‘And the Scripture, foreseeing that by faith God accounts as righteous the Gentiles, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “in you shall all the nations be blessed”. So then those who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.'
Furthermore the Scripture make crystal clear that the Gentiles will be accounted righteous by faith for it says that it is in Abraham, in believing Abraham, that all the nations will be blessed. So the blessing of God comes on all those who, like Abraham, believe. They then share Abraham's blessing which was that he was accounted righteous because of his faithful response, which was his response in faith to the promises of God.
‘The Scripture, foreseeing -.' Here we have a personalisation of Scripture, meaning, of course, God speaking through the Scriptures, thereby emphasising that the Scriptures are the word of God.
‘By faith.' This is in an emphatic position in the sentence. It is central to what the Scripture foresaw.
‘Preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham.' The kernel of the Gospel was known throughout past ages, that man by faith should respond to God in trust and repentance (Genesis 15:6; Psalms 51:17; Isaiah 57:15) and thus be accepted as righteous in His sight.
‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.' This was continually emphasised to Abraham at one time and another (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 18:18; Genesis 22:18; see also Genesis 26:4). It was always God's final purpose that all the world would be blessed through Abraham and his seed. And it would come from God's gracious working, not by a world working itself into a frenzy of activity. Thus would the Gentiles become ‘sons of Abraham'. Note that they will be blessed as nations, not by becoming Jews. Rather they would become one with many Jews as a consequence of believers from all the nations uniting in a new nation (1 Peter 2:9), by becoming part of God's concept of the true Israel (Galatians 6:16). They are not required to come within the Jewish Law for this blessing, for that Law was given to the old Israel alone at a later time than Abraham (Galatians 3:17). But we must look to Abraham as our model. And he believed God's word, and, because he believed it, it was reckoned to him for righteousness. So is the blessing of the nations connected with the righteousness which is by faith.
‘Those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.' By paralleling Abraham in believing they will share his blessing. We translate this as ‘believing' rather than as ‘faithful' because that is the idea here. He was not so much blessed for his faithfulness as for his faith which produced that faithfulness (Genesis 15:6). Clearly true faith always produces faithfulness, which is why James can say, ‘faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself ' (James 2:17). But the faith comes first. No one can be faithful without first believing. So by coming to God through the route of faith we are aligning ourselves with Abraham and receive the blessing promised through him, and this will result in our being faithful.
Thus the receiving of the Spirit is paralleled with Abraham's ‘believing God' and being accounted as righteous. Both experiences are in parallel.