CHAPTER 5

Blessing as Transformation

Sarita Gallagher Edwards and Steven C. Hawthorne

Sarita Gallagher Edwards is a scholar, teacher, and missiologist. She served as a missionary with the Christian Revival Crusade (CRC) International movement in Papua New Guinea and Australia. Her recent publications include Christ among the Nations and Breaking through the Boundaries. Until recently she served as professor of religion at George Fox University and Portland Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

Steven C. Hawthorne leads a mission and prayer mobilization ministry called WayMakers. After co-editing the Perspectives course and book in 1981, he launched a series of research expeditions among unreached peoples in Asia and the Middle East.

God’s promise to Abraham was effectively a promise to the world. In Genesis 12:1–2, God declared that He would not only bless Abram (his name at that time) but that Abram would become a blessing. The next verse reveals the amazing magnitude of that blessing: “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” How was it possible that one man would become a blessing to all of the families throughout the earth?

Even though Abram obeyed God, it’s unlikely that he grasped the global implications right away. The complete promise, as Abraham heard it repeated in the years to come, had three parts: land, family, and blessing. The first two parts about land and family probably made some sense right away. But what probably remained a mystery was the promise that somehow through his family, blessing would come upon every family on the earth.

While years passed without receiving the promised land or children, Abraham must have pondered just what the fulfillment of God’s promise would look like. We would do well to ponder it as well. The promise that “all nations will be blessed” is still being fulfilled in our day. What does it mean for a nation or people to be blessed? What should we be looking for as stewards of Abraham’s promised blessing by faith in Christ?

What Does “Blessing” Mean?

If our only source were the book of Genesis, we would learn a great deal about the idea of blessing. In Genesis, the word “blessing” is used in two distinct ways. First, we see the term blessing used to describe a pronouncement or endowment of blessing. It is an act in which a future destiny or goodness is spoken, and thus bestowed upon the person or entity being blessed. Second, the term blessing is used to describe the fulfillment of what was promised, whether material or otherwise. The word blessing, then, refers both to the giving of blessing as well as to the gifts that blessing brings forth.

Blessing as Endowment

God pronounced blessing as early as the fifth day of creation. After He created the first animal life, He declared the creatures of the sea and birds of the air as “good.” Immediately He went on to bless them, empowering them to fulfill the mandate he gave them, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill” their respective domains. By blessing them, God had made them more than merely good. His blessing endowed them with a fruitfulness and a fullness that would surely unfold. On the sixth day of creation, God created animals and humans. Once again all that God created on that day was declared to be “good.” He then blessed humanity, endowing man with the mandate and enablement to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Throughout the rest of Scripture the idea of blessing remains linked to the idea of life flourishing toward an intended fullness. When blessing is fulfilled in creatures, people, households, or nations, they are enabled to move toward their intended destiny. That change may be slow or rapid. Blessing is never seen as magical, but rather a dynamic of God’s life. Blessing is God’s goodness made “gooder.”

Further on in the record of Genesis, we see more occasions in which words of blessing are pronounced. Jacob’s struggle with Esau to obtain his father’s pronouncement of blessing is the most prominent instance (Gen 27). His struggle with an angel (or with God?) to obtain a pronouncement of blessing is noteworthy: “I will not let go unless you bless me” (32:26–29). At that time in that part of the world, a spoken blessing was understood as much more than just words. It was an irrevocable transfer of God’s special enablement and abundance.

Blessing as Tangible Fulfillment

In Genesis we also see clear references to how the promise of blessing was fulfilled in tangible ways. Near the close of Abraham’s life we read that God “had blessed Abraham in every way” (24:1). What exactly were these diverse ways that Abraham had been blessed? We can find three broad categories of blessing in the Genesis story. First, we see blessing as material wealth and fruitfulness. Second, we see blessing as favored relationship with God and the experience of His presence. And third, we see blessing bringing about a measure of peace among families and peoples.

1. Material Wealth and Fruitfulness

Abraham’s servant lists the ways God had blessed Abraham: “The LORD has greatly blessed my master, so that he has become rich; and He has given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and servants and maids, and camels and donkeys” (24:35). Note the expression, “The LORD has . . . blessed . . . so that . . .” It was obvious to this servant that the material wealth was the result of God’s blessing.

