Question
In Gen 12:2 God tells Abram that He will “make of thee a great nation” Then in 17:4 He says “thou will be a father of many nations.” I know the great nation is Israel but who are the many nations?
Response
In Romans 4:16-17 the apostle Paul quotes and makes reference to the issue of what God said in Genesis 17:4-5 saying to Abram that He has made him to be the “father of many nations.” And Paul does this in the context of teaching us how that when God justified Abram unto eternal life He established him as “the father of all them that believe,” (both of the circumcision and the uncircumcision). Hence my understanding from what Paul teaches in verses 16-18 in particular is that when God said to Abram “thou will be a father of many nations” that this is what He was referring to.
Paul makes it evident from what he teaches in Romans 4:9ff that God clearly did establish Abraham to be “the father of all them that believe.” And in so doing, Paul also makes it clear from what he teaches in verses 16-18 that when God said to Abram what is recorded in Genesis 17:4 and 5 about him being “the father of many nations,” that God was referring back to Abram’s justification unto life that is recorded in Genesis 15:6 and to the faith-father exemplar for justification in God’s sight that God established him to be at that time. In connection with this Paul says verses 16-17 with respect to “the faith of Abraham” that he is “the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations)”; and then again in Romans 4:18, “Who (Abram) against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken. So shall thy seed be.”
So it is clear to me on the basis of what Paul teaches here that when God told Abram, “I have made thee a father of many nations,” that He was declaring him to be that faith-father exemplar for “all them that believe,” which as Paul also makes clear is true and applicable even for us in this present dispensation of God’s grace.
Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries
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