Genesis 1 opens with the well-known phrase, “In the beginning,” as it begins to describe both what happened to put the earth in the condition it is in and how God intends to redeem the earth. After briefly describing creation, Genesis 1 through 11 sets the stage for God’s plan for world redemption. It tells us how sin and tragedy were introduced into the human experience. As time passes, we see the full effects of humanity’s sin, as humanity’s situation grows increasingly grim. Families are destroyed. Sons are murdered, and not long into the story, wickedness escalates so rapidly that God releases a global flood to stop its growth. Even after the flood, the earth is still left in a crisis because, while the flood swept away most of humanity, it was unable to resolve the issues in the human heart that caused the crisis in the first place. No leader, even Noah, ultimately is capable of redeeming humanity. The earth needs a new leader, a new “Adam,” to redeem and restore the human race.

Genesis 11 describes a pivotal event in early human history that serves to illustrate the human condition. While the flood is still a recent memory, humankind decides to set up a challenge to God’s authority on the plains of Shinar. Construction begins on a tower that is intended to give humanity access to spiritual power in an effort to challenge the One who flooded the earth. In this pivotal moment, God steps in and breaks the power of humankind by separating the people through confounding their speech. Thus begins the story of the nations of the earth.

However, the crisis of the nations is not the only story of Genesis. There is also a promise of redemption. Beginning with Genesis 3:15, God promises that Someone is coming who will redeem and restore the human race. The same God who creates the nations in Genesis 11, also promises ultimately to redeem them. To do this, God sets a plan into motion in Genesis 12, choosing one man who will become the father of one particular nation. He will use this man Abraham in a pivotal way in His plan to redeem all the nations.

There is a tendency to consider the Old Testament something that is only part of history, something that has been completely superseded by the New Testament. However, that is not true.

While the New Testament does say the law given to Moses is passing away, it does not say the entire Old Testament is passing away. That means we need to understand the covenants of the Old Testament and recognize what is temporary and what is permanent. One of the most important of these covenants is the covenant made with Abraham, because the Bible presents it as both a permanent covenant and an unconditional covenant. In fact, Paul uses this covenant as the entire basis of the gospel. While the gospel teaches that the law of Moses is passing away, it clearly teaches that the covenant with Abraham is not passing away at all but, instead, is the foundation of the gospel.

The Abrahamic covenant is the source of righteousness by faith as it is written in Genesis 15:6 that Abraham believed God and He “counted it to him as righteousness” (see also Romans 4:3). It is the very foundation of the promise of redemption, for the apostle Paul said,

Jesus is the means by which the promises to Abraham are fulfilled. While the law must pass away, Abraham’s promises must not pass away because they are the very basis of the gospel, and Jesus remains committed to fulfilling them. Therefore, to understand the work of Jesus and ultimately His kingdom, we must understand these promises because Jesus has been made King in order to fulfill them.

These promises undergird the entire story of redemption in this age and create a great tension throughout the biblical narrative as prophets predict their fulfillment and, at the same time, wonder how God will ever bring them to fulfillment. The first step to understanding what Jesus will do as King is understanding these promises and what the Bible says about God’s commitment to fulfilling them.

In Genesis 12, God begins to give shape and definition to His redemptive plan. He begins by calling out Abraham and giving him very specific promises. He says to Abraham,

God makes three very distinct promises to Abraham here. Each of these is important to recognize because the promises are key components of God’s redemptive plan and all three—the promise of land, the promise of descendants, and the promise to the nations—must be fulfilled by His chosen King.

First, God promises Abraham a specific land. In Genesis 12:1, He tells Abraham to go “to the land” that He “will show” him. The whole context of the promise is that Abraham is sent to a new land intended for him to possess. He will not simply dwell in this new place; he will ultimately inherit it with his descendants. “‘To your offspring I will give this land’” (Genesis 12:7).¹ Abraham and his physical descendants must inherit the land for the promise to be fulfilled.

The land is presented to Abraham as a permanent inheritance. So, for this promise to be fulfilled, Abraham’s descendants must dwell permanently in the land. The inheritance is also promised specifically to Abraham (see Genesis 15:8), whom we know never owned the land, thus creating tension. If God’s promises are true, then how is it that Abraham never saw the fulfillment of them? If Abraham’s death is the end of God’s promises to him, the promise of the land is forever unfulfilled because Abraham never inherited the land nor did he live to see his descendants inherit it.

The book of Hebrews describes this dilemma when it tells the story of the great men and women of faith. One of the indications of their great faith was that they remained faithful even when they did not receive in their lifetimes what God had promised them.

To understand the redemptive story, we have to understand what the author of Hebrews expressed in Hebrews 11. The redemptive story is deeply connected. God’s promises to the patriarchs remain unfulfilled because it has always been in God’s heart to join His people together across time and then to bring the fulfillment of all that He has promised, as we see in the last verses of the chapter.

