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Introduction

1. There are some statements in Scripture that are so shocking that we would not dare say them except the Lord had revealed them.

   1. One such statement is found in Galatians 3:13, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.”

   2. The idea that the Son of God could be made a curse, placed under God’s curse, to suffer God’s curse, ought to impress us deeply.

   3. The HC picks up on that in LD 15, Q&A 39 when it explains why Jesus was crucified.

2. We are looking at the sufferings of our Savior, and we have seen His sufferings in general and His sufferings under Pontius Pilate, His public trial and condemnation.

   1. Now the HC asks the question, but why the cross, why that particular death?

   2. And the answer of the HC is that in dying on the cross Jesus bore our curse in order to deliver us from it.

“THE SON OF GOD UNDER GOD’S CURSE” 

I. What This Means

II. How This Happened

III. What This Means For Us

1. What This Means

   1. First, what is God’s curse?

      1. The curse is the word of God’s wrath.

         1. To curse is to “speak against,” to speak evil upon or about someone.

            1. Do not think of moral evil: when God curses He does not say “bad words.”

            2. The evil of God’s curse is the evil of misery; it is that word of God which devotes someone to destruction and banishes him from God’s good presence.

            3. When God curses a person He makes that person the object of His awful wrath and makes that person miserable beyond all description until He finally thrusts that person into hell.

         2. Because the curse is the word of God’s wrath, it is efficacious; it actually does makes a person miserable; it actually does destroy a person.

            1. When a human being curses nothing happens b/c a human’s curses have no power. Only the superstitious are afraid of them.

            2. But when God curses the Almighty curses, the one whose word brought all things into being; He curses: the Word of His wrath means something.

            3. Those whom God curses, then, are devoted to destruction: they will perish forever in their sins. They may imagine that God is blessing them but God’s curse will overtake them.

      2. God’s curse, therefore, is the opposite of His blessing.

         1. If God’s curse is the efficacious word of God’s wrath, God’s blessing is the efficacious word of His favour.

            1. When God blesses, He “speaks well,” that is, He speaks good upon someone and about someone.

            2. When God blesses He causes the person whom He blesses to be happy with spiritual salvation, makes him the object of His grace and draws that person into fellowship forever.

            3. There is no middle ground between blessing and cursing: God’s word is either one of favour towards someone, the elect; or God’s word is one of wrath against someone, the reprobate. God is not double minded or double tongued, blessing and cursing the same person. Ps. 37:22.

         2. Moreover, God’s blessing and cursing are not found in things, but in God’s attitude or disposition.

            1. In popular thinking, God blesses the most the people to whom He gives the most “good things.” A rich person is more blessed by God than a poor person; a healthy person is more blessed than a sick person; a person with a happy home life is more blessed than a person with difficulties in his private life.

            2. But that is not true. God curses the wicked rich in their wealth and the wicked healthy in their health, and blesses His own people in their poverty, sickness and trials. The question is not what does God give you or withhold from someone , but what is God’s attitude toward him: is it one of favor, then He blesses him; is it one of wrath, then He curses him.

            3. The truth is very simple: God blesses and never curses the elect; God curses and never blesses the reprobate. Read Prov. 3:33.

      3. God’s curse is revealed against sinners, because God does not arbitrarily curse people at random, and God never curses the righteous. God’s curse is a holy curse: He must curses sinners; He cannot bless sinners.

         1. There was no word of curse before sin, but sin unleashed God’s curse upon the world and upon human beings in particular.

            1. God’s first word upon His creation was blessing: “And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful …” (Gen. 1:28).

            2. Immediately after the fall, God cursed: He cursed Satan (Gen. 3:14) and He cursed the ground for man’s sake (v. 17).

            3. The first human being God cursed was not Adam or Eve or Abel – it was Cain, the first reprobate (Gen. 4:11). God curses all the reprobate through their whole life and they bear God’s curse eternally in hell.

         2. God’s curse is expressed in His Law, the revelation of His righteous will and perfect character. Gal. 3:10 (“As many as are of the works of the law …”)

            1. The churches in Galatia were being seduced away from the Gospel by Judaizers, who told them that they could be saved by keeping the Law of Moses. Paul says that the Law only brings a curse on all those who seek salvation in it.

            2. There is only blessing & life for those who keep the law: as long as Adam kept God’s commandment he lived and enjoyed God’s blessing; but there is no one today who can keep God’s Law, that is, keep God’s Law perfectly.

            3. The Law declares to all who transgress even the least of God’s commandments, “You must die. You deserve God’s wrath and curse.” This is not because of some fault in the Law but because of our sins.

   2. Now, given all that: the curse of God is the word of His wrath upon transgressors of His Law, we would expect to read in Scripture that God blessed Jesus X supremely, but instead we read that Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our flesh, was cursed!

      1. Galatians 3:13: “He became a curse …” and II Cor. 5:21 says, “He became sin.”

         1. This does not mean that God hated His Son or that Jesus Christ was sinful.

            1. Jesus is, was, and always will be, the ever blessed Son of God, the one in whom the Father delights, and the one in whom the Father is well pleased.

