'But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin,
that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be
given to them that believe.'--GAL. iii. 22.
The Apostle uses here a striking and solemn figure, which is much veiled
for the English reader by the ambiguity attaching to the word
'concluded.' It literally means 'shut up,' and is to be taken in its
literal sense of confining, and not in its secondary sense of inferring.
So, then, we are to conceive of a vast prison-house in which mankind is
confined. And then, very characteristically, the Apostle passes at once
to another metaphor when he goes on to say 'under sin.' What a moment
before had presented itself to his vivid imagination as a great dungeon
is now represented as a heavy weight, pressing down upon those beneath;
if, indeed, we are not, perhaps, rather to think of the low roof of the
dark dungeon as weighing on the captives.
Further, he says that Scripture has driven men into this captivity.
That, of course, cannot mean that revelation makes us sinners, but it
does mean that it makes us more guilty, and that it declares the fact of
human sinfulness as no other voice has ever done. And then the grimness
of the picture is all relieved and explained, and the office ascribed to
God's revelation harmonised with God's love, by the strong, steady beam
of light that falls from the last words, which tell us that the
prisoners have not been bound in chains for despair or death, but in
order that, gathered together in a common doleful destiny, they may
become recipients of a common blessed salvation, and emerge into liberty
and light through faith in Jesus Christ.
So here are three things--the prison-house, its guardian, and its
breaker. 'The Scripture hath shut up all under sin, in order that the
promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given unto all them that
believe.'