Galatians 3:13

Christ hath redeemed us - The word used here ἐξηγόρασεν exēgorasen is not that which is usually employed in the New Testament to denote redemption. That word is λυτρόω lutroō. The difference between them mainly is, that the word used here more usually relates to a purchase of any kind; the other is used strictly with reference to a ransom. The word used here is more general in its meaning; the other is strictly appropriated to a ransom. This distinction is not observable here, however, and the word used here is employed in the proper sense of redeem. It occurs in the New Testament only in this place, and in Gal 4:5; Eph 5:16; Col 4:5. It properly means, to purchase, to buy up; and then to purchase anyone, to redeem, to set free. Here it means, that Christ had purchased, or set us free from the curse of the Law, by his being made a curse for us. On the meaning of the words redeem and ransom, see my notes at Rom 3:25; Isa 43:3, note; compare 2Co 5:21.

From the curse of the law - The curse which the Law threatens, and which the execution of the Law would inflict; the punishment due to sin. This must mean, that he has rescued us from the consequences of transgression in the world of woe; he has saved us from the punishment which our sins have deserved. The word, “us” here, must refer to all who are redeemed; that is, to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. The curse of the Law is a curse which is due to sin, and cannot be regarded as applied particularly to any one class of people. All who violate the Law of God, however that law may be made known, are exposed to its penalty. The word “law” here, relates to the Law of God in general, to all the laws of God made known to man. The Law of God denounced death as the wages of sin. It threatened punishment in the future world forever. That would certainly have been inflicted, but for the coming and death of Christ. The world is lying by nature under this curse, and it is sweeping the race on to ruin.

Being made a curse for us - This is an exceedingly important expression. Tyndale renders it, “And was made a curse for us.” The Greek word is κατάρα katara, the same word which is used in Gal 3:10; see the note at that verse. There is scarcely any passage in the New Testament on which it is more important to have correct views than this; and scarcely anyone on which more erroneous opinions have been entertained. In regard to it, we may observe that it does not mean:

(1) That by being made a curse, the Lord Jesus’ character or work were in any sense displeasing to God. He approved always of what the Lord Jesus did, and he regarded his whole character with love and approbation. The passage should never be so interpreted as to leave the impression that he was in any conceivable sense the object of the divine displeasure.

(2) Jesus was not ill-deserving. He was not blame-worthy. He had done no wrong. He was holy, harmless, undefiled. No crime charged upon him was proved; and there is no clearer doctrine in the Bible than that, in all his character and work, the Lord Jesus was perfectly holy and pure.

(3) Jesus was not guilty in any proper sense of the word. The word guilty means, properly, to be bound to punishment for crime. It does not mean properly, to be exposed to suffering, but it always, when properly used, implies the notion of personal crime. I know that theologians have used the word in a somewhat different sense, but it is contrary to the common and just apprehensions of people. When we say that a man is guilty, we instinctively think of his having committed a crime, or having done something wrong. When a jury finds a man guilty, it implies that the man has committed a crime, and ought to be punished. But in this sense, and in no conceivable sense where the word is properly used was the Lord Jesus “guilty.”

(4) It cannot be mean that the Lord Jesus properly bore the penalty of the Law. His sufferings were in the place of the penalty, not the penalty itself. They were a substitution for the penalty, and were, therefore, strictly and properly vicarious, and were not the identical sufferings which the sinner would himself have endured. There are some things in the penalty of the Law, which the Lord Jesus did not endure, and which a substitute or a vicarious victim could not endure. Remorse of conscience is a part of the inflicted penalty of the Law, and will be a vital part of the sufferings of the sinner in hell - but the Lord Jesus did not endure that. Eternity of sufferings is an essential part of the penalty of the Law - but the Lord Jesus did not suffer forever. Thus, there are numerous sorrows connected with the consciousness of personal guilt, which the Lord Jesus did not and cannot endure.

(5) Jesus was not sinful, or a sinner, in any sense. He did not so take human guilt upon him, that the words sinful and sinner could with any propriety be applied to him. They are not applied to him any way in the Bible; but there the language is undeviating. It is that in all senses he was holy and undefiled. And yet language is often used on this subject which is horrible and only a little short of blasphemy, as if he was guilty, and as if he was even the greatest sinner in the universe. I have heard language used which sent a chill of horror to my heart; and language may be found in the writings of those who hold the doctrine of imputation in the strictest sense, which is only a little short of blasphemy. I have hesitated whether I should copy expressions here on this subject from one of the greatest and best of men (I mean Luther) to show the nature of the views which people sometimes entertain on the subject of the imputation of sin to Christ. But as Luther deliberately published them to the world in his favorite book, which he used to call his “Catharine de Bora,” after the name of his wife; and since similar views are sometimes entertained now; and as it is important that such views should be held up to universal abhorrence, no matter how respectable the source from which they emanate, I will copy a few of his expressions on this subject. “And this, no doubt, all the prophets did foresee in spirit, than Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer, that ever was OR could be in the world. For he being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world is not now an innocent person and without sins; is not now the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; but a sinner which hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blasphemer, an oppressor, and a persecutor; of Peter, which denied Christ; of David, which was an adulterer, a murderer, and caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord; and, briefly, which hath and beareth all the sins of all people in his body: not that he himself committed them, but for that he received them, being committed or done of us, and laid them upon his own body, that he might make satisfaction for them with his own blood.

Therefore, this general sentence of Moses comprehendeth him also (albeit in his own person he was innocent), because it found him among sinners and transgressors; like as the magistrate taketh him for a thief, and punisheth him whom he findeth among other thieves and transgressors, though he never committed anything worthy of death. When the Law, therefore, found him among thieves it condemned and killed him as a thief.” “If thou wilt deny him to be a sinner and accursed, deny, also, that he was crucified and dead.” “But if it is not absurd to confess and believe that Christ was crucified between two thieves, then it is not absurd to say that he was accursed, and of all sinnerS, the greatesT.” “God, our most merciful Father, sent His only Son into the world, and laid upon him all the sins of all people, saying, be thou Peter, that denier; Paul, that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; David, that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the fruit in Paradise; that thief who hung upon the cross; and, briefly, be thou the person who has committed the sins of all people; see, therefore, that thou pay and satisfy for them” - Luther on the Galatians, Gal 3:13. (pp. 213-215. London edition, 1838).

Luther was a great and holy man. He held, as firmly as anyone can, to the personal holiness of the Redeemer. But this language shows how imperfect and erroneous views may warp the language of holy people; and how those sentiments led him to use language which is little less than blasphemy. Indeed, we cannot doubt that in Luther had heard this very language used by one of the numerous enemies of the gospel in his time, as applicable to the Saviour, he would have poured out the full torrent of his burning wrath, and all the stern denunciations of his most impassioned eloquence, on the head of the scoffer and the blasphemer. It is singular, it is one of the remarkable facts in the history of mind, that a man with the New Testament before him, and accustomed to contemplate daily its language, could ever have allowed himself to use expressions like these of the holy and unspotted Saviour. But what is the meaning of the language of Paul, it will be asked, when he says that he was “made a curse for us?”

In reply, I answer, that the meaning must be ascertained from the passage which Paul quotes in support of his assertion, that Christ was “made a curse for us.” That passage is, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” This passage is found in Deu 21:23. It occurs in a law respecting one who was hanged for a “sin worthy of death,” Deu 21:22. The Law was, that he should be buried the same day, and that the body should not remain suspended over the night, and it is added, as a reason for this, that “he that is hanged is accursed of God;” or, as it is in the margin, “the curse of God.” The meaning is, that when one was executed for crime in this manner, he was the object of the divine displeasure and malediction. Regarded thus as an object accursed of God, there was a propriety that the man who was executed for crime should be buried as soon as possible, that the offensive object should be hidden from the view In quoting this passage, Paul leaves out the words “of God,” and simply says, that the one who was hanged on a tree was held accursed.

The sense of the passage before us is, therefore, that Jesus was subjected to what was regarded as an accursed death. He was treated in his death As If he had been a criminal. He was put to death in the same manner as he would have been if he had himself been guilty of the violation of the Law. If he had been a thief or a murderer; if he had committed the grossest and the blackest crimes, this would have been the punishment to which he would have been subjected. This was the mode of punishment adapted to those crimes, and he was treated as if all these had been committed by him. Or, in other words, if he had been guilty of all these, or any of these, he could not have been treated in a more shameful and ignominious manner than he was; nor could he have been subjected to a more cruel death. Since it has already been intimated, it does not mean that Jesus was guilty, nor that he was not the object of the approbation and love of God, but that Jesus’ death was the same that it would have been if he had been the vilest of malefactors, and that that death was regarded by the Law as accursed.