God also blessed Isaac in material ways. “After the death of Abraham . . . God blessed his son Isaac” (25:11). The account describes the quintessential act of blessing: turning barrenness to fruitfulness. “Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived” (25:21). Isaac’s blessing abounded in material wealth: “Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great house-hold” (26:12–14). God gave Isaac a plentiful water supply which to him meant that “we will be fruitful in the land” (26:22). The onlooking Philistines declared that the supply of water was evidence that Isaac was “blessed of the LORD” (26:15–22).

The same kind of material abundance was described as blessing in the life of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. After he had labored in Laban’s extended household, Laban said to Jacob that his financial and material success was directly connected to Jacob, “The LORD has blessed me because of you” (30:27). Jacob agreed, telling Laban that God has “blessed you wherever I turned” (30:30).

It’s important to note that in many parts of the world the idea of blessing is commonly understood as a magical force or a mystical power by which someone can obtain desired benefits. In this mentality, blessing is not much more than good luck that can sometimes be enhanced or manipulated with procedures performed by people believed to have special powers. Advocates of the so-called “prosperity gospel” may have more in common with this worldview which reduces blessing to a method of obtaining wealth from God. There are different forms of the “prosperity gospel,” but in each variation, people are assured that they will be blessed. But they are almost never told that God desires to make them His blessing to all peoples.

2. More than Material Wealth: God’s Presence

Blessing was more than abounding fruitfulness and riches. Neighboring nations recognized some intangible aspects of blessing. Most notable was Abraham’s relationship with God. His neighbors said to him, “God is with you in all that you do” (21:22). With people of the city of Sodom looking on, no less a figure than the priest Melchizedek publicly celebrated Abram’s favor with God, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High . . . who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (14:19–20). Similarly, Isaac’s neighbors said, “We see plainly that the LORD has been with you” (26:28).

3. More than Covenant with God: Peace amid the Peoples

Recognizing the extraordinary presence of God with Abraham, his Philistine neighbors approached him in order to work out a covenant of peace (21:22–23). This brought peace to a dispute about water usage and the outcome that “Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines for many days” enjoying prolonged goodwill (21:24–34). Years later in Isaac’s time, the relationship with the Philistines became strained again. The Philistines attempted to push Isaac’s household out of their territory (26:12–17). God helped Isaac discover sources of water again and again. Eventually there was such an abundance of water for everyone that the Philistines approached Isaac to “make a covenant” of peace with him. The Philistines finally declared to Isaac, “You are now the blessed of the LORD” (26:18–29).

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Blessing Beyond Abraham’s Family

We’ve seen what it meant for Abraham and his family to be blessed. But do we also see the nations blessed in the stories of Abraham’s family in Genesis?

Less than Blessed

Abraham and his household sojourned twice to live in foreign nations, and twice he lied about his wife (in Gen 12 and 20). Both times, Sarai (her name at the time) was taken to be the wife of the king, which brought judgment to the host nation. In the second instance, when the king realized that God’s wrath was about to fall upon his entire people, he confronted Abraham saying, “How have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done” (20:9). Abraham’s action brought about the opposite of blessing. And even though Abraham prayed for God to restore the capacity to bear children, this was certainly not the way to bring blessing to other peoples.

Blessing Coming to Neighbors and Nations

Despite these and other events, God did bring help to other nations through Abraham and his descendants. For example, Abraham came to the rescue of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 14), which had been taken captive by raiding armies that had seized “all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food supply” (14:11). Not long after this, Abraham had the idea that he would pray that God would spare the entire city of Sodom. He argued his case before God, not just for his nephew Lot and his family, but for “the whole city” (18:28). Even though the city was eventually destroyed, the point is that Abraham initiated intercession to rescue the entire city.

God repeatedly helped Isaac to dig wells providing water that was used by the neighboring Philistines (26:12–22). Jacob could say of his years serving in Laban’s house-hold and business, “the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned” (30:30).

It is significant that near the end of Genesis, we see Abraham’s grandson Jacob pronouncing a blessing upon the Egyptian emperor Pharaoh. The exact words aren’t recorded, but there was a formal occasion in which “Jacob blessed Pharaoh” (47:7, 10).

