You say (page 51):—
“We would be much pleased to have our friends who hold that this ‘added’ law was the ten commandments, tell us how the law against blasphemy, murder, lying, stealing, etc., ‘shut individuals up,’ ‘guard’ them ‘in ward,’ in the relation of a ‘child to a guardian,’ to a ‘revelation’ to be made ‘afterwards.’”
This I can readily do. First, sinners are, in the Bible, represented as being in bondage, in prison. See 2 Peter 2:l9; Romans 7:14; 2 Peter 3:19, 20; Zechariah 9:l2; Isaiah 61:l; Psalms 68:6; l02:l9, 20; Acts 8:23; Hebrews 2:14, 15. Note this last text particularly. Christ died to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.”
It is sin that brings the fear of death, therefore it is sin that causes men to be subject to bondage.
Second, whenever men are in prison, it is the law that puts them there. Only a few weeks ago I heard a Judge pronounce the death sentence upon a murderer, and I took particular note of his statement that he was compelled to pronounce the sentence; that he was simply the law’s agent; that since the man had been found guilty, the law demanded his death, and that he was simply the mouthpiece of the law.
It is the law which arrests the criminal; the sheriff is simply the visible agent of the law. It is the law which locks the prisoner in his cell; the jailer, the iron walls, and heavy bars which surround the prisoner, are simply the emblems of the iron hand of the law which is upon him. If the government is just, and if the man is indeed guilty, there is no way in which he can escape the punishment, unless he has a powerful advocate who can secure his pardon from the Governor.
So it is with the sinner against God’s government. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, so that there is no possibility that he can escape arrest. As soon as he has sinned, he is seized by the law, and is at once under condemnation of death, because it has already been declared that the wages of sin is death. Now he is shut in on every side by the law. There is not one of the commandments which is not against him, because there is not a man on earth who has not broken every one of them.
At first the sinner may not be conscious of his imprisonment; he has no sense of sin, and does not try to escape. But when the law is so applied to him that he can realize its claims and his failure to meet them, he is convicted. To carry out the figure, we might say that the Spirit of God causes the prison walls to close in upon him, his cell becomes narrower, and he feels oppressed; and then he makes desperate struggles to escape.
He starts out in one way, but there the first commandment rises up against him and will not let him go free. He turns in another direction, but he has taken the name of God in vain, and the third commandment refuses to let him get his liberty in that direction. Again he tries, but he has committed adultery, and the seventh commandment presents an impenetrable barrier in that direction, and prevents his escape. So with all the commandments. They utterly refuse to grant him liberty, because he has violated every one of them, and only those who keep the commandments can walk at liberty. Psalm 119:45. He is completely shut in on every side.
There is, however, just one avenue of escape, and that is through Christ. Christ is the door (John 10:9), and entrance through that door gives freedom (John 8:36). Since the sinner is in prison, and cannot get freedom except through faith in Christ, it is exactly the truth to say that he is “shut up,” to the faith which may be revealed to him. The translation “kept in ward,” affects the case for you not in the least. It is the same as saying that we were kept in prison. Pharaoh’s butler and baker were put “in ward,” in the same prison where Joseph was. Genesis 40:3.
Now it is not the Jews alone who are spoken of as “shut up.” You yourself say that the Jews were in as bad case as the Gentiles were. The twenty-second verse of this third of Galatians also says that “the Scripture hath concluded [literally, “shut up together”] all under sin.”
This shows in what the shutting up consists. They are in jail because they have sinned. So Paul says to the Jews, “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise; for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” Romans 3:9. And again he says that “God hath concluded them all [margin, “shut them all up together”] in unbelief.” Romans 11:32. These statements are identical with that in Galatians.
Now notice that in all places the shutting up is said to be for the same purpose. Galatians 3:22 says that the Scripture hath concluded or shut up all under sin, “that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.” In the third of Romans Paul shows that Jews and Gentiles are alike under sin, in order to prove that “the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ,” may be “unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Verses 22-24. And in Romans 11:32 he states that God hath shut them all up together (both Jews and Gentiles) in unbelief, “that He might have mercy upon all.” All are in the same bondage—all are under the law—and none can be delivered from their prison until they come to Christ. He is the only door to freedom.
Let me ask you if you think that it is the ceremonial law that shuts men up under sin? If you do, then you hold that the ceremonial law is a rule of righteousness, and thereby you detract from the ten commandments. But if you do not hold this opinion, and I cannot believe that you do, then you admit that it is the moral law that shuts men up and acts as their task-master, to drive them to Christ; that they may be justified by faith. How anybody can hold a different view, I cannot imagine.