The contents of the covenant and the parties to it.
"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made."
I. THE CONTENTS OF THE COVENANT. "The promises." They are elsewhere spoken of as "the promise." It was repeated several times. This promise carries the whole of salvation within it. It is elsewhere referred to as "the oath and the promise"—"the two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie"—for God confirmed the promise by an oath, and the promise is linked with the Melchisedec priesthood of Christ, and thus involves all that is involved in priesthood, that is, atonement and intercession. It is the promise that bears up the burden of the world's hope, for it is on the ground of it we have "fled for refuge to the hope set before us" (Hebrews 6:18, Hebrews 6:19).
II. THE PARTIES TO THE COVENANT. These are—God on the one side; Abraham and his seed on the other. Not Abraham alone, but Abraham and his seed. "And he saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." The seed was not the Jewish race, nor strictly the spiritual posterity of Abraham, but Christ himself, in whom the Jewish race found its embodiment and to whom the spiritual posterity was organically united. There is a distinction between Christ personal and Christ mystical, regarded as the second Adam, as the Head of the body. Thus we understand how the whole body of believers is expressly called "Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12). They are "all one in Christ," and "if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed' (Galatians 5:1-26 :28, 29).
III. A NECESSARY CONCLUSION. If the seed is Christ, then the promise was not yet fulfilled, but awaiting fulfilment, when the Law was given. It could not, therefore, be disannulled by the Law, nor could the Law add fresh clauses to it.
The irreversibleness of the covenant by the Law.
"This, however, I say, that the covenant that has been confirmed before in reference to Christ, the Law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, does not disannul, that it should do away with the promise."
I. THE COVENANT ON ITS OWN INDEPENDENT FOUNDATION.
1. It stands irrevocable and indestructible because it has been confirmed by God, that is, by an oath; for, "Because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee" (Hebrews 6:13, Hebrews 6:14). This oath is to us the sure ground of hope.
2. It has exclusive relation to Christ regarded as the Head of the Church. He sealed this covenant with his blood, and thus the "cup of blessing" in the Lord's Supper has become "the new covenant in his blood." All covenant blessings reach us by Christ through his Spirit.
3. It stood for ages alone. The Law came four hundred and thirty years after.
II. THE INABILITY OF THE LAW TO AFFECT THE COVENANT.
1. The Law and the covenant proceed on two entirely different lines, and cannot therefore traverse each other's course.
2. The lateness of the Law, as an historic institute, leaves the covenant as it found it in the ages of its undisputed validity. There[ore the Law cannot disannul the covenant so as to throw invalidity into the promise.
III. THE INHERITANCE NOT POSSIBLE BY THE LAW, BUT BY THE PROMISE. "For if the inheritance be of the Law, it is no more of promise; but God has given it to Abraham by promise."
1. The inheritance covers more than the land of Canaan; it involves "the heirship of the world" (Romans 4:13); but it symbolizes the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom, and especially of that "better country" which was an object of wistful expectation to Abraham himself.
2. If the Law abrogates the covenant, the inheritance would in that case come of Law; but it is positively asserted that "God has given it "—the perfect tense marking the duration of the blessing—"to Abraham by promise."
The use and nature of the Law.
"What then is the Law?" The apostle's reasoning seemed to make the Law a quite superfluous thing. In the eyes of the Judaists it was God's most glorious institute. It was necessary, therefore, to show its nature, office, and characteristics, and its relation to the covenant of promise. It was really inferior to the dispensation of grace on four grounds, which themselves explain its nature and use.
I. THE LAW DISCOVERS SIN. "It was superadded because of transgressions."
1. It was not to check sin.
2. Nor to create sin.
3. But to discover it.
"By the Law is the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). This discovery would necessarily multiply transgressions (Romans 5:20), just as the introduction of light into a darkened room makes manifest the things that were before unseen. "I had not known sin but by the Law" (Romans 7:7). Many sins were not seen to be sins at all till the Law threw its intense light upon them. Thus the great service of the Law was to awaken conviction of sin in the heart and to make men feel their need of a Saviour. The ceremonial and the moral Law had equally this effect. The system of sacrifice had no meaning apart from the fact of sin. What a mistake, then, was that of the Judaists who imagined that the Law could give them a title to eternal life in virtue of their obedience to its commands
III. THE LAW WAS A TEMPORARY AND INTERMEDIATE DISPENSATION. "It was superadded … till the seed shall have come to whom the promise has been made." This refers to the coming of Christ who is "the Seed." The apostle puts himself back to the time of giving the Law, and looks forward from that starting-point to the future incarnation. The Law was thus a mighty parenthesis coming in between Abraham's promise and the coming of the seed, and was specially preparative and disciplinary in relation to that future event. It was destined then to pass away as a dispensation, but the moral Law, which it held in its bosom, was to abide in its full integrity. That Law still exists in Christianity, with its old power of manifesting sin and carrying conviction to sinners so as to shut them up to Christ.
III. THE LAW DID NOT COME DIRECT FROM GOD TO MAN, AS THE PROMISE CAME TO ABRAHAM, BUT THROUGH ANGELS BY A MEDIATOR, "Being ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator?' This is another point of inferiority. God gave the promise to Abraham immediately, not mediately by angels or through any intervention like that of Moses; unlike the Law, which was superadded through this double intervention.
1. The share of angels in the giving of the Law.
2. The share of Moses in the giving of the Law. It was "ordained … in the hand of a mediator," who was Moses. He describes his own mediation: "I stood between you and the Lord at that time" (Deuteronomy 5:5, Deuteronomy 5:27). It was Moses who bore the tables of stone from God to the people. We are not to suppose that the reference is designed to mark the inferiority of the Law to the covenant of promise, which, too, had its Mediator, Jesus Christ the Lord. He is not contrasting the Law and the gospel, but the Law and the promise of Abraham; and he asserts that, while in the one case the angels and Moses had to do with its conveyance, God in the other case gave the promise without the intervention of either man or angel.
IV. THE LAW WAS DEPENDENT UPON CONDITIONS, THE PROMISE WAS ABSOLUTE. "Now, a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." The very idea of mediation implies two parties, who are to be brought into some relation with each other through the intervention of a third person. In the case of the Law, there were two parties—God and the Jewish people. In the case of the promise, "God is one;" he is mediatorless—no one stands between him and Abraham, as Moses stood between God and the Israelites in the giving of the Law. There is a numerical contrast between "one" and "of one."