The crescendo of the entire book of Genesis is the story of Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson. Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before him, the incredible productivity of Joseph’s work caused watching foreigners to conclude that the active power of God was at work with Joseph, bringing a surprising abundance: “The LORD was with him and . . . the LORD caused all that he did to prosper in his hand” (Gen 39:3). His master recognized that because of Joseph, “the LORD’s blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field” (39:5).

Blessing Egypt and the People of All the Earth

God gave Joseph an interpretation of a dream that predicted a seven-year famine. Pharaoh recognized that the Spirit of God had given Joseph insight and wisdom (41:38). And so he declared, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt,” and further, “Without your permission, no one shall raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt” (41:41, 44). When the famine came, its devastation “spread over all the face of the earth” (41:56). Joseph was positioned to extend blessing to many nations, as “the people of all the earth came to buy grain from Joseph” (41:57).

In the second year of the seven-year famine, Joseph distributed food in exchange for money and livestock (47:14–17). As the final year of the famine came, he had arranged for the survival of the people of Egypt. In exchange for state ownership of land and a 20 percent tax (a very generous arrangement compared to most feudal systems), he offered grain to be used as seed for planting as a way of restarting agricultural cycles after the famine (47:18–24). As the famine ends with hope for longterm survival, the statement of the people is telling: “You have saved our lives!” (47:25).¹

Later Will Be Greater: Fulfillment in Descendants

Did Abraham comprehend the blessing to the nations that God was promising, especially the eventual magnitude of it? In each of the five times that God promised blessing to the nations, take note of how God amplified and clarified how His promise would be fulfilled.

Three Times to Abraham

In the initial call and promise, God told Abram that he would become “a great nation.” The promise was framed as if “all the families of the earth will be blessed” (12:3) by a single person.

The second time God speaks the promise of blessing, the promise seems almost identical. In one great person, “all the nations of the earth will be blessed” (18:18). But the next verse adds that God would bring about “what had been spoken,” or promised, to Abraham through “his children and his household after him” (18:19). From this point forward the promise would emphasize what would happen in Abraham’s descendants.

The third time God declares the promise to Abraham, God decides to demonstrate to Abraham that he really would trust and follow God’s way of blessing. We are told that “God tested Abraham” (22:1) by telling him to offer his son Isaac. The Apostle Paul described the tested faith of Abraham: He believed that God could either give “life to the dead,” or God could call “into being that which does not exist.” Abraham trusted that God could either raise his son from the dead or that He could create for him another son. So he had not one but two hopes: “In hope against hope” Abraham trusted God (Rom 4:17–18). [reading segment continues after sidebar]

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[LESSON 12] CONTINUE READING: The Lausanne Covenant (section 5)

Abraham obeyed God, who provided a substitute sacrifice. God repeated His promise, but with a significant difference. No longer is the promise of blessing to be fulfilled during the lifetime of Abraham, but instead, the fulfillment would come in the generations yet to come. “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (22:18). The singular word “seed” is a generic term describing the generations of Abraham’s future descendants. God repeated His promise with the gravity of solemnly swearing with an oath, “By myself I have sworn” (22:16). The purpose of the oath was to assure future generations, people like us, that God will not fail to fulfill His promise to bless all the nations through them.

Again to Isaac and yet Again to Jacob

God gave the promise a fourth time, this time directly to Isaac. Once again, God said that “in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (26:4). The word “seed” is amplified, spoken of as descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky (15:5; 22:17). In the fifth declaration, God promised Jacob that his descendants would be numerous and would “spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south” (28:14). At the time, Jacob may have thought that the geographic expansion was nothing more than populating the land that God had promised to give to him. But the promise is spoken in a way that could describe the great geographic expansion related to an eventual global fulfillment.

The Promise Fulfilled in Christ

Most Christians have been taught well about Jesus Christ coming to provide a way for people to be adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters. In his letter to the Galatians Paul says that “when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son . . . that we might receive” adoption as God’s children (4:4–5). But a few verses earlier in the same book Paul says that those who believe in Christ have been joined with Christ in such a way that they become part of Abraham’s family. “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise” (3:29).

The way the promise was given to Abraham, blessing would be fulfilled in the “seed” of Abraham. This word is often used as a “collective singular,” speaking of many seeds. Thus, the term can refer to one descendant or to a multitude of descendants. Which is it?