            2. There is no one who pleases God or delights His heart like Jesus: and we are only pleasing to God; God only delights in us because we are in Jesus Christ.

            3. Jesus, who became the object of God’s curse, never Himself committed any sin, nor did He even have a sinful nature or the slightest sinful inclination.

         2. Instead, the Bible means that legally Christ became a sinner and thus stood in the sinner’s place of condemnation or cursing.

            1. Christ’s nature did not change when He became Substitute: His legal status changed b/c God imputed to Him all of the sins of the people He represented.

            2. X took that willingly: He took responsib. for our sins. That is what the Bible means by a surety, one who takes upon Himself legal obligations of others.

            3. The Law said, “These people owe perfect obedience and they have not paid. Therefore they must be cursed.” And Christ responded, “I will take responsibility for them. Curse me instead.”

      2. Christ, then, became legally guilty of all the sins of His people so that the curse of the law was directed toward Him. He did not seek to escape; He obediently submitted Himself to it.

         1. The curse of the law was the curse of God’s wrath, a word of vengeance against Christ, the Sinbearer.

            1. The one who is under the curse of God cannot know the favour of God: that favour must be turned away.

            2. That one must be enveloped in darkness, he must know the horror of banishment from God.

            3. And all that happened to Christ as He suffered: yes, God loved Him, but He became the object of God’s wrath; the word of God’s wrath was directed against Him, and it made Christ unspeakably miserable.

         2. The key to understanding Christ’s sufferings is twofold: first, He suffered b/c He was guilty, and second, He suffered b/c He was guilty of the sins of others.

            1. That is how Galatians 3:13 explains it, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Not for Himself, but for us.

            2. If it had not been for our cursedness, there would have been no reason for Christ to suffer. God loved us too much to curse us, but His justice demanded we be cursed. Therefore Christ took the curse.

            3. That purpose is explained in verse 14, “That the blessing …” Christ is cursed so that we might be blessed. Christ hears the word of wrath so that we might hear the word of favor. What a glorious truth!

2. How This Happened

   1. Since the death of the cross was accursed of God, the cross was absolutely necessary if Christ was to bear the curse for sinners.

      1. No other form of death would do: Christ could not have died of a disease, drowned in the sea, or even been stoned to death. He had to be crucified.

         1. This is the teaching of Gal. 3:13 which quotes Deut. 21:22-23.

            1. In the OT, execution of criminals was usually death by stoning. After a person was dead, his corpse was hanged on a tree to expose it to open disgrace.

            2. While the body hung there in the open sun, the heat of the day who cause the flesh to rot and the vultures would eat the flesh. The meaning was that a criminal executed and exposed in such a fashion was so vile & abominable in the sight of God that God’s rejected him and God’s heaven refused him, so he would be suspended between the two as a curse.

            3. So that the curse would not remain on the land the corpse of such must be quickly buried; the dead body must not be left to hang overnight upon the tree.

         2. But crucifixion was much worse, b/c a person was hanged on a tree, a piece of wood, while he was still alive. Therefore, such a person actively bore God’s curse while he still lived.

            1. It is one thing for a dead corpse to bear the heat of the sun, but quite another for the Son of God to hang in the heat of the sun, slowly dying, racked with pain and consumed by thirst.

            2. It was common for a person to languish on the cross for days before they finally succumbed to death by exhaustion and asphyxiation.

            3. And so, if a dead body on a tree was cursed, how much more a man hanging alive on a tree for hours, even days! That was the case with Jesus Christ.

      2. The Jews understood this from the Law of Moses which is why the Xian message of a crucified Messiah was so offensive to them. “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block.”

         1. A crucified Messiah was an accursed Messiah: such a thing was impossible.

            1. Therefore, when Jesus appeared before the Jews on the cross, they took that as the great proof that Jesus was not the Messiah.

            2. Whatever His miracles suggested, no matter how wonderful His teachings, the cross was the final nail in the coffin of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah.

            3. And thus they mocked Him on the cross to come down: and when He died, they were convinced that Jesus was nothing but an accursed blasphemer.

         2. But the Jews were only partially right. Yes, Jesus was under a curse on the cross, but unlike others who were under God’s curse, Jesus was not bearing His own curse, and Jesus did not remain under the curse.

            1. Jesus was bearing the curse of sinners, and the Jews were self-righteous and would not see that they were under God’s curse and that they needed a Messiah who would bear their curse.

            2. Others who had been hanged on trees had borne the curse and perished, but Jesus bore the curse, destroyed God’s curse and when He rose again He showed that He had overcome the curse.

            3. Thus we say that Jesus was made a curse, but that He is not accursed. Raised, He lives, free from God’s curse. That explains I Cor. 12:3, “No man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed.” He was, not is, accursed.

