And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying,
In you shall all nations be blessed.
Read Chapter 3
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
The greatest cause for triumph in Abraham was that, before his circumcision, faith was reckoned to him for righteousness. This is most correctly referred to the promise that “All nations shall be blessed in you,” meaning of course by the following of his faith, by which he was justified even before the ordinance of circumcision, which he received as a token of faith, and long before the servitude of the law, which was given much later.
Preached before the gospel unto Abraham. Gave him this most joyful news of the blessing to be conferred by Christ on His descendants, i.e, on the faithful. In other words, the Gospel about Christ and His righteousness is not new, but is as old as the days of Abraham.
In thee shall all nations be blessed. Cajetan observes, in his notes or Genesis 12, that when God called Abraham from his home in Chaldea, and from his kindred, to go to a land to be shown him, He promised him a sevenfold blessing. Seven is the number of completeness. (1.) He promised him that he should be the head or father of a great nation, in the words, "I will make of thee a great nation;" (2.) abundant riches, in the words, "I will bless thee;" (3.) fame and wide renown, in the words, "And make thy name great;" (4.) the sum of all blessings and honours, in the words, "Thou shalt be a blessing." The exact force of the Hebrew here is that thou shalt be so filled with blessings as to seem to be a blessing itself, so th...
God, providing that the descendants of Abraham should not be mixed with the other nations … marked off the Israelite people by a particular rite: circumcision. … After that for forty years no one was circumcised in the wilderness. They were living without any intermixing with other nations. … As soon as the people crossed the river Jordan and the host poured out onto the territory of Judea in Palestine, he made provision by a necessary circumcision against the future error from miscegenation with the Gentiles. But the fact that the people are said to have been circumcised a second time by their leader Joshua signifies that circumcision had ceased in the wilderness, though practiced in Egypt for a good reason. Believers now are cleansed by our Lord Jesus Christ through a spiritual circumcision.
For since they were perturbed by the greater antiquity of the law and the fact that faith came after the law, he destroys this surmise of theirs, showing that faith is older than the law. That is obvious from Abraham, since he was justified before the appearance of the law…. “The one who gave the law,” he says, in effect “was the one who decreed before the law was given that the Gentiles should be justified.” And Paul does not say “revealed” but “preached the gospel” [beforehand to Abraham], so that you may understand that even the patriarch rejoiced in this kind of righteousness and greatly desired its advent.
If then those were Abraham's sons, not, who were related to him by blood, but who follow his faith, for this is the meaning of the words, In you all the nations, it is plain that the heathen are brought into kindred with him.
Hereby too is proved another important point. It perplexed them that the Law was the older, and Faith afterwards. Now he removes this notion by showing that Faith was anterior to the Law; as is evident from Abraham's case, who was justified before the giving of the Law. He shows too that late events fell out according to prophecy; The Scripture, says he, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand unto Abraham. Attend to this point. He Himself who gave the Law, had decreed, before He gave it, that the heathen should be justified by Faith. And he says not revealed, but, preached the Gospel, to signify that the patriarch was in joy at this method of justification, and in great desire for its accomplishment.
Further, ...
Of Abraham, "And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed "he adds, "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ."
