Galatians 3:18 Commentary and Bible Study

The inheritance is first promised to the seed, Christ, and consists of all things in heaven and in earth – God speaking to us in these last days ‘by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things’ (Hebrews 1:2). Abraham who was the prototype and example of all believers received, in Christ, ‘the promise, that he should be the heir of the world’ (Romans 4:13), and all believers have an inheritance in Christ, as a result of their covenant relationship with him, ‘in whom also we have obtained an inheritance’ (Ephesians 1:11). In the case of Abraham a further earthly token of this heaven inheritance was added, the physical land: ‘By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise’ (Hebrews 11:9), but because this was only a type of heaven, ‘he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God’ (Hebrews 11:10), ‘a better country, that is, an heavenly’ (Hebrews 11:16). Paul asks, ‘How did Abraham receive this inheritance? By promise or by the law?’ Again he says that if inheritance was by law – as a result of obedience to the law – then it could no longer be by promise, because what is promised is given unconditionally, but what comes by law is earned conditionally. The obvious answer is, by promise, because God promised it to Abraham who lived and died at least 430 years before the law was given. What God gave to him during his life on earth, he did not take away again after he had died by introducing new conditions. The fact that it was unconditional was what made it certain (Romans 4:16), for nothing that depends on the performance of fallen human nature can be guaranteed.