Commentary - Galatians 3:6-9

Bird's-eye view

In this pivotal section of his letter, the Apostle Paul brings out his heavy artillery to demolish the Judaizers' central error. Having just rebuked the Galatians for their foolishness in turning from the Spirit to the flesh, he now grounds his argument in the bedrock of the Old Testament itself. He demonstrates that the gospel of justification by faith alone is not a New Testament novelty but has been the one true way of salvation from the beginning. Paul's masterstroke is to appeal to Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish nation. If the Judaizers want to talk about what it means to be a true son of Abraham, Paul is more than happy to oblige. He shows that Abraham's defining characteristic was not his circumcision, not his law-keeping, but his faith. He believed God, and that act of naked trust was what God counted to him as righteousness. Consequently, true sonship to Abraham is a matter of spiritual lineage, not ethnic pedigree. Those who share Abraham's faith are his true children, and this was God's plan all along, a plan that explicitly included the Gentiles from the very start.

This passage is therefore a compact and powerful exposition of the continuity of the gospel. Paul is collapsing the false distinction the Judaizers have erected between the Old and New Covenants. He shows that the gospel promise given to Abraham is the very same gospel that Paul preaches. The Scripture itself preached the gospel in advance, promising that through Abraham's seed, all the nations would be blessed. This seed is ultimately Christ, and the blessing is the righteousness that comes through faith in Him. Therefore, to be blessed is to be blessed with Abraham, the believer, not apart from him and not on different terms.

Outline

Context In Galatians

This passage comes directly on the heels of Paul's sharp, rhetorical questions in Galatians 3:1-5. He has just asked the Galatians if they received the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith. He has called them foolish for starting in the Spirit only to try and finish in the flesh. Now, in verses 6-9, he provides the scriptural proof for his assertions. The argument is not based on Paul's personal apostolic authority alone, but on the testimony of the Scriptures which his opponents claimed to revere. This section serves as the positive biblical case for justification by faith, which he will then contrast with the curse of the law in the verses that follow (Gal 3:10-14). By establishing Abraham as the paradigm of faith, Paul is strategically dismantling the Judaizers' entire platform, which was built on the necessity of adopting Jewish ethnic and ceremonial markers (like circumcision) to be right with God. Paul is showing that their program is not only contrary to the gospel of Christ but is also a profound misreading of their own patriarch and their own Scriptures.

Key Issues

The Father of Faith

The Judaizers who were troubling the Galatian churches were essentially identity thieves. They were trying to steal the identity of Abraham and make it their own private possession, accessible only to those who submitted to their rules. They defined being a "son of Abraham" in terms of bloodline and ritual. Paul confronts this head-on by going back to the source. He says, in effect, "You want to talk about Abraham? Let's talk about Abraham."

Paul's argument is that the Judaizers have mistaken the packaging for the gift. They were focused on the outward signs of the covenant, like circumcision, while completely missing the heart of the covenant, which was always faith. Abraham is the father of all who believe because his relationship with God was established on the basis of faith long before the Law of Moses was given and even before he was circumcised (as Paul argues in Romans 4). God made a promise to a pagan idolater from Ur, and Abraham, by grace, believed that promise. That is the root. Everything else in Israel's history is the fruit. By making faith the central issue, Paul internationalizes the family of Abraham, showing that God's intention was never to create an exclusive ethnic club but a global family united by a shared trust in His promises.

Verse by Verse Commentary

6 Just as Abraham BELIEVED GOD AND IT WAS COUNTED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS,

Paul begins his scriptural proof by quoting Genesis 15:6. This is the bedrock. The word "believed" here is not mere intellectual assent. It is a deep, settled trust and reliance upon the character and promise of God. Abraham was childless and old, and God promised him descendants as numerous as the stars. From a human perspective, this was laughable. But Abraham took God at His word. He entrusted his entire future to a promise that he could not see. And God's response to this act of faith was to "count" it to him as righteousness. The Greek word is logizomai, an accounting term. It means to credit something to someone's account. God looked at Abraham's faith and credited his account with the status of "righteous." This is the doctrine of imputation in seed form. It was not Abraham's own inherent righteousness, but a righteousness that was reckoned to him by God on the basis of his faith. This one verse dismantles the entire framework of works-righteousness.

7 so know that those who are of faith, those are sons of Abraham.

From the precedent, Paul draws the inescapable principle. The connection is direct and emphatic. "So know that..." or "Therefore, understand that..." This is not a difficult concept. If Abraham's defining moment was his faith, then his true children will be defined by that same faith. The phrase "those who are of faith" describes a people whose very identity is derived from faith. It is their source, their origin, their defining quality. Paul is redrawing the family lines. Sonship is not about genetics, ethnicity, or ritual observance. It is about faith. A Gentile in Galatia who trusts in Christ has more of Abraham's spiritual DNA than an unbelieving Jew in Jerusalem who can trace his physical lineage back forty generations. This was a revolutionary and deeply offensive idea to the Judaizers, but it is the very heart of the gospel.

8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.”

Paul now expands his argument, personifying Scripture to show that this has been the plan from the beginning. Scripture is not a passive record; it is an active, divine agent that "foresees" and "proclaims." What did it foresee? That God's plan of justification by faith was never intended to be limited to the Jews. The justification of the Gentiles was always part of the script. And how do we know this? Because the Scripture "proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham." The gospel is not a new invention. The good news was preached to Abraham thousands of years before Christ's birth. And what was that gospel? It was the promise of Genesis 12:3 and 18:18: "All the nations will be blessed in you." The blessing promised to Abraham was not for his exclusive enjoyment. He was to be the conduit of that blessing to the entire world. The blessing is justification, and the means is faith, and the scope is all the nations.

9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.

This verse serves as the grand conclusion to the argument. "So then" connects everything that has been said. The logic is airtight. If Abraham was justified by faith, and if his true children are those who share his faith, and if the gospel promised from the beginning was a blessing for all nations through him, then the conclusion is clear. Those whose identity is "of faith" are the ones who receive the blessing. And notice how Paul phrases it: they are blessed with Abraham. They enter into the very same blessing that Abraham received, and on the same terms. They become co-heirs with him. Paul adds the crucial descriptor, "Abraham, the believer." This is his essential identity. He is not "Abraham, the circumcised," or "Abraham, the patriarch," but "Abraham, the believer." That is the foundation upon which the entire household of God is built. To be in that house is to share that faith.

Application

This passage is a potent antidote to one of the most persistent errors in the human heart: the desire to contribute to our own salvation. We are all natural-born Judaizers. We want to have something to point to, some ritual we have performed, some standard we have met, some pedigree we can claim. We want to add a "+ works" to the gospel of grace. Paul's argument here forces us to confront the radical simplicity of the gospel. You are either a son of Abraham by faith, or you are not a son of Abraham at all. There is no third way.

This means that our assurance before God rests on the exact same ground as Abraham's. We look away from ourselves, our performance, our heritage, and our feelings, and we look to the promise of God in Christ. We believe God. We believe that He has provided a righteousness for us in His Son, and that He credits that righteousness to our account when we do nothing more and nothing less than trust Him. This is profoundly humbling, because it strips us of all grounds for boasting. But it is also profoundly liberating. Our standing with God does not depend on our fluctuating efforts but on the unchangeable promise of God and the finished work of Christ. We are blessed not because we are good, but because we are "with Abraham, the believer," trusting in the God who justifies the ungodly.