It’s easy to forget that Christianity, which has spread all around the globe, could once only be found around Judea. In time it spread throughout the Roman Empire, eventually bringing the gospel to even the most remote people groups. While skeptics might try to rationalize the global appeal of Christianity, we can see that its spread was promised by God long ago.
Christ in the Old Testament
Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (Genesis 22:15-18)
In the days of Abraham, the continuation of a family line was important. Children were seen as a blessing because they would continue a bloodline that had existed for generations. This explains the sorrow we see when Sarah couldn’t bear children, as well as the importance of God’s promise to expand Abraham’s seed far beyond what he could have hoped.
Naturally, Abraham and his descendants would have taken this promise to be fairly straightforward. On the surface, it seems like God is simply promising that Abraham’s family tree would be massive, and that it would be so prominent that they would impact everyone on Earth. And while that’s true, we see that Christ fulfills this promise in a way that shows how good our God truly is.
Fulfilled in the New Testament
Therefore, recognize that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. (Galatians 3:7-9)
Jews who lived around the time of Christ and the apostles could be forgiven for assuming that God’s plan was to make Israel into the greatest nation on Earth. After all, everything in the Old Testament showed that Israel was God’s chosen people. So as everyone looked for Jesus Christ to fulfill God’s ancient promise to Abraham, many of them were looking toward the growth and expansion of a physical nation.
However, God sent Christ to do more than convert people into a physical family. From the beginning, God planned to fulfill His promise to Abraham through the global spread of the gospel. Abraham assumed his physical family would spread, but God did something much bigger by bringing us all into one, big spiritual family. God’s blessing to Abraham has been fulfilled through Jesus Christ in a way that even the angels never expected.
And if you’re a Christian reading this, there’s a good chance that you are an inheritor of that blessing. Most of us are Gentiles, or non-Jews, and we may not realize how important God’s promise is. Despite being non-Israelites, we are in no way considered second-class citizens of Heaven. God doesn’t show us less love or favor because of our physical heritage. Instead, those of us who have trusted Christ for our salvation are the spiritual children of Abraham.
God promised Abraham that his offspring would be nearly impossible to count. God promised that all nations would be blessed by Abraham’s seed. Christ was physically related to Abraham, yet He makes all of us members of God’s family through His blood. All Christians throughout history, regardless of what part of the world they come from, are members of the same family. Through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God kept His promise in an incredible way.
