Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after… I. THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT VIEWED IN ITSELF (Genesis 13:15; Genesis 17:7). The prominent feature in it is grace, and it clearly looks forward to Christ. Its chief blessings are — (1) Divine forgiveness; (2) Divine reward; (3) Divine adoption; (4) Divine illumination. II. THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT VIEWED IN ITS RELATION TO THE COVENANT OF SINAI. The covenant of grace was announced to Abraham in the promise made to him and his seed, Christ, long before the giving of the covenant of Sinai; its conditions were fulfilled by Christ during the Incarnation, at a period long subsequent to the giving of that covenant, it was therefore independent of and superior to it; it was designed for the benefit of the whole human race, whereas the Sinaitic covenant was confined to a single nation, was limited in its application, imperfect in its provisions, and, as far as the Jews were concerned, a failure in its results. We may conceive of the covenant of grace as stretching through time like some vast geological formation, having its beginning in the ages that are past, and reaching onward to the ages that are to come. As such formation, however, displays itself upon the surface of the earth, there is at one point a depression, a sinking of its outline, and that depression or valley is filled up by a formation of more recent growth, an overlying stratum which conceals the older formation from view, but does not destroy it. Such older formation crops up on the one side, and on the other of the later one, and in fact underlies it in all its parts; the one being limited and partial as contrasted with the other, which is comparatively unlimited and universal. Thus the covenant of grace stretches through the entire period of man's history; but at one point in its course it becomes overlaid by a covenant of recent growth, the national covenant of Sinai. But the older covenant is neither lost nor superseded; it recedes for a while from view; it gives place in the history of man to an intermediate covenant; but it does not vanish from our history. It had shown itself in Abrahamic times; it was to display itself yet more gloriously at the coming of Christ; but yet even during the period of its seeming obscuration, its operation was not suspended: the pious Jew looked through his own covenant to the covenant of grace — he dug, as it were, through the mixed and local deposit of his own economy, to the rock beneath him. (Emilius Bayley, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. |
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