It was by such substituted sorrows that we are saved; and he consented to die the most shameful and painful death, as if he were the vilest criminal, in order that the most guilty and vile of the human race might be saved. With regard to the way in which Jesus’ death is connected with our justification, see the note at Gal 2:16. It may be observed, also, that the punishment of the cross was unknown to the Hebrews in the time of Moses, and that the passage in Deu 21:23 did not refer originally to that. Nor is it known that hanging criminals alive was practiced among the Hebrews. Those who were guilty of great crimes were first stoned or otherwise put to death, and then their bodies were suspended for a few hours on a gibbet. In many cases, however, merely the head was suspended after it had been severed from the body. Gen 40:17-19; Num 25:4-5. Crucifixion was not known in the time of the giving of the Law, but the Jews gave such an extent to the Law in Deu 21:23 as to include this mode of punishment (see Joh 19:31 ff).

The force of the argument here, as used by the apostle Paul, is, that if to be suspended on a gibbet after having been put to death was regarded as a curse, it should not be regarded as a curse in a less degree to be suspended Alive on a cross, and to be put to death in this manner. If this interpretation of the passage is correct, then it follows that this should never be used as implying, in any sense, that Christ was guilty, or that he was ill-deserving, or that he was an object of the divine displeasure, or that he poured out on him all his wrath. He was, throughout, an object of the divine love and approbation. God never loved Jesus more, or approved what he did more, than when he gave himself to death on the cross. God had no hatred toward him; He had no displeasure to express toward him. And it is this which makes the atonement so wonderful and so glorious. If God had been displeased with Jesus; if the Redeemer had been properly an object of God’s wrath; if Jesus, in any sense, deserved those sorrows, there would have been no merit in Jesus’ sufferings; there would have been no atonement. What merit can there be when one suffers only what he deserves? But what made the atonement so wonderful, so glorious, so benevolent; what made it an atonement at all, was that innocence was treated as if it were guilt; that the most pure, and holy, and benevolent, and lovely being on earth should consent to be treated, and should be treated by God and man, as If Jesus were the most vile and ill-deserving. This is the mystery of the atonement; this shows the wonders of the divine benevolence; this is the nature of substituted sorrow; and this lays the foundation for the offer of pardon, and for the hope of eternal salvation.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Gal_3:13

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

Sin and redemption

I. The divine execration of sin.

1. Under a moral government a righteous governor will, yea, must, append blessing to good and cursing to evil.

2. There is a law above all human laws:

(1) In the perfection of its nature;

(2) the extent of its application;

(3) the power of its condemnation.

3. If we have broken this law, then we are placed under a curse.

II. The Divine redemption of the sinner

1. Guilty men are under the curse; a guiltless one comes under it

(1) joyfully;

(2) completely.

2. The Lord Jesus Christ, then, represents our race, and for us has become a curse.

(1) He was of such dignity that He could represent it;

(2) His act was spontaneous;

(3) He was appointed of the Father;

(4) foreseeing the result of His work He rejoiced to do it (Isa_53:11; Heb_13:1-2).

3. By bearing the curse on Himself He bore it off from us.

4. The curse being thus rolled away, the way is prepared for the coming of the blessing.

5. The blessing comes to those who repent and believe. (C. Clemance, D. D.)

I. The curse of the law contained all that was due to sin.

II. This belonged to us.

III. It was transferred to Christ. His hanging on a tree was the sign and token of this (Deu_21:23 cf.; 1Pe_2:24).

IV. This secures for all believers the blessing of faithful Abraham.

1. An interest in Christ.

2. Righteousness.

3. Acceptance with God. (J. Owen, D. D.)

The necessity for Christ

s bearing our curse

The sentence or curse of the law must not fall to the ground, for then the aid of Gods governing the world could not be secured; His law would seem to be given in jest, and His threatenings would be interpreted to be a vain scarecrow, and the sin of the creature would not seem so odious a thing, if the law might be broken and there were no more ado about it; therefore Christ must come to bear this curse. (T. Manton.)

Deliverance firm the curse through Christ

1. The threatenings of the law, denouncing a curse against those who yield not personal obedience to it, did not exclude or forbid a surety to come in the sinners room, and to undergo the curse due to him.

2. All men are by nature under the sentence of the laws curse, whereby in Gods justice they are under the power of darkness (Col_1:13), slavery and bondage to sin and Satan (Eph_2:2), so to remain until they be cast into utter darkness (Jud_1:13), except delivery and redemption intervene.

3. There is no delivery of enslaved man from this woeful bondage, but by giving satisfaction and by paying of a price for the wrong done to Divine justice, either by himself, or by some surety in his stead. Satisfaction is demanded by

(1) Gods fidelity (Gen_2:17);

(2) His righteous nature (Psa_11:6-7);

(3) the inward desert of sin (Rom_1:32).

4. It is not in the power of fallen man to acquire a ransom for himself, by anything he can either do or suffer.

5. Jesus Christ has undertaken and accomplished this great work.

6. This work is to redeem. Christ buys back what was once His own, but for a time lost.

7. It is a real redemption, all that was forfeited being restored.

8. The price paid by Christ, in order to our redemption, was no less than His undergoing the curse due to us. (James Ferguson.)

Christ made a curse for us

The apostle here unveils a reason why men are not saved by their personal righteousness, but by their faith. He says the reason is, that men are not saved now by any personal merit, but their salvation lies in another, viz., in Christ Jesus, the Representative Man, who alone can deliver from the curse of the law; and since works do not connect us with Christ, but faith is the uniting bond, faith becomes the way of salvation. Since faith is the hand that lays hold upon the finished work of Christ, which works could not and would not do, for works lead us to boast and to forget Christ, faith becomes the true and only way of obtaining justification and everlasting life. Let us try to understand more clearly the nature of His substitution, and of the suffering which it entailed upon Him.

I. What is the curse of the law here intended?

1. It is the curse of God. God who made the law has appended certain penal consequences to the breaking of it; and the man who violates the law becomes at once the subject of the wrath of the Lawgiver. Hence it must be

(1) supremely just;

(2) morally unavoidable;

(3) most weighty.

2. It is a sign of displeasure. God is angry with the wicked every day: His wrath towards sin is great.

3. Gods curse of something more than a threatening; He comes at length to blows. He uses warning words at first, but sooner or later He bares his sword for execution. Cain. Flood. Sodom.

II. Who are under the curse?

1. The Jewish nation. To them the law of God was very peculiarly given beyond all others.

2. All nations. The law, although not given to all from Sinai, has been written by the finger of God more or less legibly upon the conscience of all mankind.

3. Those who, when offered the gospel, prefer to remain under the law (Gal_3:10). All that the law of works can do for men is to leave them still accursed.

III. How was Christ made a curse for us?

1. By substitution. Christ was no curse in Himself. Of His own free will He became a curse for us.

2. All the sins of His people were actually laid upon Him. He endured both

(1) the penalty of loss; and

(2) the penalty of actual suffering, both

(a) in body and

(b) in soul.

It was an anguish never to be measured, an agony never to be comprehended. To God only were His griefs fully known. Well does the Greek liturgy put in, Thine unknown sufferings, for they must for ever remain beyond guess of human imagination. Behold Christ bearing the curse instead of His people. Here He is coming under the load of their sin, and God does not spare Him, but smites Him as He must have smitten us, lays His full vengeance on Him, launches all His thunderbolts against Him, bids the curse wreak itself upon Him, and Christ suffers all, sustains all.

IV. The blessed consequences of Christs having thus been made a curse for us.

1. We are redeemed from the curse. The law is silenced; it can demand no more. The quiver of wrath is exhausted.

2. The blessing of God, hitherto arrested by the curse, is now made most freely to flow. A great rock has been lifted out from the river-bed of Gods mercy, and the living stream comes rippling, rolling, swelling on in crystal tides, sweeping before it all human sin and sorrow, and making the thirsty who stoop down to drink at it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The nature of our redemption

Redemption being deliverance by means of the substitution of a ransom, it follows that, although the ransom can only be paid to God, and to Him only as the moral governor of the universe, we may still be said to be redeemed from all that we are delivered from by means of the ransom paid in the sacrifice of Christ. Thus we are said to be redeemed from

(1) our vain conversation (1Pe_1:18);

(2) death (Hos_12:14);

(3) the devil (Col_2:15);

(4) all iniquity (Tit_2:14);

(5) the curse of the law (Gal_3:13; Gal_4:5).

It is, of course, not meant that the ransom is paid to the devil, or to sin or to death, or to the law. These different conceptions are not inconsistent. A captive is redeemed by a price paid only to him that holds him in bondage, but by the same act he may be redeemed from labour, from disease, from death, from the persecution of his fellow-captives, and from a slavish disposition. (Hodge.)

The two curses

Two curses pronounced in the law are here referred to. All mankind was liable to the former one. How was it to be removed?

