Hebrews 9:16 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For where a testament is, &c.— "For where a covenant is engaged in, answerable to that which typified this of which I now speak,—to make it firm and binding, there must be necessarily something done, which implies the death of the covenanting party." Nothing can be more foreign to the apostle's subject than to speak of testaments and testators, as he is made to do in this and the next verse, and then to return again, Hebrews 9:18 to the subject of covenants, upon which he had been treating. But let us consider what was the fact, that we may understand, or at least get some light into, this very difficult portion of scripture. A covenant is proposed by God the Father to mankind by a Mediator, Jesus Christ, his own eternal Son; wherein a promise of an eternal inheritance is made to man, provided he is ready and willing to comply with the conditions laid before him: there had been a covenant made by God to the Jewish nation, which engaged to them a present temporal happiness in the land of Canaan, provided they observed the law given to them. Here then a second covenant is proposed by God, not offering a present, but a future good; not a temporal, but an eternal happiness: it is a covenant offered by God,—a Being omnipotent, immortal, uncontrolable,—to a series of beings weak, frail, infirm, but capable of subsisting after death. Christ, as the eternal Word of God made flesh, assuming human nature and uniting it to his Godhead, is not the party that enters into covenant, but he is the Mediator between the parties covenanting. God the Father is the party on one side, and he offers peace through the blood of his Son: man is ο διαθεμενος, the party with whom the covenant is made; who is through grace to accept and fulfil the conditions, namely, to believe in, love, and obey Christ through the Spirit of God. Christ is the Person who acts between God the Father and offending man, and brings the conditions of our salvation; but offers themto us through the infinite merit of his death and intercession, and with the promise of his Spirit, without whom we could not in the least degree comply with the conditions, or be in the least degree sanctified and prepared for glory.