To be a blessing sums up what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 5:43–45; Matt. 15:1–9;). To be a blessing is at the essence of any morality that Christians should strive to achieve. It’s the kind of morality or holiness or ethics that matters to the people around us.
And YHWH said to Abraham, get yourself up and go from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation; and I will bless you; and I will make your name great. And be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you; whereas the one who belittles you, I will curse; and in you will be blessed all the kinship groups on the earth. And Abram went just as YHWH said to him. — Genesis 12:1-4, Christopher J. H. Wright in The Mission of God, 200, emphasis added.
When God called Abraham, God made a promise to bless him, but he also called Abraham to obedience. As Christopher Wright shows, the call to obedience was a call to be a blessing. In many ways the story of Abraham, like the story of Israel, like the story of the church, is a story of God’s blessing and humanity’s failure to be a blessing to the surrounding people.
In our day to day work and life, God wants us to be a blessing even where it’s hard. He wants fathers to be a blessing to their wives and children. He wants mothers to be a blessing in their work place and among their friends. He wants older men to be a blessing to younger men, older women to younger women, men to women, and rich to poor. God wants us to see our entire lives defined by his call to be a blessing.
To be a blessing sums up what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 5:43–45; Matt. 15:1–9;). To be a blessing is at the essence of any morality that Christians should strive to achieve. It’s the kind of morality or holiness or ethics that matters to the people around us. God doesn’t want us to “fix” the world; he wants us to be a blessing to the world.
It’s hard to be a blessing to friends and family, people who know us too well. It’s hard to be a blessing to strangers, people who don’t know us at all. It’s even harder to take the call of God where it hurts, to be a blessing to people who hate you and seek to harm you, but in the book of Romans, Paul draws upon the language of God’s call to Abraham and applies it to every Christian in the most challenging experiences of life.