1. He who was to remove it must not Himself be liable to it. He who was to be a substitute for the guilty must Himself be innocent. He who was to suffer in the stead of the disobedient must Himself be obedient in all things.

2. He who was to be the substitute for all must have the common nature of all. He must not take the person of one individual man (such as Abraham, Moses, Elias), but He must take the nature of all, and sum up all mankind in Himself.

3. He who was to do more than counterbalance the weight of the sins of all, must have infinite merits of His own, in order that the scale of Divine justice may preponderate in their favour. And nothing that is not Divine is infinite. In order, therefore, that He may be able to suffer for sin, He must be human; and in order that He may be able to take away the sins, and to satisfy Gods justice for them, He must be Divine.

4. In order that He may remove the curse pronounced in the law of God for disobedience, He must undergo that punishment which is especially declared in the law to be the curse of God.

5. That punishment is hanging on a tree (Deu_21:23).

6. By undergoing this curse for us, Christ, He who is God from everlasting, and who became Emmanuel, God with us, God in our flesh, uniting together the two natures--the Divine and the human--in His one person--Christ Jesus, redeemed us from the curse of the law. Thus, having accepted the curse, He liberated us from it. (Bishop Chris. Wordsworth.)

Christ stood for the every one who continueth not, by becoming the very one who hung upon the tree. (M. B. Riddle, D. D.)

The satisfaction of Christ

1. The believers discharge. The law of God hath three parts, commands, promises, and threatenings or curses. The curse of the law is its condemning sentence, whereby a sinner is bound over to death, even the death of soul and body. The chain, by which it binds him, is the guilt of sin, and from which none can loose the soul but Christ. This curse of the law is the most dreadful thing imaginable; it strikes at the life of a sinner, yea, his best life, the eternal life of the soul; and when it hath condemned, it is inexorable, no cries nor tears, no reformations or repentance, can loose the guilty sinner: for it requires for its reparation that which no mere creature can give, even an infinite satisfaction. Now from this curse Christ frees the believer; that is, He dissolves the obligation to punishment, cancels the hand-writing, looses all the bonds and chains of guilt, so that the curse of the law hath nothing to do with him for ever.

2. We have here the way and manner in and by which this is done; and that is by a full price paid down, and that price paid in the room of the sinner, both making up a complete and full satisfaction. He pays a full price, every way adequate and proportionable to the wrong.

3. The nature of Christs satisfaction.

(1) It is the act of God-man; no other was capable of giving satisfaction for an infinite wrong done to God. But by reason of the union of the two natures in His wonderful person, He could do it, and hath done it for us.

(2) If He satisfy God for us, He must present Himself before God, as our Surety, in our stead, as well as for our good; else His obedience had signified nothing to us: To this end He was made under the law (Gal_4:4), comes under the same obligation with us, and that as a Surety, for so He is called (Heb_7:22). Indeed, His obedience and sufferings could be exacted from Him upon no other account. It was not for anything He had done that He became a curse.

(3) The internal moving cause of Christs satisfaction for us was His obedience to God, and love to us. That it was an act of obedience is plain from Php_2:8, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

(4) The matter of Christs satisfaction was His active and passive obedience to all the law of God required.

(5) The effect and fruit of this His satisfaction is our freedom, ransom, or deliverance from the wrath and curse due to us for our sins. Such was the dignity, value, and completeness of Christs satisfaction, that in strict justice it merited our redemption and full deliverance; not only a possibility that we might be redeemed and pardoned, but a right whereby we ought to be so. We pass on to state some obections, and to answer them. The doctrine of Christs satisfaction is absurd, for Christ (say we) is God; if so, then God satisfies Himself, than which what can be more absurd to imagine? I answer, God cannot properly be said to satisfy Himself; for that would be the same thing as to pardon, simply, without any satisfaction. But there is a twofold consideration of Christ; one in respect of His essence and Divine nature, in which sense He is the object both of the offence, and of the satisfaction made for it. Another in respect of His person and economy, or office; in which sense He properly satisfies God, being in respect of His manhood another, and inferior to God (Joh_14:28). The blood of the man Christ Jesus is the matter of the satisfaction; the Divine nature dignifies it, and makes it of infinite value.

2. If Christ satisfied by paying our debt, then He should have endured eternal torments; for so we should, and the damned shall. We must distinguish betwixt what is essential, and what is accidental in punishment. The primary intent of the law is reparation and satisfaction; he that can make it at one entire payment (as Christ could and did) ought to be discharged. He that cannot (as no mere creature can) ought to lie for ever, as the damned do, under sufferings.

3. If God will be satisfied for our sins before He pardon them, how then is pardon an act of grace? Pardon could not be an act of pure grace, if God received satisfaction from us; but if He pardon us upon the satisfaction received from Christ, though it be of debt to Him, it is of grace to us: for it was grace to admit a surety to satisfy, more grace to provide Him, and most of all to apply His satisfaction to us, by uniting us to Christ, as He hath done.

4. But God loved us before Christ died for us; for it was the love of God to the world that moved Him to give His only-begotten Son. Could God love us, and yet not be reconciled and satisfied? Gods complacential love is indeed inconsistent with an unreconciled state: He is reconciled to every one He so loves. But His benevolent love, consisting in His purpose of good, may be before actual reconciliation and satisfaction.

5. Temporal death, as well us eternal, is a part of the curse; if Christ have fully satisfied by bearing the curse for us, how is it that those for whom He bare it die as well as others? As temporal death is a penal evil, and part of the curse, so God inflicts it not upon believers; but they must die for other ends, viz., to be made perfectly happy in a more full and immediate enjoyment of God, than they can have in the body; and so death is theirs by way of privilege (1Co_3:22). They are not deaths by way of punishment. The same may be said of all the afflictions with which God, for gracious ends, now exercised His reconciled ones. Thus much may suffice to establish this great truth. We proceed to make the following inferences:

1. If the death of Christ was that which satisfied God for all the sins of the elect, then certainly there is an infinite evil in sin, since it cannot be expiated, but by an infinite satisfaction. Fools make a mock at sin, and there are but few souls in the world that are duly sensible of, and affected with its evil; but certainly, if God should damn thee to all eternity, thy eternal sufferings could not satisfy for the evil that is in one vain thought.

2. If the death of Christ satisfied God, and thereby redeemed the elect from the curse, then the redemption of souls is costly; souls are dear things, and of great value with God.

3. If Christs death satisfied God for our sins, how unparalleled is the love of Christ to poor sinners!

4. If Christ, by dying, hath made full satisfaction, then God is no loser in pardoning the greatest of sinners that believe in Jesus; and consequently His justice can be no bar to their justification and salvation. He is just to forgive us our sins (1Jn_1:9). What an argument is here for a poor believer to plead with God!

5. If Christ hath made such a full satisfaction as you have heard, how much is it the concernment of every soul, to abandon all thoughts of satisfying God for his own sins, and betake himself to the blood of Christ, the ransomer, by faith, that in that blood they may be pardoned? It would grieve ones heart to see how many poor creatures are drudging and tugging at a task of repentance, and revenge upon themselves, and reformation, and obedience, to satisfy God for what they have clone against Him: And alas! it cannot be, they do but lose their labour; could they swelter their very hearts out, weep till they can weep no more, cry till their throats be parched, alas, they can never recompense God for one vain thought. For such is the severity of the law, that when it is once offended, it will never be made amends again by all that we can do; it will not discharge the sinner, for all the sorrow in the world. (John Flavel.)

Suffering, redemption, blessing

I. The sufferings of Christ. He was made a curse. Upon Him rested, for a season, the wrath of God.

1. This was the bitter experience of His life. From His standpoint of perfect rectitude and purity, He saw how far men had wandered from God, and how deeply they had fallen in sin.

2. This was the agony of His death. Mans hatred to God culminated in the act that put Christ to death.

3. That Christ endured such suffering, being made a curse, was evident from the peculiar manner of His death. As it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.

II. Redemption by christ. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.

III. Blessing through Christ. In this blessing is included--

1. Salvation for the Gentiles, That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.

2. Blessing through Christ included the promise of the Spirit.

Lessons:

1. Christ the sufferer must be Christ the Redeemer.

2. The blessings of salvation are to be obtained in Christ (ἐν Χριστῷ). There must be fellowship with Christ.

3. Salvation becomes an actual and personal blessing through the ministration of the Spirit. (Richard Nicholls.)

Christ made a curse for man

A man pays a ransom for slaves; but Christ took the slaves place. A doctor gives medicine to a sick man; but Christ took the disease on Himself. We are told of Sister Dora that she was in the habit of bringing back to life patients who had sunk into the first stage of the fatal collapse which often precedes death from small-pox, by actually putting her mouth to theirs, and breathing into them, until vitality was restored. (Sister Dora, by M. Lonsdale.) St. Vincent do Paul was at one time almoner-general to the prison ships in the chief harbours of France, during the reign of Louis XIII. While visiting those at Marseilles, he was so much struck by the broken-down looks and exceeding sorrowfulness of one of the convicts, that, on discovering his sorrow was less for his own sake than for the misery to which his absence must needs reduce his wife and children, St. Vincent absolutely changed places with the convict. The prisoner went free, whilst St. Vincent wore a convicts chain, did a convicts work, lived on convict fare, and, worst of all, had only convict society. He was soon sought out and released, but the hurts he had received from the pressure of the chains lasted all his life …. After this St. Vincent worked with infinitely more force on the consciences of the convicts for having been for a time one of themselves. (From Miss Yonges Book of Golden Deeds.)

