John 8:56 Commentary and Bible Study

Abraham saw the day of Christ in his own time, because he understood the Scriptures. Consider Genesis 3:15, the statement of God to the serpent at the Fall of man – ‘I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heal.’ The first promise of a coming Messiah is given immediately following the fall of man and his disobedience in the Garden of Eden; there will be hostility between the seed of the serpent, that is unsaved people, unconverted people, and the serpent also. Christ will bruise the serpent’s head. This happened on Calvary’s cross when Satan was defeated. He lost control of all who would become believers in Christ and came under judgement himself. But Christ suffered in the process: ‘and thou [the serpent] shall bruise his heel’, when on Calvary he made an atonement for sin. So there would be a great descendant to Adam and Eve through whom the world would be redeemed, and that was firmly in the mind of all the godly throughout the Old Testament.Then in Genesis 15:1-6 the same promise begins to be unfolded to Abraham and it is explained to him that the blessing would come through one born in his own house and from his own body who would be his heir. As a result he would have a great multitude of descendants as the stars of heaven. This was the beginning of the unfolding of the promise. And in chapter 17 it is unfolded further when God makes a covenant with Abraham confirmed in the promised seed, Christ, by which not just Hebrews not Gentiles will be saved. Then in Genesis 22 where God tempted or tested Abraham and commanded him to offer up his only son, Isaac, and at the last moment God stayed the hand of Abraham. Why was he put through that terrible experience? Because God was enabling Abraham to identify with him. He was going to send a Saviour, the Messiah, he was going to give him for the sin of the world. Of course, he would live again, but he was going to have to see him crucified on that cross of Calvary. And he, the Father, would lay on his beloved Son – equally God with him – he would lay upon him the sin of all who would be saved, and punish him instead of them. Abraham was going to be enabled to identify even with God in the possible loss of his only son. That is included when Christ said, Abraham saw my day. He could see the future, he knew what was going to happen. God showed him, God brought him to this point of great identification.Now if Abraham did not know it before, he now realised for certain that the ultimate promised seed was not Isaac, but one far greater who was yet to come, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Abraham saw the day of Christ. The Son of God would come, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.