{"id":2467,"date":"2023-03-23T09:20:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2467"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:21:22","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T13:21:22","slug":"galatians-316","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/23\/galatians-316\/","title":{"rendered":"Galatians 3:16"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.

Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th<\/sup> verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books. <\/em>
 
\u201cThe promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.  Scripture does not say \u2018and to seeds,\u2019 meaning many people, but \u2018and to your seed,\u2019 meaning one person, who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16).
 
Since the Napoleonic era and the heroic exploits of Admiral Lord Nelson in the early 19th<\/sup> century, every rope in the British Royal Navy has carried an identifying mark.
 
A single scarlet thread is woven into the smallest heaving lines and the thickest hawsers.  A purposeful continuity unites those maritime ropes, no matter what their size or function.
 
In the same way, there is a distinguishing \u201cscarlet thread\u201d that runs through both Old and New Testaments.  The Bible is an enormously complex book \u2013 we can even describe it as a library of 66 volumes \u2013 which features hundreds of characters and subplots.  But there is also a purposeful continuity \u2013 a storyline that draws together all the disparate parts. 
 
It\u2019s called the Promise. 
 
God makes a promise to a man named Abraham, which includes a promise to Abraham\u2019s descendants (who will become the Jews), who will ultimately bring to the whole world a Promised Person \u2013 the Messiah, or Anointed One, whom Christians have identified as Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
We have good reasons to believe that the apostle Paul\u2019s letter to the Galatians is the oldest of all his known correspondences.  This is one of his first attempts to explain to a pagan culture that the creator, in order to start healing a seriously broken world, has rolled up his sleeves and gotten down into the grime and sweat of space and time.
 
So where does Paul start?  As we see in our \u201c3:16\u201d verse, he starts with Abraham \u2013 for the simple reason that this is where God started.   
 
The Jewish storyline, in other words, is really humanity\u2019s storyline \u2013 something that wasn\u2019t fully revealed until the time of Jesus. 
 
The closer we look at this storyline, the more we discover that the Bible is not a book about people looking for God.  Scripture is not the collective spiritual journal of several hundred deceased Middle Easterners.  We don\u2019t see any evidence, for example, that Abraham was searching for spiritual significance.  God was searching for him<\/em>.
 
From the opening chapters of the Bible, we find ourselves asking, \u201cHow in the world is God going to redeem humanity?\u201d  The answer is, \u201cSlowly but surely.\u201d God will reveal his power, his love, and his character to the descendants of Abraham so they can present to the world, as a gift, a two-thousand-year record of what it is like to know him.  As C.S. Lewis puts it, God hammered into the heads of the Jews what kind of God he was, and the Old Testament is the account of the hammering process.
 
That\u2019s the heart of the Promise. 
 
God\u2019s promise to Abraham is an unconditional covenant.  That means Abraham doesn\u2019t have to be good enough, smart enough, tall enough, or enough of anything to deserve God\u2019s love.  Abraham is simply blessed \u2013 blessed to be a blessing to everyone else on earth. 
 
God\u2019s promise of physical descendants appears to be a non-starter, however, since Abraham and his wife Sarah have never been able to have children.  Yet even though he\u2019s already celebrated his 100th<\/sup> birthday, his greatest personal dream finally comes true:  He gets to shop for diapers.  And not just for himself. 
 
As the Promise unfolds, we follow the scarlet thread through some truly strange and difficult stories.  God\u2019s people often seem unworthy of the name.  The pathway to that special Promised Person is like a funnel that grows ever narrower \u2013 from Isaac to Jacob to Judah, one of the original 12 tribes of Israel.  Eight hundred years later it is David, a descendent of Judah, who becomes Israel\u2019s most famous king.
 
For the next thousand years, God\u2019s people wait.  They wait for a particular Son of David who will one day come and fulfill the entirety of the Promise that God made to Abraham. 
 
Who would have suspected that the bearer of the Promise would be laid in a feeding trough when he was born, and wouldn\u2019t even be recognized by most of those he came to save?
 
In the end, of what value is Galatians 3:16? 
 
This verse is a trust-builder.  It reminds us that despite everything we see and experience in our not-yet-redeemed world, there remains a discernible rhyme and reason.  In the midst of a devastating earthquake in Turkey, 611 mass shootings in America during the first 81 days of 2023, chaos and incivility in our public discourse, a war that rages on in Ukraine, and the fear of global bank failures, there is still purposeful continuity \u2013 a storyline that has characterized human history since its earliest days, and that remains anchored on God\u2019s original Promise.
 
We\u2019ve noted before an illustration proposed by British author Vaughan Roberts.   
 
Imagine walking along a beach.  Looking out to sea, you notice a young woman swimming not far from the shore.  To your horror, you can also see something else.  There is a shark rapidly closing in on her.  You shout.  You wave your arms.  Other people seem to be completely unconcerned. 
 
As you run down the beach in an effort to recruit some help, you suddenly see a large black chair with one word written on the back: DIRECTOR.  The man sitting in that chair is shouting instructions through a megaphone.  You\u2019ve stumbled onto the set of a movie.  The director has everything in control<\/em>.
 
Even when things seem grim \u2013 even when history seems to be running off the rails, whether on the pages of Scripture or the front page of your favorite news source \u2013 God is still God. 
 
The scarlet thread of the storyline is still weaving its way through human events.  
 
And by God\u2019s grace, you and I have even been invited to be part of the story. 

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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at one of the \u201c3:16\u201d verses of the Bible, spotlighting some of the significant theological statements that happen to fall on the 16th verse of the third chapter of a number of Old and New Testament books.  \u201cThe promises were spoken to Abraham… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[571,574],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-316-verses","tag-bibles-basic-storyline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}