What’s Happening?
In the garden, God meant to mature humanity into his own glory. Adam and Eve were made to grow into the knowledge of good and evil and into the fullness of God’s image—but as a gift, received by waiting on God, not seized by their own hand. Instead they grasped, reaching to become like God on their own terms and in their own time. Ever since, this has been the deformed reflex of the human heart: to grab at God’s promises rather than wait for God to form them in us. Abram, called to bear God’s image again, will face the same test.
God had promised Abram descendants as countless as the stars (Genesis 15:5). The promise was not only about number but about glory. The stars were the bright, shining host of heaven, glorious beings who ruled God’s creation with him from the beginning (Job 38:7). Abram’s children were to become like them—humanity grown at last into the brightness of God’s image. But Abram and Sarai were old, and Sarai was barren (Genesis 11:30). The shining multitude God promised would have to come from a dead and childless line.
So God bound his word in covenant. In the ancient world, covenants were sealed in blood: animals were cut in two, and both parties walked between the pieces, pledging their own lives to keep the promise (Genesis 15:10). But when night fell, Abram watched as God alone passed through the sacrifice in a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch (Genesis 15:17). God passed through by himself for two reasons. First, the life of the promise was something Abram could never produce; only God could bring children from a barren womb. And second, a covenant lasts only as long as those who make it. Had Abram walked through, the promise would have died when he died. Because God walked through alone, the promise is as deathless as he is. God’s word cannot fail, because God cannot die.
Yet Abram and Sarai could not wait. Rather than trust God to bring the promised life in his time, they reached for it by their own strength—just as Adam and Eve had reached for the fruit. Sarai gave her servant Hagar to Abram, and Hagar conceived (Genesis 16:2–4). The grasp brought conflict, and Hagar fled into the wilderness. But God did not abandon her. He met her there, saw her in her suffering, and promised that her son too would become a great nation (Genesis 16:10–13). Ishmael would not be the child of promise—he was the child of grasping, life produced by human effort. Yet even over Abram’s failure to wait, God remained faithful.
Where is the Gospel?
The promise God made to Abram could not die, because God himself carried it. And in Jesus, God keeps it in full.
Jesus is the seed who does what Adam and Abram could not: he bears God’s image without grasping, receiving glory from his Father rather than seizing it (Philippians 2:6). And he takes our humanity into himself precisely to give us what we could never grasp on our own—to form his own image in us, maturing us into the shining glory of God we were always meant to share.
He does this the way God has always worked: by bringing life from barrenness. Paul says the story of Sarah and Hagar shows two ways of living (Galatians 4:23–24). Ishmael is life according to the flesh—God’s promise grabbed by human effort. Isaac is life according to the promise—life God alone gives where there was only death. The grave is the barren womb of the world, and from it God brings the impossible birth. When we join Jesus in his death, he does what no one can do for themselves: he brings life from the dead, new birth from the barren tomb.
This is how the countless, shining multitude is finally born. Those who die with Jesus and rise in him are remade into the bright images of God that Abram’s stars foretold—not by grasping glory too soon, but by being formed into it by the God who took our humanity into himself and will not let his promise die.
See for Yourself
I pray the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God who brings life from a barren and dead line and whose promise can never die. And may you see Jesus as the one who takes your humanity into himself, forms his image in you, and raises you to shine like the stars he promised.