Paul says that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. What is this curse that Christ became?
The curse is the primordial sentence of death that God placed upon Adam. Because of his disobedience to God, God declared man an exile of Eden. Banished from the presence of God, he was condemned to work the cursed ground with his cursed sons, until the breath of life left him and he returned to the dust.
After Adam, the world only plunged deeper into its own depravity and evil, so that God said his Spirit would no longer contend with man. This means that the curse is alienation from the life-giving power of God’s Spirit. The curse is the return to the formless and void world, covered again with water, before God’s Spirit moved over it to give it life.
This is the curse that the Israelites shouted on Mount Ebel and Mount Gerizim, “Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” Paul says that this curse is for Anyone who has not kept the law in every detail, and so the curse comes for every last man, woman and child.
In Deuteronomy, Moses describes these curses that will come upon Israel if they fail to keep the law. He says, “You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the county, your basket and your kneading bowl will be cursed, your descendants will be cursed … you will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.” In other words, once the law has been breached, the curse is inevitable. These curses will follow you no matter where you go to hide, in the country, in the city, in the home, in your kitchen, as you enter your house, and as you leave. Moses says that these curses touch everything you do, and make it all turn to confusion, vanity, and emptiness. These are the curses that twist the goodness of creation, that make the fruitful world fruitless – so that you build a house, and another takes it, you plant a vineyard, and another reaps the profit. These curses also bring all kinds of bodily decay, disease, pain, hunger, fever, and boils. These curses bring your enemies against you, to destroy your home, your town, your wife, and your children. And the final curse is that Israel will return to the slavery they had in Egypt, but this time when they are up for auction in the market, no one is going to buy them.
Our world is no stranger to these curses. We see their effects all around us. Every time you brush against the shadow of death, you feel what this curse is like. The guilt and the shame of your sin, or the loss of hope in the future, or the hardships of life suck out the joy and happiness you once had. These all signs that the tragic fall of man is still in this world.
Sometimes the curse seems so palpable that we desperately attempt to put it to an end. Men try to bear the punishment themselves, heaping the curses and the shame for what they have done, hoping that they can expiate whatever this horrible evil is inside of us. Or like Adam they sew the fig leaves together and hide in the bushes, trying with all our might to wash out the stain of sin. But what will come of this? Paul says that all who rely on the law to bring back their righteousness are still under a curse. The great tragedy of the curse then, is not simply that it lies heavy upon us, but that all your goodness, all your pain, all your suffering, does not lift the curse even one millimeter. All the curses of the law will inexorably come.
But what Paul says is that the curse has already come upon the cross. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law because he has become the curse for us. The curses of the world, your curses piled high, from the curses for your petty complaints to your most unspeakable wickedness, – all these curses were laid on the bloody back of the crucified Messiah. God himself bore our sins in the body of Christ on the cursed tree. God before whom no sinner can stand, stood in the place of sinners. As Isaiah says, “He bore our sicknesses and he carried our pains, but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. And he was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities.”
What comes of all this? For those who reject Christ, what comes is simply the curse. But for us who live by faith, Isaiah says we are healed. John says we are sons of God. Paul says we are a new creation, redeemed from the curse, in Galatians 3:14 Paul says it this way, “the purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised Spirit through faith.” The result of the cross is that our decaying bodies are now filled with God’s life giving Spirit. Now, we possess the life-giving power of God, the power that brought the world to life in the beginning and that brought Christ back to life at the resurrection. Christ has born our sins so that we might die to sin, and live to righteousness. This means that all the remnants of the curse can no longer separate us from God’s presence. So for all those who have been united to Christ, the decay, suffering and even death that we endure, once signs of the curse, have now become signs of blessing, signs that we have been made righteous through Christ.
Christ cursed on the cross is now the sign that the veil of the temple has been ripped open, and God’s spirit is being poured out like water on his people. It is the sign that Jesus is the victorious Son of God, so that now, in your present life, the Spirit works the sweat of your brow to bring forth the fruit of righteousness and holiness.
The cross is folly to the world, but for us who have been brought into the kingdom, we proclaim that the God-cursed Messiah is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
This power is that the crucified King has so vanquished our enemies that even the ultimate dereliction of death on a cross, is transformed. Now, the cross is an instrument for glory to bring the blessings and the life of God into our lives – so that, as Athanasius says, “Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, “O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting?”
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, Amen.