   2. The cross was symbol of accursedness, and it was means whereby X bore the curse.

      1. The cross was the wood on which Jesus sacrificed Himself for sins of His people.

         1. By submitting to crucifixion, Jesus actively offered Himself.

            1. In the OT, the animals were slaughtered in a violent and bloody manner and their blood was sprinkled upon the altar before God. Jesus fulfilled the type.

            2. Therefore Jesus was killed in a violent manner, and He sprinkled His own blood before God as He gave up His life for the sins of His people.

            3. As animal sacrifice was burned up on the altar as a picture of the consuming of God’s wrath, so the Son of God took upon Himself the wrath of God.

         2. But Christ could not actively offer Himself unless the form of death gave Him occasion slowly and deliberately to lay down His life.

            1. If Jesus had just been struck with a blow to the dead or stabbed with a dagger, His death would not have been accursed and it would have been too quick.

            2. But the death on the cross was slow: He hung there for six hours, and three of them were under thick darkness as He deliberately bore God’s curse.

            3. All the suffering in Christ’s life were leading up to this point where He would lay down His life for the sheep: “Therefore doth my Father love me b/c I lay down my life, that I might take it up again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17-18).

      2. We must understand that Jesus’ death was voluntary; He offered Himself in obedience to and out of love for the Father.

         1. And we must also understand that as Jesus died and as God’s curse pressed down upon Him He loved the Father.

            1. Now, if God’s curse came down upon us, not only would we not be able to bear it, but we would curse God in bitterness.

            2. But with Christ it was different: He loved the Father even when He was under God’s curse. He trusted in God even when God turned away from Him; He hoped in God even in the deepest anguish of God-abandonment.

            3. And because He did that, God was fully satisfied with His sacrifice: He obeyed where we could not; and He suffered the penalty we deserved but could never bear.

         2. Thus, on the cross, Christ experienced the full horror of the curse of death. The other two men on Calvary did not experience what Christ did.

            1. That is why Christ trembled so violently in Gethsemane, that is why His cry was one of such inexpressible anguish. He experienced something much more horrible than mere nails in the hands and feet.

            2. The other men were not bearing the wrath of God against the sins of a multitude of sinners; they were not drinking, slowly, painfully, every drop of the wrath of God.

            3. But Christ was, and as He did that, He tasted the true horror of death. That’s why He insisted on being fully conscious for the whole experience; He would not drink the sedative that was offered to Him to dull His senses. And thus He bore the curse

3. What This Means For Us

   1. That Christ took God’s curse upon Himself on the accursed tree means that there is no curse for us.

      1. For God’s elect there never is a curse: we deserved the curse, but we were never cursed because God eternally loved us and chose us in Christ.

         1. God cannot and will not curse one who is in Christ; because to be in Christ is to be blessed.

            1. That means were are eternally blessed: God’s attitude toward us in always one of favor.

            2. But because we have broken God’s commandments we are worthy of being cursed and not worthy of being blessed.

            3. That is why the HC says “Christ took on Him the curse which lay upon me.” A broken law threatened God’s curse against me but Christ took that curse and gives me the blessing of God.

         2. On the other hand, if Christ did not take God’s curse there can be no blessing. That is the case with the reprobate. Let us examine the three crosses on Calvary’s hill so we can better understand it.

            1. First, there was the middle cross: on that cross Jesus Christ died, bearing the curse of His people.

            2. Second, there was the cross on which the penitent thief died. He was an elect sinner. We know this because he believed. He was not bearing his curse while he died on the cross, although his death was slow and painful. Christ was bearing his curse.

            3. But what of the third cross: there the unbelieving, impenitent thief died. He was a reprobate man. Christ did not bear his curse. He bore his own curse and he perished under his own curse.

      2. It is impossible to believe Gal. 3:13 and to be an Arminian.

         1. The Arminian says that Christ bore the curse for everyone, because He died for everyone.

            1. But Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us.”

            2. It does not say, “Christ hath made redemption from the curse of the law possible for us by offering to be made a curse for us if we would accept it.”

            3. So, the Arminian has a difficulty: either Christ was made a curse for all men and therefore all men are saved from the curse; or Christ was made a curse for some who still must bear their own curse forever in hell.

         2. The point of Galatians 3:13 and of the HC is this: Christ was made a curse for us SO THAT we will NEVER have to bear it ourselves.

            1. If Christ was made a curse for us and we still have to bear, then, IN WHAT SENSE was Christ actually MADE a curse for us?

            2. What, in other words, does that little word FOR mean?

            3. And where is the comfort if Christ has been cursed for me but I still could be cursed?

   2. Christ died on the cross so that we would have the assurance that Christ bore our curse: so that it would be done publically, so that there could be no question about it, so that we would never have to doubt: did Christ really deliver us from the curse?

      1. God could not have made it clearer: He made Christ a public spectacle of accursedness, not so we could say, there is an accursed man, that is what we deserve.

      2. Instead we say, we who look to Him by faith: Jesus bore my curse. He did it b/c He loved me and He desired to deliver me from God’s curse which hung over me.

      3. Now, I have nothing to fear: the curse of death is gone, and I enjoy God’s blessings.