Paul answers the question this way: Both are true. There is one preeminent son of Abraham: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ” (3:16). Jesus Christ is the one seed of Abraham, but Paul also declares that since people become sons and daughters of Abraham’s family by faith, the promise is being fulfilled by their faith as those who inherit the promise:

It is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles [ethne = nations] by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham. (3:7–9)

Christ has now ended the curse and opened the family of God. Now people from every family on earth can be part of Abraham’s family by faith in Christ. They inherit the full family heritage of being blessed in order to become God’s blessing to all the nations. Each person will only see a small part of the fullness in their lifetime, but each son or daughter of Abraham will be honored as one who fulfilled God’s promise to all peoples.

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God’s Promise Becomes Our Mandate

God’s promise to bless all the nations through Abraham’s descendants carries mandate force for everyone who has been joined with Christ by faith. The promise so clearly reveals God’s purpose, that Christians rightly consider it to convey God’s mandate to serve as His agents of blessing among all the peoples of the earth.² We are blessed in Christ in order to bring forth the blessing of Christ among all the nations. But what are we hoping for? What does it mean for the nations to be blessed? And how are we to pursue it? The promise of blessing shapes and integrates our mission in two important ways.

Relational Blessing: Belonging to God’s Family

The greatest blessing imaginable is the privilege of belonging to God’s people, and therefore, belonging to God as His children. Christ has opened Abraham’s family to all. We are now seeing people from every people, tribe, and clan being joined with Christ by faith and enfolded into the people of God. Extending the invitation to belong to God’s family is the greater part of what it means to bring blessing to the nations. We cannot consider that the Abrahamic blessing has visited a people if the gospel of Jesus Christ has not yet been clearly conveyed to them.

What will it look like when this aspect of God’s blessing is fulfilled? We can look forward to the day when we will see at least some from every people on earth trusting and following Christ. The blessing of the nations means much more than evangelism, but it certainly can mean no less than the evangelization of every people.

We have seen in the book of Genesis that God displayed evidence of His dynamic presence with His people. God will be no less present amidst the peoples of the earth as groups of obedient followers of Christ emerge and grow among the nations. As in the book of Genesis, the presence of God with His people in our day is the beginning of all of the more tangible aspects of blessing that God brought about. This means that evangelization has a special priority. God’s promise to bless the nations is the framework in which Christ’s commission to disciple some from every people makes sense. The promise of blessing authorizes Christ’s followers to hope and to work together for God’s life to abound amidst every people.

Material and Social Blessing: Abundance and Peace

We can expect the blessing of belonging to God to become a reality amidst every people. But we can look forward to so much more! We can expect to see significant displays of the abundance of God’s life. We should not expect a utopian perfection. But we can work and pray with a strong hope, partly informed by what we see in the book of Genesis, that God will be with His people to bring forth significant measures of blessing among the nations.

And so we ask again, what will the fulfillment of God’s promise to bless the nations look like? Of course, it will be different in every place and people, but we should expect God to bring forth every kind of blessing, such as economies that flourish with justice and righteousness, agricultures and industries that abound with plenty for all, and peace throughout communities and between different peoples and races. We can expect that God will enable His people to wage war with disease, to break the vicious cycles of poverty, to provide water in desert lands, and to be present with healing in the midst of catastrophe.

We should expect that some of Abraham’s children by faith will be used by God to preserve life after the example of Joseph. We are probably seeing now in many cities an answer to Abraham’s prayer for the city of Sodom in Genesis 18. In that prayer God said that an entire city would be spared the immediate consequences of their sin because of the righteousness of a few. In Abraham’s day there were less than ten righteous people in that city. In our day, there are millions of God’s faith family spread throughout many of the cities of the earth.

Blessing as Transformation

Recently the term “transformation” has helped many express hope that Christian mission can be directed beyond successful evangelism to also seek lasting changes in society which reflect the justice and character of Christ. The biblical ground for integrating evangelism with social action is usually found in numerous biblical texts dealing with the hope and reality of the kingdom of God. It could be that we have been overlooking a body of biblical truth that supports a robust and strategic holism. God’s ancient promise of blessing provides a vivid, rich, and powerful framework for integrating the pursuit of societal transformation and the completion of world evangelization.

Here are seven reasons why the Abrahamic promise of blessing provides a framework for us to pray, plan, and colabor for the evangelization of all the peoples of the earth with hope that there will be significant transformation.

