s seed in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed, Gen. 22. 18. All this is accomplished because Abraham believed God and thus obeyed the voice of God.

To add the works of the flesh or the works of the law to this promise of God is an affront to the gift of God which is received by faith and by faith alone. May we never lose sight of the centrality, the supremacy, and the exclusivity of Christ in our worship or in our service for Him.