Galatians 3:16 - Homiletics

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.