Our redemption by Christ

This curse is the wretched inheritance of all the guilty sons of Adam. And can there any, in this forlorn and desperate ease, interpose to shelter the trembling sinner from so great, so deserved, so imminent a destruction? Is there any way of escape, any door of hope opened? There is; for, behold! I this day bring unto all penitent and humble souls the glad tidings of great joy; joy which, if excess of fear and horror have not altogether stupefied and made us insensible, must needs fill us with the highest raptures of triumph and exultations. A Saviour, a Redeemer: O sweet and precious names, for lost and undone sinners! Names, full of mercy, full of life! Justice is answered; the law is satisfied; the curse removed; and we restored to the hopes of eternal life and salvation. Christ hath redeemed us, etc.

I. Jesus Christ, the ever-blessed God, was made a curse for us.

1. What it is to be made a curse. Now to be accursed, in its proper notion, signifies to be devoted to miseries and punishments; for we are said to curse another when we devote and, so far as in us lies, appoint him to plagues and miseries. And God is said to curse men when He doth devote and appoint them to punishments. Men curse by imprecation; but God curseth more effectually by ordination and infliction. But yet, notwithstanding, every one whom God afflicts must not be esteemed as cursed by Him. Every one, therefore, that is afflicted is not presently accursed. For God hath two ends for which He brings any affliction upon us. The one is the manifestation of His holiness; the other is the satisfaction of His justice. And accordingly as any affliction or suffering tends to the promoting of these ends, so it may be said to be a curse or not.

2. How Jesus Christ, who is God blessed for ever, could be made a curse or become accursed. This, at the first glance of our thoughts upon it, seems very difficult, if not impossible, to be reconciled. And the difficulty is increased, partly because the true faith acknowledgeth our Lord Jesus Christ to be the true God, blessed for ever; and partly because the apostle tells us, That no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, calleth. Jesus accursed (1Co_12:3).

(1) Then certain it is that Christ is essentially blessed, being the most blessed God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, possessing all the infinite perfections of the Deity, invariably and immeasurably. Yea, and He is the fountain of all blessing, whence flow all our hopes and happiness. But although He is for ever blessed essentially, yet,

(2) Mediatorily, He was accursed; and that because the economy and dispensation of His mediatory office required that tie should be subjected unto sufferings, not only as they were simply evil, but as they were penal, and inflicted on Him to this very end, that justice might be repaired and satisfied.

(3) But the curse of the law being only duo unto sin and guilt, it remains yet to be inquired how this curse could be justly inflicted on our Saviour, who was infinitely pure and innocent; and to whom the Scripture gives this testimony, that He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth (1Pe_2:22). To this I answer: That sin may be considered either as personal or imputed.

(a) Christ was free from all personal sin, whether of corruption of nature or transgression of life.

(b) Yet He was not free from all imputed sin and guilt. The sins of all the world assembled and met together upon Him.

3. Is it consistent with the justice of God to punish an innocent person for the sins of those that are guilty? To this I answer:

(1) In general, that it is not unjust for God to punish the sins of one person upon another who hath not committed them. We find frequent instances of this in the Scripture (Exo_20:8; Lam_5:7; Gen_9:25; 2Sa_21:1-14; 2Sa_24:17).

(2) It is just with God to inflict the punishment of our sins upon Christ, though innocent. And there are two things upon which this justice and equity are founded--conjunction and consent.

[1] There is a near conjunction between Christ and us, upon which account it is no injustice to punish Him in our stead. And this conjunction is twofold-either natural or mystical.

1st. There is a natural conjunction between us, as Christ is truly man, and hath taken upon Him our nature, which makes a cognation and alliance between us. We are bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. It was therefore necessary that Christ should take our nature upon a threefold account.

(1st) That thereby the same person, who is God, might become passive, and a fit subject to receive and bear the wrath of God; for had He not been man, He could not have received it; and had He not been God, He could not have borne it.

(2ndly) That satisfaction might be made to offended justice in the same nature which transgressed; that as it was man which sinned, so man also might be punished. And yet farther,

(3rdly) that the right of redemption might be in Christ, being made near of kin unto us, by His taking our flesh and our nature. For we find in the law that the person who was next of kin was to redeem to himself the lands of his relations, when they were fallen to decay, and constrained by poverty to sell them (Lev_25:25; Rth_3:12; Rth_4:4). Whereby was typified unto us our redemption by Jesus Christ, who, having a body prepared for Him, is now become near of kin unto us, and is not ashamed to call us brethren. Now, because of this natural conjunction, the transferring the punishment from us, who are guilty, unto Christ, who is guiltless, doth, at least in this respect, answer the rules and measures of justice; that although the same person be not punished, yet the same nature is. But this is not all, for--

2ndly. There is a nearer conjunction between Christ and us, and that is mystical, whereby we are made one person with Him. And by reason of this, God, in punishing Christ, punisheth not only the same nature, but the same person. For there is such an intimate union by faith between Christ and a believer, that they make up but one mystical person.

[2] As Christ is thus conjoined to us, both naturally and mystically, so He has also given His full consent to stand in our stead, and to bear our punishment.

4. Did Christ bear the same wrath and curse which were due to us for our sins, or some other punishment in lieu thereof? For answer to this, we must carefully distinguish between the substance of the curse and the adjuncts and circumstances of it. For want of rightly distinguishing between these, too many have been woefully staggered and perverted in their faith; and have been induced to believe that Christ died not in the stead of any, but only for the good of all, as the Socinians blaspheme. Now certain it is that Christ underwent the very same punishment, for the matter and substance of it, which was due to us by the curse and threatening of the law, though it may be different in very many circumstances and modifications, according to the divers natures of the subjects on whom it was to be inflicted. For the substance of the curse and punishment threatened against sinners is death. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

5. For whose sake was Christ thus accursed and punished?

(1) He died in our place and stead as a Ransom for us.

(2) He suffered our punishment to free us from it.

II. Christ being thus made a curse for us, and suffering all the wrath and punishment that was due unto us, hath thereby redeemed us from the curse and condemnation threatened in the law.

1. Let us consider what redemption is. Redemption, therefore, may be taken either properly or improperly. An improper redemption is a powerful rescue of a man from under any evil or danger in which he is. Thus Jacob makes mention of the angel which redeemed him from all evil (Gen_48:16); and the disciples profess that they hoped that Jesus had been He who should have redeemed the Israelites from under the Roman yoke and subjection, etc. A proper redemption is by paying a price and ransom. And that either fully equivalent: thus one kinsman was to redeem another out of servitude (Lev_25:49-50); or else what is given for the redemption of another may, in itself, be of a less value, but yet is accepted as a recompense and satisfaction: thus the first-born of a man was to be redeemed, and the price paid down for him no more than five shekels (Num_18:15-16). Now the redemption made for us by Christ is a proper redemption, by way of price; and that price, not only reckoned valuable by acceptation, but, in itself, fully equivalent to the purchase, and compensatory to Divine justice.

2. The reasons which moved God to contrive the method of our redemption by substituting His own Son to bear the punishment of our offences.

(1) God substitutes His Son to undergo our punishment that thereby the exceeding greatness of His love towards us might be expressed and glorified.

(2) In the sufferings of Jesus Christ, God manifests the glory both of His justice and mercy, and with infinite wisdom reconciles them one with the other.

(3) By this means also God most effectually expresses His infinite hatred and detestation of sin. For it is expedient that God should, by some notable example, show the world how provoking a thing sin is. It is true He hath already demonstrated His hate against it by ruthful examples upon all the creatures. As soon as ever the least breath of this contagion seized upon them, God turned the angels out of heaven, and man out of Paradise; He subjected the whole creation unto vanity, that nothing but fears, care, sorrow, and disappointment reign here below; and under these woeful effects of the Divine wrath we groan and sign away our days. But all these are but weak instances of so great and almighty a wrath; and their capacity is so narrow, that they can only contain some few drops of the Divine indignation, and those, likewise, distilled upon them by degrees and succession. And, therefore, God is resolved to fit a vessel large enough, a subject capable enough, to contain the immense ocean of His wrath; and because this cannot be in any finite and limited nature, God Himself must be subject to the wrath of God.

