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Have you ever wondered why Jesus Christ and Abraham are mentioned together in Galatians 3:29? This verse says that if you belong to Christ then you are heirs of Abraham (covenant) and beneficiaries according to the promise (inheritance). The word “heir” means “a person who is legally entitled to inherit the property or estate of a deceased person”. An “heir” is a “beneficiary” and both words are used dominantly in the Law of Estate and Succession.

Galatians 3:29 is a covenant and an inheritance scripture. Inheritance is based on a promise and the promise originates from a covenant. It is through covenant that the promise to inherit is made in the bible. The word “heir” is a grace and a succession term because an heir always receives the estate as a free gift.

This may sound like a complicated subject but it is a very simple one. It sounds complicated because when the word “covenant” is mentioned, we always visualise an agreement between two parties, and when the word “inheritance” is mentioned, we always think about movies like “The Fighting Temptations”. In this movie, advertising executive Darrin Hill (Cuba Gooding Jr.) returns home after a number of failures. When he got back to his small hometown, Georgia, he learns that his Aunt had left an inheritance for him after her death. However, she included a condition in her Will that for him to receive the inheritance, he had to first lead the church choir to victory in a gospel competition. If he failed to lead the choir, or having led the choir but fail to win, he would be disqualified from receiving the inheritance. This is not biblical inheritance because it is based on a condition and is not a free gift. It is not free because the heir had to work for it. Because it was based on a competition, if he does not win, he loses the inheritance.

The problem with this kind of inheritance is that it shifts the focus away from the Testator, to the heir. When the heir wins, he gets the glory for the victory. The Testator may not even receive any recognition because when she included the condition in her Will, she made the inheritance to depend on the heir and not on her. The condition takes out the Testator from the picture. So after winning the competition, the heir will be justified to give himself credit. He will hardly even remember that the competition was made possible by the aunt.

The requirement to fulfil the condition, in order to qualify for the inheritance, is called “works”. Romans 4:4 says “Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.” This is not biblical inheritance because it is not based on grace but on works. Any inheritance that is preceded by a condition is not biblical because it leaves room for the “heir” to fail. This is the difference between the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament the “promises” were preceded by conditions. In the New Testament there is no condition to the promise.

The word covenant is a biblical term. The world uses the term “covenant” to mean an agreement between two people. Biblical covenant and biblical inheritance are very different to earthly covenant and inheritance. Biblical inheritance is always unconditional, while earthly inheritance is often with a lot of conditions. When God cut the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, it was about God making an eternally binding and unconditional commitment to bless Abraham and his descendants.

Most of the clients that I consult with on Wills and Estates often impose conditions for their beneficiaries. One client, who owns a number of properties, instructed me to draft a will to the effect that he bequeath his entire estate to his only son, but that I should include a condition that says that his son cannot sell the properties until he turns forty years old. My client had good intentions, but by imposing that condition he placed his son in a position where the inheritance was not guaranteed. What if the son dies at the age of 39? What if at some point in his life, before he turns 40, he finds himself in desperate need of money? Or if some unfortunate circumstances occur and leave him bankrupt? The condition creates a possibility for the boy to live in poverty while valuable properties have been bequeathed to him, which he could not benefit from because of the condition.

We thank God for the new covenant because there is no condition attached to it. With Abraham, he only had to keep the sign of circumcision. With us, once we belong to Christ by getting born-again, we become legally entitled to receive the inheritance. The sign of circumcision was pointing to Christ and now that the Christ has come, the only circumcision that is required is that of the heart. The circumcision was not even a prerequisite for the blessing to Abraham because the righteousness of God was accounted to him while he was still uncircumcised.

Romans 4:9-12

“Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only, or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.”

As the Seed of Abraham, we will never be able to understand covenant if we limit it to just an agreement between two parties, and we will never understand biblical inheritance from the perspective of the movies that we watch on television. Biblical covenant and inheritance can only be understood if based on God’s covenant of grace and how God blessed Abraham’s descendants apart from works. Isaac and Jacob’s inheritance was solely based on the covenant that God made with Abraham. Isaac and Jacob were blessed because of Abraham. The inheritance could not fail because the covenant was not dependent upon them. The covenant was the guarantee that their inheritance could not fail.

Before we deal with the inheritance of Isaac and Jacob, which is a picture of the inheritance that we have in Christ, let us first deal with the connection between Christ and Abraham. We must understand why Galatians 3:29 says that we must belong to Christ in order to qualify as heirs of Abraham. We must also understand why God didn’t leave out Abraham and just say, “If you belong to Christ you are heirs”? Why do we have to be heirs of Abraham and not just heirs of God, and why do we have to belong to Christ to be heirs of Abraham? What promise is the Apostle Paul talking about here? The answers to these questions will not only help us understand and receive our inheritance, but will also open the bible up for us and enable us to appropriate the grace of God.

In Genesis 17 God made a covenant with Abraham. The word “promise” in Galatians 3:29 refers to the terms of the covenant. The “promise” that we are talking about here was a spiritual and physical one. It was a promise of salvation and wealth transfer.