Examining The Scripture VII: I Will Bless Those That Bless You

In Genesis 12:1-3 we see what is called the Abrahamic Covenant and the promises God made to Abram who eventually is renamed Abraham. God promised Abram that He would make him into a great nation, that He would bless him, that his name would be great, that Abram himself would be a blessing or more specifically the people of the earth would be blessed through Abram/Abraham (Isaac, Jacob, Judah…to Jesus). Conversely, those who cursed Abram or his lineage would be reciprocally cursed. The blessing leads to Jesus Christ which means the main blessing is redemption, salvation from sin, eternal life and all the benefits of being co-heir with Jesus the Messiah(praise God!) and all the rewards that come with accepting what Jesus did on the cross. To anyone that accepts.

There is a connection to Genesis in that Genesis 3:15: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." was the “Protoevangelium” or first announcement of the Gospel. Some descendant of Eve in humanity would crush the head (symbol of power in the Old Testament times) of the serpent/Satan. The Abrahamic Covenant narrows that to the lineage of Abraham.

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. ~Genesis 15:6

We then jump ahead to Genesis 15:6 to a core theological verse in the Bible. It was by faith in the fact that God existed and that He would fulfill what He promised that Abram would be saved. He believed God. This faith was credited to him as righteousness. We are not saved by making promises to God (works) we are saved by believing the promise of God (Wiersbe 81). Righteousness in the theological Christian sense is living a Godly life conformed to God’s commands and it is the righteous who will enjoy God’s favor. This ends up leading into New Testament theology. All have sinned and need God’s righteousness “imputed” to us or “put against our accounts”. For the descendants of Abraham were saved the same way that we are saved today, believing in God’s promise of the Messiah to come (Jesus). In the Old Testament it was the coming of or the promise of Messiah. In the New Testament in is the faith in Christ and His completed work at Calvary. Abram’s belief is critical here. Without it there is no covenant because belief is Abram’s side of the agreement/covenant to uphold. By faith Abraham was justified (Romans 4:16-18).


Wiersbe, Warren W.. "Dark Night Of The Soul." The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament Genesis-Deuteronomy (The Pentateuch) (Bible Exposition Commentary). Acambaro: Victor, 2001. 81. Print.