Galatians 3:16

Promises. These promises included a son to be his heir (Gen. 15:4), possession of the literal land of Canaan (v. 18), the prospect of becoming a great nation (chs. 12:2; 15:5), progenitorship of the Messiah (Gal. 3:16), and the privilege of being God’s chosen instrument to proclaim salvation to the nations of earth (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:8, 14). These promises were repeated to Abraham upon several different occasions, over a space of nearly half a century (see Gen. 12:1-4, 7; 13:15, 16; 15:4, 5, 13-18; 17:1-8, 16-21; 18:10; 22:17, 18).

To seeds, as of many. That is, to all Abraham’s descendants.

Thy seed. The objective of God’s covenant with Abraham was the coming of the Messiah and the salvation of men. All the other promises were accessory to this. Great blessings were in store for the chosen people if they would cooperate with God (see Vol. IV, pp. 26-30), but unfortunately they failed to do so (pp. 30-33). Accordingly, they forfeited their role as the instrument of Heaven for the salvation of the world. Nevertheless, God overruled their failure to the extent that the Messiah came to earth in the fullness of time, as a Son of Abraham (see Vol. IV, p. 32).

Originally, the promise of posterity pointed forward in a literal sense to Isaac (see references cited above under “promises”; chs. 4:22, 23). But here, by inspiration, the apostle Paul points to a figurative truth deeper than that which the promise appeared, on the surface, to embrace (see on Deut. 18:15). The promise thus met its first and partial fulfillment in Isaac, but was to have a final and complete fulfillment in Christ. In here declaring that Christ was, in a special sense, the “seed” promised to Abraham, Paul does not exclude either Abraham’s lineal descendants through Isaac (see Gal. 4:23) or his spiritual descendants through Christ (see ch. 3:29). Accordingly, the promise met its supreme, but not exclusive, fulfillment in Christ.