I need not spend your time in commenting on the final words of this
text. Suffice it to gather their general purport and scope. The
apparently stern treatment which God by revelation applies to the whole
mass of mankind is really the tenderest beneficence. He has shut them up
in the prison-house in order that, thus shut up, they may the more
eagerly apprehend and welcome the advent of the Deliverer. He tells us
each our state, in order that we may the more long for, and the more
closely grasp, the great mercy which reverses the state. And so how
shallow and how unfair it is to talk about evangelical Christianity as
being gloomy, stern, or misanthropical! You do not call a doctor unkind
because he tells an unsuspecting patient that his disease is far
advanced, and that if it is not cured it will be fatal. No more should a
man turn away from Christianity, or think it harsh and sour, because it
speaks plain truths. The question is, are they true? not, are they
unpleasant?
If you and I, and all our fellows, are shut up in this prison-house of
sin, then it is quite clear that none of us can do anything to get
ourselves out. And so the way is prepared for that great message with
which Jesus opened His ministry, and which, whilst it has a far wider
application, and reference to social as well as to individual evils,
begins with the proclamation of liberty to the captives, and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound.
There was once a Roman emperor who wished that all his enemies had one
neck, that he might slay them all at one blow. The wish is a fact in
regard to Christ and His work, for by it all our tyrants have been
smitten to death by one stroke; and the death of Jesus Christ has been
the death of sin and death and hell--of sin in its power, in its guilt,
and in its penalty. He has come into the prison-house, and torn the bars
away, and opened the fetters, and every man may, if he will, come out
into the blessed sunshine and expatiate there.
And if, brethren, it is true that the universal prison-house is opened
by the death of Jesus Christ, who is the Propitiation for the sins of
the whole world, and the power by which the most polluted may become
clean, then there follows, as plainly, that the only thing which we have
to do is, recognising and feeling our bound impotence, to stretch out
chained hands and take the gift that He brings. Since all is done for
each of us, and since none of us can do sufficient for himself to break
the bond, then what we should do is to trust to Him who has broken every
chain and let the oppressed go free.
Oh, dear friend, if you want to get to the heart of the sweetness and
the blessedness and power of the Gospel, you must begin here, with the
clear and penitent consciousness that you are a sinful man in God's
sight, and can do nothing to cleanse, help, or liberate yourself. Is
Jesus Christ the breaker of the bond for you? Do you learn from Him what
your need is? Do you trust yourself to Him for Pardon, for cleansing,
for emancipation? Unless you do, you will never know His most precious
preciousness, and you have little right to call yourself a Christian. If
you do, oh, than a great light will shine in the prison-house, and your
chains will drop from your wrists, and the iron door will open of its
own accord, and you will come out into the morning sunshine of a new
day, because you have confessed and abhorred the bondage into which you
have cast yourselves, and accepted the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made you free.