under Arrest

Here we have a condensed history of the world before the gospel was fully revealed by the coming of our Lord Jesus.

The history of each saved soul is a miniature likeness of the story of the ages. God acts upon the same principles both with the race and with individuals.

I. THE UNHAPPY PERIOD: “Before faith came.”

1. We had no idea of faith by nature. It would never occur to the human mind that we could be saved by believing in Jesus.

2. When we heard of faith as the way of salvation we did not understand it. We could not persuade ourselves that the words used by the preacher had their common and usual meaning.

3. We saw faith in others, and wondered at its results; but we could not exercise it for ourselves.

4. We could not reach to faith, even when we began to see its necessity, admitted its efficacy, and desired to exercise it.

   • The reason of this inability was moral, not mental:
   • We were proud, and did not care to renounce self-righteousness.
   • We could not grasp the notion of salvation by faith, because it was contrary to the usual run of our opinions.
   • We were bewildered, because faith is a spiritual act, and we are not spiritual.

5. We were without the Spirit of God, and therefore incapable.

   • We do not wish to go back to the state in which we were “before faith came,” for it was one of darkness, misery, impotence, hopelessness, sinful rebellion, self-conceit, and condemnation.

II. THE CUSTODY WE WERE IN: “Kept under the law, shut up.”

1. We were always within the sphere of law. In fact, there is no getting out of it. As all the world was only one prison for a man who offended Caesar, so is the whole universe no better than a prison for a sinner.

2. We were always kicking against the bounds of the law, sinning, and pining because we could not sin more.

3. We dared not overleap it altogether, and defy its power. Thus, in the case of many of us, it checked us, and held us captive with its irksome forbiddings and commandings.

4. We could not find rest. The law awakened conscience, and fear and shame attend such an awakening.

5. We could not discover a hope; for, indeed, there is none to discover while we abide under the law.

6. We could not even fall into the stupor of despair; for the law excited life, though it forbade hope.

   • Among the considerations which held us in bondage were these:
   • The spirituality of the law, touching thoughts, motives, desires.
   • The need of perfect obedience, making one sin fatal to all hope of salvation by works.
   • The requirement that each act of obedience should be perfect.
   • The necessity that perfect obedience should be continual throughout the whole of life.

III. THE REVELATION WHICH SET US FREE: “The faith which should afterwards be revealed.” The only thing which could bring us out of prison was faith. Faith came, and then we understood—

1. What was to be believed.

   • Salvation by another.
   • Salvation of a most blessed sort, gloriously sure, and complete.
   • Salvation by a most glorious person.

2. What it was to believe.

   • We saw that it was “trust,” implicit and sincere.
   • We saw that it was ceasing from self, and obeying Christ.

3. Why we believed.

   • We were shut up to this one way of salvation.
   • We were shut out of every other.
   • We were compelled to accept free grace, or perish.
   • Our duty is to show men how the way of human merit is closed.
   • We must shut them up to simple faith only, and show them that the way of faith is available.

To Arrest Attention

The Law and the Gospel are two keys. The law is the key that shuts up all men under condemnation, and the gospel is the key which opens the door and lets them out.—William Tyndale.

“Shut up unto the faith.” To let you more effectually into the meaning of this expression, it may be right to state that in the preceding clause, “kept under the law,” the term, kept, is, in the original Greek, derived from a word which signifies a sentinel. The mode of conception is altogether military. The law is made to act the part of a sentry, guarding every avenue but one, and that one leads those who are compelled to take it to the faith of the gospel. They are shut up to this faith as their only alternative—like an enemy driven by the superior tactics of an opposing general, to take up the only position in which they can maintain themselves, or fly to the only town in which they can find a refuge or a security. This seems to have been a favorite style of argument with Paul, and the way in which he often carried on an intellectual warfare with the enemies of his Master’s cause. It forms the basis of that masterly and decisive train of reasoning which we have in his epistle to the Romans. By the operation of skillful tactics, he (if we may be allowed the expression) manœuvred them, and shut them up to the faith of the gospel. It gave prodigious effect to his argument, when he reasoned with them, as he often does, upon their own principles, and turned them into instruments of conviction against themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as a Jew. He made use of the Jewish law as a sentinel to shut them out of every other refuge, and to shut them up to the refuge laid before them in the gospel. He led them to Christ by a schoolmaster whom they could not refuse; and the lesson of this schoolmaster, though a very decisive, was a very short one—“Cursed be he that continues not in all the words of the law to do them.” But in point of fact, they had not done them. To them, then, belonged the curse of the violated law. The awful severity of its sanctions was upon them. They found the faith and the free offer of the gospel to be the only avenue open to receive them. They were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, by concluding them all to be under sin, left them no other outlet but the free act of grace and of mercy laid before us in the New Testament.—Dr. Chalmers.

The law was meant to prepare men for Christ, by showing them that there is no other way of salvation except through him. It had two especial ends: the first was to bring the people who lived under it into a consciousness of the deadly dominion of sin, to shut them up, as it were, into a prison-house out of which only one door of escape should be visible, namely, the door of faith in Jesus; the second intention was to fence about and guard the chosen race to whom the law was given—to keep them as a peculiar people separate from all the world, so that at the proper time the gospel of Christ might spring forth and go out from them as the joy and comfort of the whole human race.—T. G. Rooke.