1. God Works with and through His People

God’s people work with intentionality, strategy, and hope, using all of the grace, skills, and resources God has entrusted to them. But at the same time, God infuses the work of His people with His power and life. Blessing is a function of the work of people and the presence of God. Blessing is always more than the sum of all human efforts.

2. God Brings Good Things from Evil People

The defining story of mission is not a story about God finding the best people and then sending them to do good things for others. In the story of Genesis, the brother-killing-brother threats did not stop with Cain killing Abel. There was conflict between Isaac and his brother Ishmael. And then Jacob was told to flee to a distant land so his brother Esau would not kill him. The brothers of Joseph intended to kill him, but instead they sold him into slavery. The people of this family were not good and kind people. Joseph tells his brothers that even though they had planned “evil against me,” God had overruled. God used their evil plot “for good—in order to bring about this day, to preserve many people alive” (50:20).

3. Increase and Fullness, but Never Perfection or Utopia

A blessed city or people is not a perfect society. Instead, hope for blessing gives us courage to pray and to work toward societies that flourish in every way—spiritually, relationally, physically, economically, aesthetically, and environmentally.

4. Not Exclusive to God’s People

While God’s people are distinctively blessed, God intends for His blessing to extend beyond His people. The well-being of entire cities and nations can be pursued without respect to how the gospel may have been received or rejected.

5. Growth rather than Redistribution

Generosity is certainly a virtue of anyone who would desire to be a blessing in a biblical sense. But being a blessing means something other than merely sharing wealth with equality in view. The basic idea of blessing is that God’s life multiplies and comes to an abundance or fullness by God’s doing.

6. Blessing even from the Poor and Powerless

Throughout Genesis, God brought about great blessing through weak, comparatively poor, or powerless people. Joseph was an imprisoned slave. Being a blessing in God’s hand is never the exclusive privilege of those who are wealthy or well positioned by global standards.

7. Blessing Is Variable, Slow-Forming, and Long-Lasting

Changes that can be attributed to God’s blessing often take place over a period of years or even generations. The fruition of blessing appears in comparable but never identical ways in every people or place.

Coworkers with God to Bring Blessing

We find in the Genesis account a remarkably clear prophetic sketch of the broad scope of God’s purpose for His people. Since God’s promise to Abraham embodies His purpose and our mission, then we are right to expect that our mission will lead to social and material change or transformation. But the main lesson to be learned is not that God’s mission includes concerns for social and physical issues. The greatest lessons we may find are those which show us how to cowork with God to bring forth His blessing. To be God’s blessing among all the peoples will require our utmost effort somehow blended with the exertion of God’s miraculous, life-giving power.

As God continues the fulfillment of His promise in our day, we can learn important lessons about how we can cowork with God from the lives of Abraham’s family. Perhaps the person in Genesis that exemplifies the mystery of God at work with His people to bring forth blessing is Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph.

1. Coworking with God

Joseph worked with God and God worked through Joseph. When Potiphar’s household was blessed, the miraculous increase was said to be “the LORD’s blessing” (39:5). The abundance multiplied in extraordinary ways because of the diligence and wisdom of Joseph’s efforts. We see God at work in supernatural ways, giving Joseph abilities to interpret dreams. But it was Joseph’s skill and wisdom, also given by God, that put together a long-range plan to help the people of Egypt survive the famine and to restore economic and agricultural abundance.

2. Working Faithfully Regardless of Position

When Joseph worked as a slave, he worked diligently so that blessing abounded throughout all of his master’s affairs. Even while in Pharaoh’s dungeon as a prisoner, he proved trustworthy and was put in charge of running the prison because “whatever he did, the LORD made to prosper” (39:23). He was promoted to the highest pinnacle of power in an extensive empire. In that position he was used to save many lives and to restore the fertile agricultural economy of Egypt.

3. Serving as One Sent by God

Joseph gradually came to understand that he had been sent by God. He could have lived out a storyline of victimization as someone who had been brutalized by his family, unjustly treated as a slave, wrongly accused, and forgotten in prison. But instead, he came to recognize that God was aiming at something far beyond his own well-being, to preserve the lives of many people (50:20). Joseph told his brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:5, 7–8). Joseph is the first person in the story of the Bible who is said to have been expressly sent by God to accomplish a mission of any kind.

