Galatians 3:8b – Trail of Blood

… and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Summary: Paul presents us with a curious definition for the word “Gospel.” Understanding what he means requires us to unpack the concept of the Gospel and look at what it means.

Here’s an interesting question: If you asked a hundred Christians to state the Gospel Message in their own words, how many would say it the way God did to Abraham?

What? “Zero,” you say? Well, I agree with you.

I’ve never heard anyone else explain the Gospel this way. So why does Paul describe this quote from God as “the Gospel?”*

The word “gospel” has an interesting history. It is said to have originally meant “good news.”** And what is this “good news” the Bible talks about?

The short answer is the “good news” is that God does not throw all humanity into the trash heap like we deserve. Instead, he has made a way for us to be forgiven and reunited with him forever through his Son, Jesus Christ.

The “blessing” God was pointing to when he spoke with Abraham, is something that would happen centuries after God spoke the promise. The “Good News” involves a story that is at once both simple and complex.

I recently read through Leviticus, which it describes the rules for making sacrifices before the Lord. After that, I read Numbers, Chapter 33, and marveled as Moses recounts Israel’s travels from Egypt to the Promised Land.

I thought about their travels through the desert and the elaborate Tabernacle they carried with them. Then I thought about all the animals sacrificed during their forty years in the desert.

After that, I thought about Jesus carrying his cross from Pilate’s palace to the place known as Golgotha. In my mind’s eye, I can see Jesus dragging his cross† along a dry, dusty road. Behind him is a trail of blood that has fallen from our Lord’s body. Perhaps bloody footprints marked the place where he traveled.

Then, also in my mind’s eye, I looked back on Israel in the desert. If I stand back far enough, if I imagine I am looking down from the highest clouds, I can see the trail of the Israelites as they travel from Egypt to Kadesh Barnea. When the Israelites proved unfaithful there, God made them wander in the desert for forty years until they arrived at the plains of Moab opposite Jericho (Numbers 33: 50).

At every camp along the way, every time a sacrifice was made at the tabernacle, the blood was spilled at the base of the altar. Looking down on the nation of Israel, everywhere they went, they left a trail of blood. As Israel trekked from Egypt to the Promised Land, their footsteps foreshadowed the Gospel.

Application: The Good News is all about Jesus.

Food for Thought: How have all nations been blessed through Abraham?

*See Genesis 18:18, 22:18, 26:4

** https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-the-gospel.html

† Or the crossbeam.