(4) God so severely punisheth His Son that the extremity of His sufferings might be a caution to us, and affect us with a holy dread and fear how we provoke so just and so jealous a God. For if His own Son, dear to Him as His own essence, could not escape, when He only stood in the place of sinners, how thinkest thou, O wretch! to escape the righteous judgment of God if thou continuest in thy sins and provocations?

3. Who the persons are for whom Jesus Christ has wrought out this great redemption.

(1) That Christ died for all men, with an absolute intention of bringing all and every one of them into a state of salvability; from the which they were excluded by their guilt and Gods righteous judgment, and that He is not frustrated in this His intention, but, by His death, hath fully effected and accomplished it.

(2) The second argument is this: The covenant of grace is propounded to all indefinitely and universally. (Mar_16:16) Whosoever believeth shall be saved. And, under these general terms, it may be propounded unto all, even the most desperate and forlorn sinners on earth. But if Christ had not died for all, as well for the reprobate as the elect, this tender could not be made to all, as our Saviour commands it to be (v. 15), Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

(3) It must needs be acknowledged that Christ died for all men, in such a sense, as He is denied to have died for the fallen angels; then His death was not only a sufficient, but an intended, ransom for all. For the death of Christ had sufficient worth and value in it to have redeemed and restored them, being an infinite price, through the infinite dignity of His person.

(4) All are bound to the great duty of believing in Christ; therefore He died for all.

(5) All men in the world are obliged to return gratitude and obedience unto Christ upon the account and consideration of His death; therefore His death had a respect to all (See 1Co_6:20; 2Co_5:15).

(6) Christ challenges unto Himself supreme authority and dominion over all by the right of His death (Rom_14:9). But if Christs authority over all, as Mediator, be founded on His death, it will follow that, as His authority is over all, so His death was for all; otherwise He must exercise His jurisdiction over those persons over whom He hath no right nor title.

III. Practical inferences and corollaries.

1. Be exhorted to admire and adore the infinite love of our Lord Jesus Christ towards fallen and undone mankind, in that He was pleased to substitute Himself in our stead, and, when the hand of justice was lifted up against us, to thrust Himself between us and the dread effects of the Divine wrath, receiving into His own bosom all the arrows of Gods quiver, every one of them dipped in the poison of the curse

(1) Consider the infinite glory and dignity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(2) Consider our infinite vileness and wretchedness.

(3) The infinite love of Christ, in being made a curse for us, is mightily glorified, if we consider, not only what He was, and who we are, but the several bitter and direful ingredients that compounded the curse which was laid upon Him.

2. If Christ has thus borne the curse for us, why should we think it much to bear the cross for Him?

3. Here is abundant satisfaction made to the justice of God for all the transgressions of true believers. They, by their Surety, have paid to the full, yea, and supererogated in His sufferings. For God could never have been so completely satisfied in exacting the penalty from us in our own- persons as now He is by the punishments laid upon His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. For those very sufferings of thy Saviour, which were an expiation for the sins of the whole world, were all of them tendered to the Father as an expiation for thine, and the full value of His infinite satisfaction belongs all of it entirely unto thee. And, therefore, look upon thy sins as horrid and heinous as thou canst; yet, unless thine in particular have been more than the sins of all the world, unless thine have been more sinful than sin itself can be, know, for thy comfort, that a full atonement is made, and now nothing is expected from thee but only to accept, it, and to walk worthy of it. (E. Hopkins, D. D.)

The substitute

One of our boys had committed an offence so bad that Mr. Gibb, his teacher, though rarely using the rod, felt it necessary to make an example of him. The punishment was to be publicly inflicted, that others might fear. But when the culprit, who had only been a few days in our school, was stripped, he was such a living skeleton, that the master had not the heart to beat him. At his wits end what to do--for the crime must be punished--it occurred to him to make such an appeal as, to compare small things to great, reminds us of the mystery of salvation, and the love of Him who was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, and by whose stripes we are healed. Turning to the others, It goes, he said, against my heart to lay a hand on that miserable creature. Will any one take his place, and be punished in his stead? The words bad hardly left his lips when, with tears of pity brimming in his eyes, a boy stepped bravely out, pulled his jacket off, and pushing the culprit aside, offered his own back and shoulders to the rod. A ragged school boy, he was a hero in his way, presenting an example of courage and kindness, of sympathy and unselfishness, rare in schools--or anywhere else. (Dr. Guthrie.)

Christ our substitute

Damon, a Grecian philosopher, is remarkable for his devotion to Pythias, his friend. Pythias having been condemned to death, he obtained leave of absence to go home and settle his affairs, and Damon pledged himself to endure the punishment if his friend did: not return. Pythias was absent at the time for the execution, but Damon was punctual, and ready to die for his friend, and the king was so pleased with the friendship of Damon that he pardoned him. (W. Birch.)

Enduring the curse for another

About a fortnight ago a man was admitted to the Bristol Royal. Infirmary, suffering from an affection of the throat, supposed to be diphtheria. The operation of tracheotomy was performed by Mr. W. C. Lysaght, M.R.C.S., assistant medical officer to the Infirmary; but the tube becoming choked, the last chance of saving the mans life was for some one to apply his lips to the tube and suck the moisture. This Mr. Lysaght did, but without avail, for shortly afterwards the patient died of suppressed scarlatina. Mr. Lysaght caught the disease in its worse form, and died. (From The Yorkshire Post, Aug. 6, 1887.)

Christ made a curse

I. Christ made a curse. First of all, I lay down this position as certain (however unlikely it might have seemed to us beforehand:), that the curse which the apostle speaks of is the curse of God. True, there was no lack of the cursing of this blessed One, in a secondary sense of the word, from other quarters,--no lack of the cursing of Him by men and devils, in the sense of maligning, blaspheming--wishing, calling Him accursed. But Paul assuredly does not speak of anything of that kind. Besides that he says made--not called, or wished, but (γενόμενος) made a curse,--see how certain it is from the entire context that it is the curse of God which he speaks of, and which he says Christ was made. He had begun to speak of this curse at the tenth verse, saying, As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that con-tinueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. Then in the thirteenth verse, where the text lies, Christ, says he, hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. It is out of the question to imagine the sense of the term to be entirely changed in this second: clause. Beyond all doubt the meaning is, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, having borne that curse--been made the curse of the law for us. And then, as it is Gods curse which the apostle says Christ was made, so was it God Himself who made Him that curse. God alone can bring His curse on any man. And you may only further notice as to this, that the word made here is the same the apostle uses in the fourth verse of the next chapter, When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law--made by God, of course. Our first position then is, that it is the curse of God which the apostle says Christ was made, and God Himself who made Him that curse.

II. But, secondly, at once the question arises, how could such a thing ever be? For the righteous God will bring His curse on no guiltless one. But it is certain He will not bring His curse on the guiltless. Wicked men may curse them--may wish, or call them, accursed.

III. But now, thirdly, there was a mysterious manner, yet most real and true, in which Christ was not guiltless. I might remind you of those words of the ransomed Church in Isaiah, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. But let us fix our attention a little more closely on those words of 2Co_5:21, God made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Made Him to be sin--the entire expression is, made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. So much is certain, therefore, negatively, that the apostles meaning is not, and cannot be, that He was made our sin in the pollution, or stain, or turpitude of it, either in nature or in life. For, besides the frightfulness of such a thing to be even imagined, it were in contradiction to the express words, He hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. So that the question remains just as before, what that sin was which was transferred. It could not be the pollution, the turpitude, on the one hand; it was not the suffering simply, on the other. But there was a great intermediate element between the turpitude and the suffering;and this it was that Christ was made in the whole fearful reality of it--even the guilt (the reatus, as the Latins spoke)--the just liability in law, and in the eye of the lawgiver, to endure the suffering, the punishment, the curse. For Christ, by an altogether peculiar Divine constitution--of infinite grace alike on the Fathers part and on His own--had become the Head of His body the Church,--taken their place in law--become one with them in law for ever. Read again, for instance, that fourth verse of the following chapter, When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law--under the law? But what could the Son, the very Lawgiver, have to do with subjection to the law? Nothing, assuredly, for Himself--nothing save as a public Person, Surety, Representative. And now turn we for a moment to the passage cited by the apostle from the Pentateuch. Let no one be startled in the reading of it. It is the twenty-first of Deuteronomy, the twenty-second and twenty-third verses--If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree; his body Shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God); that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

IV. Fourthly, thus have we the wondrous explanation of the whole life of our Lord Jesus Christ, which otherwise were an inexplicable enigma. Even had His sufferings proceeded simply from the hands of men and devils, the mystery would not have been removed, since neither devils nor men could be more than instruments--voluntary and guilty, yet only instruments--in the hand of Jehovah for the executing of His designs. But the fact, unquestionably, was that the principal sufferings of this Just One came from the immediate hand of the Father himself. It is impossible to read the Gospel histories without perceiving that by far His deepest agonies were those which He endured when there was no hand of man upon Him at all, or when, at least, He himself traces the suffering to another hand altogether--saying, for example, Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour.--My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; tarry ye here and watch with Me--Oh My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me--My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Ah! behold the explanation of all--of the travail of Messiahs soul--of an agony that wrung the blood from every pore of His sacred body--of what He himself declared to be His own Fathers desertion of Him--see, not the source of it only, but the soul also of its deepest bitterness and anguish, in these words, made sin, made a curse,--not accursed simply, but--as if all the curses due to a worlds sin had been made to meet in His person--made curse, that we might be redeemed from the curse of the law!