4. Accomplishing God’s Purpose

As Joseph stated it, the purpose God sent him to accomplish was simply to “preserve life.” Joseph preserved the lives of his own family, but the grateful exclamation of the Egyptian people tells the greater story of lives saved throughout Egypt and Canaan: “You have saved our lives!” (47:25).

Without clarity about God’s greater purpose unfolding over many years, it’s doubtful that Joseph would have recognized that God had sent him at all. Joseph could have arranged that his remains would have been entombed in grand Egyptian style. Instead, he insisted that his remains be carried back to the land that God had promised Abraham (Gen 50:25; Heb 11:22). Joseph realized that he was pursuing a purpose that would be fulfilled beyond his own life span.

You Have Been Long Awaited

We know that Abraham gazed at the sky, counting the stars, believing that his family would number in the billions. But according to Jesus, Abraham saw more than the sky at night. He saw the day. The day of Christ. A day in which billions of his children would be blessed and be a blessing among all the peoples of earth. No wonder he was moved with joy. Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

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God’s blessing of people overflows in their blessing of others, and, those who experience blessing from God in turn bless God, which means that they give all that creatures really can give to God: thanksgiving and praise.

Blessing highlights the relationship between creation and salvation in a different way from other ways of characterizing God’s activity in the world. Already on the fifth day of the creation God blesses (Gen 1:22). Blessing is the way God enables His creation to be fertile and fruitful, to grow and to flourish. It is in the most comprehensive sense God’s purpose for His creation. Wherever human life enjoys the good things of creation and produces the good fruits of human activity, God is pouring out His blessing. Wherever people bless God for His blessings, to that extent God is known as the good Creator who provides for human flourishing. God’s blessing is universal.

But we should not think of the idea of blessing as something that describes God’s goodness in creation, but does not also help us understand His goodness in salvation. Salvation, too, is God’s blessing, since salvation is the fulfillment of God’s purposes in spite of the damage evil does to God’s creation. The Abrahamic blessing is more than the blessing of creation because it is designed to contend with and to overcome its opposite: God’s curse.

With sin, God’s curse enters creation alongside God’s blessing. We found the universal background to God’s promise to Abraham in the account of the nations in Genesis 10–11.

But there is an even earlier background in Genesis 3 and 4, where the blessings of creation turn to curse (3:17; 4:11). The curse even enters into God’s promise to Abraham, apparently paralleling the blessing. God says to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse” (Gen 12:3 NASB; cf. 27:29; Num 24:9). But blessing predominates in the promise (as the difference between the plural “those who bless you” and the singular “the one who curses you” seems to suggest), and it is clearly blessing, not curse that is the goal of God’s calling of Abraham. Therefore blessing has the last word in the promise: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Through the story of Israel, curse continually accompanies blessing (e.g., Deut 7:12–16; 27–28), but the ultimate goal of God’s promise to Abraham is the blessing that will prevail over the curse. It does when the seed of Abraham, the singled-out descendant of Abraham, the Messiah, becomes “a curse for us so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Gal 3:13–14 ESV). This is why God’s promise that the nations will be blessed is called “the gospel” by Paul (Gal 3:8). The secret of the promise is Christ’s bearing of the curse so that the blessing may prevail. The gospel is that in Jesus Christ the curse has been set aside and God’s creative purpose for the blessing of His creation is established beyond any possibility of reversal. God’s last and effective word is His blessing. It is a particular word, spoken in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, broadcast by those who, like Paul, cannot but pass it on, so powerful is its effect, overflowing with blessing from those who, blessed by it, become a blessing to others.

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Notes

1. Some observers have interpreted Joseph’s action as a shrewd act of oppression denying impoverished people ownership of land. The account emphasizes that many lives were saved. When viewed in light of most famines that wiped out millions of people in the ancient world along with the likelihood that many regimes would have allowed much of the population to slowly starve, it is possible to see Joseph’s work as a work of salvation. But because there was a restoration of agricultural abundance, it should be considered an act of blessing.

2. In Genesis 12:2, the Hebrew expression “be a blessing” is in the imperative mood. Taken by itself this verb could be considered to be a clear command to Abram to somehow become a blessing. But even though the word itself is in the imperative mood, the grammar of the entire expression frames this phrase as a forceful way to express the purpose of the three cohortative Hebrew verbs immediately before it (to make Abram a great nation, to bless him, and to make his name great).