Paul says Abraham heard the gospel. Not just some hint of it, but the gospel itself. “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” (Gal 3:8) The English phrase, “Preached the gospel beforehand,” is actually only one word in Greek: proeuēngelisato. It appears nowhere else in the New Testament. The prefix pro- means “ahead of time.” It’s the same good news, announced early. So the gospel has a pre-history, and Paul says so himself. Genesis 12:3 says, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 18:18 says “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.” Paul blends them because he wants to make use of the word “nations.” Paul’s gospel was inclusive of the nations. Notice what the “gospel” to Abraham actually says. It isn’t instructions for getting to heaven. It’s an announcement: God will bless the nations in Abraham. That’s a proclamation of what God will do. Where else do we find this language? In Isaiah. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news… who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” - Isaiah 52:7 Three verses later: “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” - Isaiah 52:10. It’s good news to Zion, with the nations in view. And how does Isaiah get to 52:7? Through Abraham. “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.” (Isa 51:2) Notice the three words used here: called, blessed, multiplied. That’s Genesis 12:1-2 in a sentence. Galatians is soaked in Isaiah. Paul describes his call in 1:15-16 in language that echoes the servant of Isaiah 49. “Hearing with faith” in 3:2 and 3:5 sounds like Isaiah 53:1, “Who has believed what he has heard from us?” In 4:27, Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1 outright. Galatians 3:8 needs to be understood within this context. So Paul reads Genesis 12 through Isaiah and so should we. Abraham receives the promise. Isaiah gives it a herald. Paul calls it euangelion. That’s the gospel of the gospel. Timing matters too. The promise of Genesis 12 comes before circumcision (Genesis 17) and before Sinai, which came “430 years afterward” (Galatians 3:17). The blessing of the nations was announced before either. It never depended on Gentiles becoming Jews. What would the alternative actually look like? What if every Gentile had to be circumcised and become a Jew to receive Abraham’s blessing? Then who are the “nations” that get blessed? There would be none left. The promise would erase its own recipients. That’s a reductio ad absurdum. The promise requires nations to remain nations. Isaiah sees exactly this: “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:25) Three peoples, one God, and nobody stops being who they are. That helps explain why Paul fights gentile circumcision so hard in Galatians. It isn’t because Torah is bad. It’s because circumcising the nations would undo the gospel announced to Abraham. “…so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.” (Galatians 3:14)

What Did Jesus Mean by “Be Perfect”? “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) If this means “never make a mistake,” the standard is impossible. It would be easy to conclude that Jesus was setting us up to fail. But Jesus wasn’t inventing a new ideal. He was teaching something that was already in the Torah. The Greek word Matthew uses is teleios. When Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the Septuagint, they used teleios for the Hebrew tamim. Two places stand out: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” (Genesis 6:9) “You shall be blameless before ADONAI your God.” (Deuteronomy 18:13) In both verses “blameless” is tamim, and the Greek is teleios. Deuteronomy 18:13 sounds very much like Matthew 5:48: “You shall be teleios.” So what is tamim? It does not mean to be flawless. Rather, it means to be whole and undivided. In his commentary on Noah, the 19th-century rabbi Malbim draws a sharp line. Tzaddik (righteous) describes WHAT Noah did. Tamim (blameless) describes WHY he did it. Some people do justice the way a merchant does business, for honor or profit. When the payoff disappears, their righteousness vanishes with it. The tamim person does justice with no ulterior motive, purely out of love for justice and for the sake of God alone. Now read Matthew 5 again. Just before “be perfect,” Jesus describes the Father: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” He gives without asking what He gets back. Then He describes us: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” The very next words after “be perfect” make the same point: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” Righteousness with an angle is not tamim. “Be perfect” doesn’t mean “be flawless.” It means be whole. Love and do justice with no hidden motive, the way your Father does. Noah wasn’t sinless. Genesis 9 makes that plain. But he was tamim. Jesus is calling his disciples to be Noahs in their generation.