Luke 1:55 Commentary and Bible Study

‘To our fathers’, to whom the great promises concerning Israel were first made when God promised that they would be his people and he would be their God. That promise to the nation formed the basis of all his further dealings with them until that time. But we read that they were promises not just for a time, but for ever, and this expression ‘for ever’ tells us that the land promises were only the shadow and not the reality, for Israel has not kept the land for ever, and besides, the land is on earth and the real blessing is in heaven. For this reason we know that the seed spoken of here is the spiritual seed who will indeed keep it forever, those who have spiritual life within them by the power of the Spirit, who will be raised from the dead and enter into eternal blessing.These promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were still fresh in the mind of Mary. She longed for their fulfilment, because she knew that all the good that would ever come upon her and upon the seed of Abraham, the believing spiritual seed, would come through their fulfilment. She studied the promises and her mind was often thinking about them. She had the faith now – having had a little time to reflect on Gabriel’s message – to see that she herself was about to be the recipient of these wonderful things, and to play a major part in God bringing them about for the nation. Abraham is taken as the sole example of the fathers, though ‘fathers’ is plural. It is about all God has ever said from the beginning: to Adam and Eve about the seed of the woman, and to all the prophets that followed. The promises to Abraham were delivered in two ways. In a typical form, they were delivered in a limited sense to all the physical descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, by giving them a land, and protecting them and supplying their many earthly needs. But this first fulfilment was in turn an encouragement to believe the greater promise. It was not the true fulfilment, but a token fulfilment along the way, giving assurance of a greater fulfilment to follow. The true fulfilment would come to the spiritual seed, the believing remnant in Israel, and especially to the church of Jesus Christ. Above all, it would come to Jesus Christ, the one seed, in whom all his people would be blessed. The coming of Christ is about an eternal deliverance. He came as the King who would deliver for all eternity. This song of Mary was inspired by God. He maybe caused her to talk of things she didn’t fully understand. When the angel spoke to the shepherds and when they visited the child Jesus in the stable, Mary heard about this and she pondered all that had happened, as if she did not fully understand it all. Yet she speaks here as a prophetess.