The Reasonableness of the Gospel.
I. There is something of a military allusion in this passage which it may be well to point out. The expression "kept under the law" denotes in the original being kept as in a citadel or garrison. It is this expression, "shut up unto the faith," which gives our text much of its power and singularity. The Law surrounded the Jews, as it were, with a rampart, effectually preventing their uniting with the rest of mankind, until their object of faith, which is Christ, or the dispensation of faith, which is the Gospel, should come in the fulness of time. But while we admit that the passage before us has a reference to the Jew, derived altogether from local and temporary circumstances, we cannot doubt that the expression "shut up unto the faith" applies to men of other lands and other generations. We regard this expression as making out to us what may be called the reasonableness of the Gospel.
II. The Gospel is a reasonable scheme reasonable on the principle that, whatever other way is devised and tried, it is invariably found deficient, so that man remains shut up to the Gospel as his only resource. (1) The law leaves no place for repentance. (2) The law emphatically exhibits the necessity for a mediator. It will meet man like an ever-watchful adversary in his successive endeavours to appease conscience and propitiate God, driving him back and producing at least the confession that there is no alternative but eternal death or the suretyship 01 a mediator. It shuts us up to the faith and Christ crucified; it keeps us in a garrison, that we may be willing to receive and accept of salvation. We make a wrong use of the law, if it does not lead us to Christ.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1834.