If Abraham did not receive his promise in his lifetime, and God’s Word is true, then there must come a time in the future when Abraham is raised from the dead so that the promise can be fulfilled in exact detail according to how it was spoken. Abraham cannot inherit his promises as a dead man, so the dilemma of his unfulfilled promises must mean that a time will come in the future when God will raise Abraham (and the rest of the patriarchs) from the dead and fulfill His promises. This means that the hope of the resurrection, which is so central in the New Testament, was central in God’s redemptive plan from the very beginning. This is not to say that Abraham would have completely understood or expected this, but his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22 shows that he did understand God would raise the dead if necessary to fulfill His promises. Only as the redemptive story develops throughout the Scripture does it become apparent that God’s promises to the patriarchs were not fulfilled in their lifetimes. In later chapters, we will see that the New Testament anticipates a future fulfillment of Abraham’s promises.

Abraham is also promised that he will have descendants. God says, “I will make of you a great nation,” in Genesis 12:2. The promise implies that the people will be a righteous people because Abraham is told that this great nation will make his name great. The people called by Abraham’s name can only make his name great in the earth if they are a righteous people in the eyes of God. In other words, this statement refers to quality as well as quantity. Righteousness is what makes a nation great, not merely its large population (see Proverbs 14:34).

Abraham will be a blessing to the earth because the nation that flows from him will be a blessing to all the earth. Again, this enforces the prediction that the nation coming from him will be righteous. In biblical thinking, the unrighteous are cut off from the earth (see Psalm 37), but Abraham is promised the exact opposite—descendants who make his name great!

Abraham also receives a promise for the nations of the earth. In Genesis 12:3, God promises him that all the nations of the earth will receive blessing through His plan to make a great nation from Abraham’s descendants. The first two promises are specific to Abraham’s natural descendants, but it is important to recognize that God promises, from the beginning, that His plan for Abraham will be a great blessing to all the nations. Galatians 3:8 and other New Testament passages tell us that this blessing is the offer of salvation to the Gentiles.² The idea, then, of gentile salvation is not a new idea originating in the New Testament. Instead, we find it right here in the original promise made to Abraham.

God is going to bring blessing to all the people of the earth, every tribe and tongue, in the process of fulfilling the first two promises He made to Abraham. From the beginning, God is committed to the nations, and their salvation and Israel’s salvation are deeply intertwined.

Having then made these three promises to Abraham, God says something interesting. He tells Abraham that He “will bless those who bless” Abraham and curse those who dishonor him (Genesis 12:3). Dishonor is translated curse in the New American Standard Bible and treats you lightly in the New English Translation. A curse as a consequence serves as a sober warning to Abraham that God’s plan is going to be controversial in the nations. There will be individuals who agree with and bless God’s plan by blessing Abraham, and there will be those individuals who curse or treat Abraham lightly because of how God chooses to fulfill His three promises to him.

Because this verse ends with, “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” it indicates that the salvation of the nations will ultimately be connected to how they relate to Abraham or to God’s plan to fulfill all three promises. The nations are warned it will be easy to take offense at God’s plan; however, they are also told that blessing God’s plan through blessing Abraham is the way to receive the blessing that will flow through God’s plan to them—to all the nations of the earth. This is the very same thing the apostle Paul said when he told the gentile believers in Rome to not be arrogant toward the unsaved Jewish people (see Romans 11:20, 23–27).

All three promises are tied together and will be fulfilled together. The nations will receive blessing and salvation in the way God accomplishes His plan to make the Jewish people a great people who permanently inherit a land and who, by way of receiving their promises, will bless the nations. The Jewish people cannot receive their full inheritance unless the nations come into the blessing of salvation, but the nations cannot receive their full blessing without the Jewish people receiving salvation and a land inheritance.³ These three promises are three strands of one cord. God will not fulfill only one without the other. All three of them must be fulfilled, and because of the way they are interdependent all three will come to their complete fulfillment at the same time.

Right there, in Genesis 12, we find the three core promises that drive God’s redemptive plan: 1) Abraham will have descendants who will become a righteous nation, 2) those descendants will permanently inherit a land, and 3) the nations will receive blessing and salvation through the process. These three promises become the foundation of God’s mission in the world and are reiterated throughout the biblical narrative.

In Galatians, Paul tells us plainly that Abraham received the essence of the gospel in Genesis 12.

Paul tells us that Genesis 12 predicts both justification by faith and the salvation of the Gentiles. Note carefully how Paul makes his case about the salvation of the Gentiles. He does not apply Abraham’s first two promises to the Gentiles; instead, he notes the promise to the Gentiles was always in the covenant made with Abraham, as was righteousness by faith. Paul recognizes God was intentional from the beginning of His redemptive work to plainly state that the Gentiles would receive great blessing from His covenant with Abraham. Since Paul recognizes the promise made to the Gentiles as a literal promise, then it makes sense for us to take literally the other promises to Abraham’s descendants as well—especially in light of Abraham’s encounter with God in Genesis 15.