V. Fifthly, there are certain great central things among the types of the Old Testament which cast much light over the mysterious fact in our text, and, in their turn, receive important light from it. Let me select three--the brazen serpent, the burnt offering, and the sin offering.

1. The brazen serpent. At first view it seems very strange that the chosen type of the blessed Redeemer should have been the likeness of a serpent,--that, when the Israelites were dying of the bite of serpents, the medium of their cure should have been the likeness of one, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. But the wonder ceases, or rather is turned into another wonder of holy admiration, when we find that the only possible way of our deliverance from sin, was the Redeemers taking it, in its whole guilt and curse into His own person--being made sin and a curse for us. What glorious light is thus cast on the words of Jesus, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life!

2. The burnt offering. There is no doubt that the fire of all the burnt offerings of the law, whether it came down immediately from heaven to consume the victim, as on various memorable occasions, or was kindled naturally, was the emblem of the Divine holiness and justice, consuming the substitute lamb on which the sin had been laid--the sacrifice in place of the sinner. What a picture of Christ made a curse, enduring the fire of the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men! What a picture of the prophets Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts; smite the shepherd! What a picture of Him who cried, My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of My bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and My tongue cleaveth to My jaws; and Thou hast brought me into the dust of death!

3. The sin-offering. Let these words, for example, be carefully observed (Lev_16:27-28), The bullock for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin-offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall one carry forth without the camp; and they shall burn in the fire their skin, and their flesh, and their dung. And he that burneth them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp. That is to say, the victim, as having had the whole iniquities transferred to it by the laying of the hand upon its head, had become an unclean and accursed thing, and so behoved to be carried away out of Gods sight without the camp, and consumed in the fire. This is what our apostle refers to in those words in Hebrews, The bodies of those beasts, whose blood for sin is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. As if to say that when God appointed the sin-offerings of the law to be carried forth outside the camp as unclean and accursed, and to be burned in the fire, it was but a figure of our Lord Jesus, laden with our accursed iniquities, made sin and a curse, numbered with the transgressors, dealt with as the vilest of all--not by man so much as by God, the Holy One of Israel--because the Lord had, with His own most free consent, made to meet on Him the iniquities of us all. When Jesus was led forth out of Jerusalem, and there crucified between the thieves, it was as if all the innumerable multitudes of sinners whom He represented had been in that hour carried out, and had there endured, in their own persons, the curse of the Divine law due to their whole ungodliness, unrighteousness, pride, falsehood, vanity, uncleanness, rebellion, and I know not what other crimes and sins.

VI. But thus I observe, once more, that we do not get at the full explanation of the mysterious fact in our text till we have taken into view the wondrous design and issue of all, as set forth in the passage thus--Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And now, not only are we thus delivered from the laws terrible sentence, but--the stone which lay over the grave of our corruption once removed--the way is open for the Holy Ghosts descending into it to make an end of our corruption too,--yea, open for the whole blessing of the Abrahamic covenant, I will be a God to thee, coming on believers everywhere, of the Gentiles and of the Jews alike--from which blessing the apostle singles out the promise of the Holy Ghost, as being the centre and sum of it all, saying, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, etc., that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Three words in conclusion.

1. The apostle, in the opening chapter of this Epistle, speaks of another gospel, which is not another. Very rife in our day is another gospel, which truly is not another gospel. Substantially it is this, that God never has had a quarrel with man, but only man a quarrel with God,--that God never has been angry with men, but men only jealous of Him; and that the whole design, of Christs coming into the world, and of His suffering unto death was to convince men of this--who, as soon as they are persuaded to believe it--to believe that God loves them, and has loved them always, are saved. Another gospel truly--which in fact turns the whole mission and work of our Lord Jesus Christ into an unreality! But see the apostles gospel in verses 10, 13, 14, of this chapter. Verse 10, Gods quarrel with guilty men--As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. Then, the wondrous settlement of that quarrel (verse 13), Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. And hence the settlement of our vile quarrel also with God (verse 14), that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Now at length a conscience purged, and righteously purged, from dead works, to serve the living God! Now all possible motives, of love, and fear, and gratitude, and hope, and joy, unto a new and child-like obedience! O Lord, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid: Thou has loosed my bonds.

2. Behold here the very soul of the Lords Supper, which might have for its motto, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,--This is My body broken for you: this cup is My blood of the new covenant, shed for remission of the sins of many. Oh for a profound self-abasement, and fervent love, and lively faith, in the observing of it!

3. Be it well known to all, that we become partakers of this whole redemption by faith alone without the deeds of the law. (C. G. Brown, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 3:13-14. Christ — Christ alone; the abruptness of the sentence shows a holy indignation at those who reject so great a blessing; hath redeemed us — Or, hath bought us off, whether Jews or Gentiles; from the curse of the law — The curse which the law denounces against all transgressors of it, or the punishment threatened to them. Dr. Whitby proves, in his note on this verse, that the violation of the law given to Adam was attended with a curse, as well as that given to the Israelites by Moses, and that it is the more general curse. Nearly to the same purpose speaks Dr. Macknight, thus: — “That the persons here said to be bought off from the curse of the law, are the Gentiles as well as the Jews, is evident from Gal 3:10, where the apostle tells us, As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for the proposition being general, it implies that the Gentiles as well as the Jews are under the curse, and need to be bought off. This appears likewise from the purpose for which Christ is said (Gal 3:14) to have bought us off; namely, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the nations, that is, on both Jews and Gentiles. Next, the curse of the law, from which all are bought off by Christ, is not a curse peculiar to the law of Moses. For as the Gentiles never were under that law, they could have no concern with its curse. But it is the curse of that more ancient law of works, under which Adam and Eve fell, and which, through their fall, came on all their posterity. Also it is the curse of the law of nature, under which all mankind, as the subjects of God’s universal moral government, are lying for having broken that law. These curses are called by the general name of the curse of the law; not as being peculiar to the law of Moses, but because they were published in the law of Moses. From this curse of the law of works, Christ hath bought us off, by becoming a curse for us. For in the view of his death, to be accomplished in due time, God allowed Adam and his posterity a short life on earth, and resolved to raise them all from the dead, that every one may receive reward, or punishment, according to the deeds done by him in the body. Further, being bought off by Christ from the curse of the law of works, mankind, at the fall, were bought off from law itself; not indeed as a rule of life, but as a rule of justification; and had a trial appointed to them under a more gracious dispensation, in which not a perfect obedience to law, but the obedience of faith is required in order to their obtaining eternal life. Of this gracious dispensation, or covenant, St. Paul hath given a clear account,” Rom 5:18. The same writer observes further here, “Christ’s dying on the cross is called his becoming a curse; that is, an accursed person, a person ignominiously punished as a malefactor: not because he was really a malefactor, and the object of God’s displeasure, but because he was punished in the manner in which accursed persons, or malefactors, are punished. He was not a transgressor, but he was numbered with the transgressors, Isa 53:12.” That the blessing of Abraham — The blessing promised to him; might come on the Gentiles also; that we — Who believe, whether Jews or Gentiles; might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith — As the evidence of our being justified by faith, and of our being the sons of God, Gal 4:5-7. This promise of the Spirit, which includes all the other promises, is not explicitly mentioned in the covenant with Abraham, but it is implied in the promise, (Gen 22:17,) In blessing I will bless thee; and is expressly mentioned by the prophets, Isa 44:3; Eze 39:29; Joe 2:28.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:13-14 In contrast with those who depend on the law (3:10-12), those who look to God through faith in Christ freely receive God’s life and blessings.

