Q. “M. A. W.” You ask for explanation as to the Covenant or Testament (διαθηκη) of Galatians 3:17, and Hebrews 8, 9 and if we are under the new covenant, or any covenant at all?
A. In Galatians 3:15-29, we have the relationship between law and promise discussed as to how they stand one to another. Unconditional promise was made of God to Abraham 430 years before the law, and law then coming in with its conditions could not set aside the unconditional promises. Moreover, in the law there were two parties and a mediator; in promise there was but one — God Himself, acting from Himself, and requiring no conditional terms. One was a contract, the other was grace. Read Galatians 3:16 thus: “Now to Abraham were the promises made (Gen. 12), and to his seed”; that is, Christ risen, as Isaac, in figure, raised from the dead (Gen. 22); where God ratified the previously-given covenant (Gen. 12; 15), by His oath, to which no conditions were attached whatever. Galatians 3:17, “And this I say, the covenant previously ratified by God to Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul,” etc. The law was added, “for the sake of transgressions,” but did not disannul the previous purpose of God, while testing man.
There are really but two covenants in Scripture — the old covenant and the new. Still the word covenant is used in several places in connection with the Lord, when it is but the enunciation of certain relationships into which He was pleased to enter with man or the creature (Genesis 9:8-17, &c.), or to be approached by him, but without conditions. The context must decide the sense.
In Hebrews 8; 9, He shows the setting aside of the old covenant, and the introduction of a second, yet to be made with Judah and Israel. Meanwhile a Mediator is introduced previous to the time when Israel and Judah are again in the land. This Mediator has shed the blood necessary for its establishment, but has not yet established it —the party concerned not yet being under this dealing of God; that is, Israel and Judah. If Jer. 31:31-40 be read, where the new covenant is enunciated, it will be seen that no mediator is named. Christ having been rejected when He came to fulfill the promises made to the fathers, sheds His blood and goes on high, and all direct dealings with Israel are suspended, while all necessary for its ultimate establishment has been accomplished. In Matthew 26:28, He says: “This is my blood of the new covenant”; not, This is the new covenant, but the “the blood” of it. The covenant itself has not yet been established.
Hence in Hebrews, while the writer shows the passing away of the old, and introduction of the new, he never shows its application as a present thing. The only two blessings of the new covenant which we get, as Christians, are forgiveness of sins, and direct teaching from God. Christians are not under a covenant in any wise. They have to do with the Mediator of it while hidden in the heavens before He renews His relationship with Judah and Israel, to whom alone the covenant pertains. See Jer. 31:31; Hebrews 8:8-12.
Hence, too, in Hebrews 9:15, he says: “For this cause he is the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance”; not, the establishment of the new covenant, but “eternal inheritance,” as having to do with the Mediator Himself whose blood had been shed.
It is striking the way the writer avoids the application of the new covenant to Christians while speaking of it with reference to Judah and Israel, and at the same time appropriates to the former the two blessings which flow from it to them.
Hebrews 9:16 and 17 are a parenthesis. They show that even in human things a testament has no force as long as the testator lives. Death comes, and then it is valid. It is the same word, but used distinctly in this sense.