The encounter between God and Abraham in Genesis 15 is one of the great covenantal encounters in the Bible. It is an important chapter because there is nothing else like it in the Word. God only enters into covenant a few times in the Bible, and each one is incredibly significant. It is also important to understand this chapter because Paul’s basis for salvation by faith is this covenant encounter between God and Abraham: “‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6). Abraham’s encounter is not simply an Old Testament story, then; it is the foundation for our New Testament faith.

We are saved by faith because Abraham secured his promise by faith. Our promise of salvation is secure only to the extent that Abraham’s promise is secure. Furthermore, it follows that our salvation is connected to God’s covenant with Abraham. Paul interprets Genesis 15 as the basis of God’s ongoing covenant with people. God’s agreement with Abraham is not something that has passed away, but it is something that Jesus has secured.

In this chapter, Abraham asks God if He intends to fulfill the promise made in Genesis 12. Abraham only addresses two of the promises—the promises of descendants and land—but the covenant encounter of Genesis 15 is God’s confirmation of what He spoke in Genesis 12, which means all three promises are ultimately confirmed by the covenant act.

The encounter begins as Abraham expresses his pain to God and asks for assurance that the promises of Genesis 12 will be fulfilled literally.

Abraham is in pain because God made him a promise, but Abraham cannot see any way for the promise to come to pass. He cannot have one son, much less many descendants, and he is also wandering the land he is supposed to possess. It is important to understand the entire context of the covenant encounter. The key question is whether or not the promises will be fulfilled literally. Abraham is concerned that another brought into his house will inherit his promise instead of his physical son. To use New Testament language, Abraham is concerned that someone grafted into his family will fulfill the promise of a son. God emphasizes the literalness of the promise. Yes, there will be billions, like Abraham’s servant, who will be grafted into Abraham’s house and receive blessing. However, the promise given to Abraham will have a literal fulfillment in his descendants.

In the conversation, God repeats and affirms both His promises from chapter 12:

After verbally confirming His promise, God enters into covenant with Abraham in a covenant ceremony during which He fully commits to perform the promises:

There are several key components of the covenant ceremony that we have to recognize. The first is its cultural significance. The ceremony was based on an ancient method of making an agreement. In this ancient ceremony, two individuals would walk between split animals to make a public statement of their commitment. The commitment was that it should be done to them as it was done to the animals if they should break their agreement. God wanted to assure Abraham that this was a permanent agreement by using an ancient ceremony that Abraham understood.

Second, God did not allow Abraham to contribute to the performance of the covenant. Though the covenant was made with Abraham, when it was time to make covenant, God put Abraham into a deep sleep, leaving him unable to contribute to the covenant ceremony. This happened because Abraham’s righteousness came from faith. Faith, or confidence in God’s Word, was the only thing that God allowed Abraham to contribute.

Third, two parties had to walk through the sacrifices to make the covenant, but instead of God and Abraham walking through it together, God walks through it. This is one of the most interesting events in Scripture. There is not a third party to the covenant. It is between Abraham and God, yet Abraham sees two manifestations of God, a flaming torch and a smoking fire pot (some translations say “oven”), moving through the animals together.

What does this signify? Only God made covenant with Abraham, yet he saw two manifestations walk through the animals in the covenant ceremony. In the New Testament, we see the intimate partnership between the Father and the Son in the work of redemption. In light of later Scripture, we can recognize that the two manifestations of God that Abraham sees represent the Father and Son walking through the sacrifices. This means the Father and Jesus made a commitment to each other to fulfill the promises made to Abraham. This is significant because, if Abraham had been allowed to walk through with God, then Abraham’s ability would determine whether the covenant failed or succeeded, since because he would be committing his strength to keep it. God knew Abraham’s weakness, so He guaranteed the covenant Himself. He knew that Abraham’s sin, and the sin of his descendants, would break the covenant. That is why the Son walked through with the Father, committing Himself to be sacrificed like the split animals in order to ensure the success of the covenant. This emphasizes the permanence of the covenant and God’s commitment to it. This was more than a symbolic promise; it was also a prophetic act. Because of Abraham’s sin, and the sin of his descendants, the reality is the Son would be sacrificed like the animals. That future sacrifice would permanently secure the covenant.

God’s commitment to fulfilling the promises He made to Abraham in Genesis 12 is on full display in Genesis 15. The dramatic covenant ceremony emphasizes that Abraham’s righteousness has no part to play in the fulfillment of the promises. God Himself will secure the promises with His own righteousness. This is one of the key themes of the promises made to Abraham: the promises are neither threatened nor secured by Abraham’s ability to obey. They are promises God made to a man and committed Himself to fulfill. There is a reason that Paul understood righteousness by faith from this chapter. He understood God’s commitment to fulfilling these three promises through His own strength.

To understand God’s redemptive plan, it is important to recognize these key differences between this covenant and the Mosaic law, where God laid out requirements, with blessings and curses, and the outcome of the agreement was based on the people’s performance. These key differences are why Paul says that the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus has caused one to pass away (Sinai) and another to be guaranteed (Abraham) forever.