3:13 rescued us (or ransomed us): Christ paid a ransom to buy back his people (see 4:4-5; 1 Pet 1:18-20). • “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”: Paul quotes Deut 21:23, in which executed criminals exposed for public shame were under God’s curse (see study note on Deut 21:22). Jesus, when he was crucified, took upon himself God’s curse that should have fallen upon all sinners (cp. 2 Cor 5:21).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Gal 3:13. Χριστὴς, Christ) Christ alone. This is an abrupt exclamation without a conjunction, and with some degree of indignation against the doers of the law. There is an Asyndeton not unlike this, Col 3:4: where the apostle is likewise speaking of Christ.—ἡμᾶς, us) The curse chiefly pressed upon the Jews; for the blessing also was nearer to them. The antithesis is, on the Gentiles, Gal 3:14: comp. Gal 4:3; Gal 4:6.—ἐξηγόρασεν, hath redeemed) He set us free by purchase from the state in which we were held. The same word occurs, Gal 4:5.—ἐκ τῆς κατάρας, from the curse) under which they lie, who trust either to the law, or the works of the law.—γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα, being made a curse for us) We have here the abstract, not the concrete noun. Who would dare without the fear of blasphemy so to speak, if the apostle had not led the way? The word curse, κατάρα, means more than anathema, Rom 9:3: for the curse is inflicted by another, the anathema is spontaneously incurred. In like manner יכרת, ἐξολοθρευθήσεται, shall be cut off, is said of Christ, Dan 9:26: comp. Gal 3:24 with the annot. of C. B. Michaelis. Ὑπὲρ, for, instead of, is also used here with the utmost propriety; for Christ became the curse, which we were, in our stead, that we might cease to be a curse.—γέγραπται, it is written) Deu 21:23, κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ Θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου.—ἐπὶ ξύλου, on a tree) between heaven and earth. Our mother-tongue calls it the gallows. The apostles, in treating of redemption, mention the cross, rather than the agony on the Mount of Olives, 1Pe 2:24. Had not the punishment of the cross been long ago abolished, the stupendous power of the cross of Christ would be more obviously before our eyes.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal_3:13. Connection: Through the law no one becomes righteous (Gal_3:11-12); Christ has redeemed us from the curse. See on Gal_3:11. The asyndeton renders the contrast stronger. Comp. Col_3:4. Rückert (comp. also Flatt, Koppe, Schott, Olshausen) reverts to Gal_3:10, supplying μέν in Gal_3:10, and δέ in Gal_3:13. This is incorrect, for Χρίστος finds its appropriate antithesis in the words immediately preceding; and, as in general it is a mistake thus to supply μέν and δέ, it is here the more absurd, because ὅσοι in Gal_3:10 has expressly received in γάρ its reference to what precedes it. Against Hofmanns interpretation, that Gal_3:13 is apodosis to Gal_3:11-12, see on Gal_3:11.

ἡμᾶς] applies to the Jews; for these were under the curse of the law[126] mentioned in Gal_3:10, and by faith in Christ made, themselves partakers of the redemption from that curse accomplished by Him, as Paul had himself experienced. Others have understood it as the Jews and Gentiles (Gomarus, Pareus, Estius, Flatt, Winer, Matthies). But against this view it may be urged, that the Gentiles were not under the curse of the Mosaic law (Rom_2:12); that a reference to the natural law as well (Rom_2:14-15) is quite foreign to the context (in opposition to Flatt); that the law, even if it had not been done away by Christ, would yet never have related to the Gentiles (in opposition to Winer), because it was the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile (Eph_2:14 f.); and lastly, that afterwards in Gal_3:14 εἰς τὰ ἔθνη is placed in contrast to the ἡμᾶς, and hence it must not be said, with Matthies, that it so far applies to the Gentiles also, since the latter as Christians could not be under obligation to the law,which, besides, would amount to a very indirect sort of ransom, entirely different from the sense in which it applied to the Jews.

ἐξηγόρασεν] Comp. Gal_4:5; 1Co_6:20; 1Co_7:23; Eph_1:7; 2Pe_2:1; Mat_20:28; Rev_5:9 Diod. Exc. p. 530. 4; 1Ti_2:6; Polyb. iii. 42. 2. Those who are under obligation to the law as the record of the direct will of God,[127] are subject to the divine curse expressed therein; but from the bond of this curse, from which they could not otherwise have escaped, Christ has redeemed them, and that by giving up for them His life upon the cross as a λύτρον paid to God the dator et vindex legis,having by His mors satisfactoria, suffered according to Gods gracious counsel in obedience to the same (Rom_5:19; Php_2:8), procured for them the forgiveness of sins (Eph_1:7; Col_1:14; Rom_3:24; 1Ti_2:6 : Mat_20:28; Mat_26:28), so that the curse of the law which was to have come upon them no longer had any reference to them. This modus of the redemption is here expressed thus: by His having become curse for us, namely, by His crucifixion, in which He actually became the One affected by the divine ὀργή. The emphasis rests on the κατάρα, which is therefore placed at the end and is immediately to be vindicated by a quotation from Scripture. This abstract, used instead of the concrete, is purposely chosen to strengthen the conception, and probably indeed with reference to the קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים, Deu_21:23; comp. Thilo, ad Protev. Jac. 3, p. 181. But ΚΑΤΆΡΑ is used without the article, because the object is to express that which Christ has become as regards the category of quality

He became curse, entered into the position, and into the de facto relation, of one visited with the divine wrath; it being obvious from the context that it was in reality the divine curse stipulated in the law, the accomplishment of which He suffered in His death, as is moreover expressly attested in the passage of Scripture that follows. Comp. Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 321, d; Kahnis, Dogm. I. p. 518 f., III. p. 382; Delitzsch, Z. Hebr. p. 714. The idea of κατάρα as the curse of Godobvious of itself to every readerforbids us to explain away (with Hofmann) the becoming a curse as signifying, not that God accomplished His curse on Christ, but that God decreed respecting Christ that He should suffer that which men did to Him as fulfilment of the curse of the law, which was not incurred by, and did not apply to, Him. The exact real parallel, 2Co_5:21, ought to have prevented any such evasive interpretation. And if Paul had not meant the curse of God, which Christ suffered ὙΠῈΡ ἩΜῶΝ,as no reader, especially after the passage of Scripture which follows, could understand anything else,he would have been practising a deception. Christ made sin by God, and so suffering the divine cursethat is just the foolishness of the cross, which is wiser than men (1Co_1:25). Comp., besides, Rich. Schmidt, Paulin. Christol. p. 81, who, however, regards the contents of our passage and of 2Co_5:21 under the point of view of the cancelling of sin (sin being viewed as an objective power), and thus comes into contact with Hofmanns theory.

ὙΠῈΡ ἩΜῶΝ] That ὙΠΈΡ, as in all passages in which the atoning death is spoken of, does not mean instead of (so here, Bengel, Koppe, Flatt, Rückert, Reithmayr, following earlier expositors; comp. also Lipsius, Rechtfertigungsl. p. 134f.), see on Rom_5:6. Comp. on Gal_1:4. The satisfaction which Christ rendered, was rendered for our benefit; that it was vicarious,[128] is implied in the circumstances of the case itself, and not in the preposition. The divine curse of the law must have been realized by all, who did not fully satisfy the law to which they were bound (and this no one could do), being compelled to endure the execution of the divine ὀργή on themselves; but for their deliverance from the bond of this curse Christ intervened with His death, inasmuch as He died as an accursed one, and thereby, as by a purchase-price, dissolved that relation to the law which implied a curse. Comp. 1Co_6:20; 1Co_7:23; Col_2:14. This effect depends certainly on the sinlessness of Christ (2Co_5:21), without which His surrendered life could not have been a λύτρον (Mat_20:28), and He Himself, by the shedding of His blood, could not have been a ἱλαστήριον (Rom_3:25), because, with guilt of His own, He would have been amenable to the curse on His own account, and not through taking upon Him the guilt of others (Joh_1:29); but utterly aloof from and foreign to the N.T. is the idea which Hilgenfeld here suggests, that the curse of the law had lost its validity once for all, because it had for once shown itself as an unrighteous curse. The death of Christ served precisely to show the righteousness of God, which has its expression in the curse of the law. See on Rom_3:25.

ὅτι γέγρ.… ξύλου is not an epexegesis to γενομ. ὑπ. ἡμ. κατ. (Matthias, who writes ὅ, τι), but is a parenthesis in which the γενόμενος κατάρα, which had just been said of Christ, is vindicated agreeably to Scripture, by Deu_21:23, freely quoted from the LXX.[129] Accursed (visited with the wrath of God) is every one who (according to the LXX., in which the article is wanting, every one, if he) is hanged on a tree. The original historical sense of this passage applies to those malefactors who, in order to the aggravation of their punishment, were after their execution publicly hung up on a (probably cross-shaped) stake,[130] but were not allowed to remain hanging over the night, lest such accursed ones should profane the holy land (Deu_21:23; Num_25:4; Jos_10:26; 2Sa_4:12). See Lund, Jüd. Heiligth. ed. Wolf, p. 536; Saalschütz, Mos. R. p. 460 f.; Bähr in the Stud. u. Krit. 1849, p. 924 f. Now, so far as Christ when put to death hung upon a stake (comp. Act_5:30; Act_10:39; 1Pe_2:24), the predicate ἐπικατάρατος applies also to Him; and this furnishes the scriptural proof of the preceding γενόμενος κατάρα.

