Hebrews 9:16

For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it. For a testament is of force where there hath been death: for it doth never avail while he that made it liveth.

THE TESTAMENT (WILL) OF CHRIST

The word "testament" in these two verses comes from the same word translated "covenant" everywhere else in Hebrews; and since there are some facts related to wills that do not relate to covenants, the commentators have generally been at a loss to know how to treat this interjection of a drastically new thought. Of course, the Greek word from which both of these renditions comes means either; and the author of Hebrews is well within his rights to make a digression of the kind noted here. His doing so strongly reminds one of Paul and his custom of seizing upon a word or a phrase for a parenthetical development of it apart from his main line of thought. This appears to be exactly the case here. The parenthetical thought that flashed upon the author's mind came as a result of that other meaning of the word for "covenant" which he had been using; and it was suggested by the mention of a death that had "taken place" for the redemption of the sins under the law. Then, departing for the moment from his main argument, and seizing upon the alternate meaning of the word, which is "testament," he made an independent argument for the absolute necessity of Christ's death within the framework of the alternate meaning.

Since Christ is the heir of all things (Hebrews 1:2), people may inherit, therefore, only if Christ died; but he did die. And think of the benefits that accrue to people in this. Lenski has a perceptive paragraph on this subject, as follows:

It becomes still clearer here why Christ is called the mediator of a testament. God made him the Heir, and thus through him alone who owns everything, through him and through his death as the testator, do we inherit as heirs. Although all comes from God, none of it reaches us save through Christ as the medium (Mediator), the middle link, the testator for us, whose death gives to us, his heirs, the great eternal inheritance ... It is misleading to press these human terms, which convey the divine facts, so that these facts become blurred and distorted. The human testator dies and remains dead, his property is conveyed to heirs who in turn die; successive generations of heirs step into the shoes of their predecessors. Our Mediator-Testator died and thereby made us joint-heirs with him, heirs who never die so that their inheritance might be lost to them. The word "eternal" which is used in verses Hebrews 9:2,4 and Hebrews 9:15 is not repeated and emphasized for naught.[14]

The use of the word "testament" in these verses is the source of an incidental revelation for which people may be truly thankful. It furnishes an independent view of the entire concept of eternal life in Christ, a view which makes the eternal inheritance to be, in a sense, on a parity with receiving a bequest from some person who has left it in his will for another. Such is the import of the word "testament" as used here. The terms of any will become binding only upon the death of the person making it; and they do not limit or impede in any way the free use of the testator's property BEFORE his death. This sublime fact is precisely the reason why no person may claim forgiveness of his sins through a mere act of faith, as did a certain woman (Luke 7:50), or like the thief on the cross, for example. The testator had not then died; and the conditions under which it was prescribed how all people might inherit were not announced as yet. The value of this in understanding the preconditions of salvation is past all calculation. If people would inherit through Christ, who is the heir of all things, let them discover what his plenary representatives, the apostles of Christ, announced after his death as the binding terms of the testament, and obey them, meet those conditions; nor should they rely upon isolated and individual instances of Christ's redemptive favor in which, prior to his death, salvation was conferred upon persons such as the thief on the cross and the certain woman already mentioned. To make such prior examples (prior to his death) any solid basis for determining how people are saved now, after Christ's death, is a very hurtful error.