I have just posted over on Political Theology Today, on the subject of the call and blessing of Abram in Genesis 12:1-4a:

In the call of Abram and the outworking of the blessing upon him and covenant with him, we witness something of the logic of election. Although many argue that the call of Abram was for the purpose of the blessing of the world, election cannot be simply instrumentalized. The logic of election is the logic of love: YHWH’s choice and call of Abram was an end in itself.

The election and blessing of Abram is not expended in the blessing of the nations, but extended into it. When the nations are blessed, they are blessed in, with, and for the sake of believing Abraham. Abraham is not the vanishing mediator or disposable channel of the divine promise, but the father of believing Jews and Gentiles, in whom they both receive the blessing. The universal scope of the blessing’s international outpouring is not the erasure of the particularism of the love by which it is given, but its fullest expression.

Read the whole piece here.