[126] Which is not to be turned into a subjective condition, as Bähr (Stud. u. Krit. 1849, p. 922) wishes, who explains it as the state of spiritual death, in consequence of his erroneous view of εὐλογία in ver. 8.

[127] For in the apostles view everywhere, and here also, the law is this, and ver. 19 is not at variance with its being so (in opposition to Ritschl in d. Jahrb. f. D. Theol. 1863, p. 523 f.). Comp. on Col_2:15.

[128] As is expressly stated in Mat_20:28, 1Ti_2:6, by ἀντί. Comp. Thomasius, Chr. Pers. u. Werk, III. 1, p. 88 ff.; Gess, in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. II. 4, III. 4. The less satisfactory is it, therefore, with Schweizer in the Stud. u. Krit. 1858, p. 425 ff., to find that the essential import of our passage only amounts to this, that the Mosaic law had been set aside on the appearance of Christianity, and that this setting aside was decisively evinced by the death on the cross. See, on the other hand, Baur in Hilgenfelds Zeitschrift, 1859, p. 226 ff., and in his neut. Theol. p. 156 f.

[129] The LXX. has κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ Θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλον. The ὑπὸ Θεοῦ is also expressed in the Hebrew. Jerome accuses the Jews here also of intentional falsification of the text, alleging that in an anti-Christian interest they had inserted the name of God into the original text. Bähr, in the Stud. u. Krit. 1849, p. 928 ff., is of opinion that Paul purposely omitted ὑπὸ Θεοῦ, so as not to represent Christ as cursed by God (with which Hofmann agrees); that He was called cursed only because, through His death, He appeared as cursed before all to whom the law was given. But this is incorrect, because the expression is not Pauls, and because, so interpreted, the whole proof adduced would amount only to a semblance, and not to a reality. Christ has certainly averted from men the curse of God which was ordained in the law (ver. 10), by the fact that He, as the bearer of the divine curse, died while hanging on the cross. Having thus actually become ἐπικατάρατος, He became the propitiatory sacrifice for those who were subject to the law, whom He consequently redeemed from the definite divine curse of the law (ver. 10), so that on the part of God the actus forensis of justification now commenced; and for this reason, although the crucified One was ἐπικατάρατος, Paul could elsewhere represent Him as ὀσμὴ εὐωδίας (Eph_5:2). Luther aptly remarks: Si vis negare eum esse peccatorem et maledictum, negato etiam possum, crucifixum et mortuum. The cause of the non-adoption of ὑπὸ Θεοῦ cannot be that Paul, under the influence of a subordinate value assigned to the law as not directly given by God, had the passage imprinted on his mind without ὑπὸ Θεοῦ (Ritschl, l.c. p. 526), for he did not entertain any such estimate of its inferior value. We must, in fact, simply abide by the explanation that he quoted the passage of Scripture from a free recollection (as is already shown by ἐπικατάρατος and the addition of ὁ), and in doing so, having in view only the cursed as the point of the passage, left unnoticed the entirely obvious ὑπὸ Θεοῦ. In a similar way, in ver. 11, in the quotation Hab_2:4, he does not adopt the μου of the LXX.

[130] Analogous to our former custom of fastening criminals on the wheel, in order to aggravate the punishment.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gal 3:13 . The Law pronounced a blessing and a curse; but since it made no allowance for human infirmity, the blessing proved barren in result; while the curse, which invoked the just wrath of an offended God for the punishment of the guilty, proved, on the contrary, fruitful in condemnation.

From this hopeless state of just condemnation Christ delivered us by revealing the infinite mercy of an Almighty Father, and so reviving hope and thankful love in the heart of the condemned sinner by faith in His love. ἐξηγόρασεν . The figure of a ransom, which this word conveys, is doubly appropriate in this connection. Men needed a ransom, for the Law had left them prisoners under sentence of death, and Christ had Himself to pay the price. He had to become a man like His brethren save in sin, and to endure the penalty denounced on malefactors and hang on the accursed cross, as if He had been guilty like them. γενόμενος κατάρα . Hebrew thought tended to identify the man on whom a curse was laid with the curse, as it identified the sin-offering with the sin, calling it ἁμαρτία (Lev 4:21-25 ). Hence the scapegoat was regarded as utterly unclean by reason of the sins laid upon it. Ἐπικατάρατος … This passage is quoted from Deu 21:23 with one significant alteration. In the original the criminal executed under sentence of the Law is pronounced κεκαταραμένος ὑπὸ Θεοῦ , so that the Law is affirmed to be the voice of God, carrying with it the fulness of divine sanction. But here the words ὑπὸ Θεοῦ are omitted, inasmuch as the new revelation of God’s mercy in Christ has superseded for Christians the previous condemnation of the Law.

The original passage refers to criminals executed under the Jewish Law, and commands the speedy burial of their dead bodies before sunset in opposition to the vindictive practices prevailing in Palestine among the surrounding nations of nailing up unburied bodies in public places ( cf. 1Sa 31:10 , 2Sa 21:10 ). It made, of course, no reference to crucifixion, which was a Roman mode of execution, not a Jewish.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A preventing of an objection: How then can they be blessed, whom the Law pronounceth to be accursed? Because Christ sustained the curse which the Law laid upon us, that we might be quit from it.

A proof of the answer by the testimony of Moses.

Christ was accursed for us, because he bare the curse that was due to us, to make us partakers of his righteousness.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Abrupt exclamation, as he breaks away impatiently from those who would involve us again in the curse of the law, by seeking justification in it, to "Christ," who "has redeemed us from its curse." The "us" refers primarily to the Jews, to whom the law principally appertained, in contrast to "the Gentiles" (Gal 3:14; compare Gal 4:3-4). But it is not restricted solely to the Jews, as ALFORD thinks; for these are the representative people of the world at large, and their "law" is the embodiment of what God requires of the whole world. The curse of its non-fulfilment affects the Gentiles through the Jews; for the law represents that righteousness which God requires of all, and which, since the Jews failed to fulfil, the Gentiles are equally unable to fulfil. Gal 3:10, "As many as are of the works of the law, are under the curse," refers plainly, not to the Jews only, but to all, even Gentiles (as the Galatians), who seek justification by the law. The Jews' law represents the universal law which condemned the Gentiles, though with less clear consciousness on their part (Rom. 2:1-29). The revelation of God's "wrath" by the law of conscience, in some degree prepared the Gentiles for appreciating redemption through Christ when revealed. The curse had to be removed from off the heathen, too, as well as the Jews, in order that the blessing, through Abraham, might flow to them. Accordingly, the "we," in "that we might receive the promise of the Spirit," plainly refers to both Jews and Gentiles.

redeemed us--bought us off from our former bondage (Gal 4:5), and "from the curse" under which all lie who trust to the law and the works of the law for justification. The Gentile Galatians, by putting themselves under the law, were involving themselves in the curse from which Christ has redeemed the Jews primarily, and through them the Gentiles. The ransom price He paid was His own precious blood (Pe1 1:18-19; compare Mat 20:28; Act 20:28; Co1 6:20; Co1 7:23; Ti1 2:6; Pe2 2:1; Rev 5:9).

being made--Greek, "having become."

a curse for us--Having become what we were, in our behalf, "a curse," that we might cease to be a curse. Not merely accursed (in the concrete), but a curse in the abstract, bearing the universal curse of the whole human race. So Co2 5:21, "Sin for us," not sinful, but bearing the whole sin of our race, regarded as one vast aggregate of sin. See Note there. "Anathema" means "set apart to God," to His glory, but to the person's own destruction. "Curse," an execration.

written-- (Deu 21:23). Christ's bearing the particular curse of hanging on the tree, is a sample of the "general" curse which He representatively bore. Not that the Jews put to death malefactors by hanging; but after having put them to death otherwise, in order to brand them with peculiar ignominy, they hung the bodies on a tree, and such malefactors were accursed by the law (compare Act 5:30; Act 10:39). God's providence ordered it so that to fulfil the prophecy of the curse and other prophecies, Jesus should be crucified, and so hang on the tree, though that death was not a Jewish mode of execution. The Jews accordingly, in contempt, call Him Tolvi, "the hanged one," and Christians, "worshippers of the hanged one"; and make it their great objection that He died the accursed death [TRYPHO, in Justin Martyr, p. 249] (Pe1 2:24). Hung between heaven and earth as though unworthy of either!

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 13. Christ hath redeemed us] εξηγορασεν. Hath bought us with a price; viz. his blood, or life.

Being made a curse for us] Being made an atonement for our sins; for whatever was offered as an atonement for sin was considered as bearing the punishment due to sin, and the person who suffered for transgression was considered as bearing the curse in his body; therefore, in the same day in which a criminal was executed it was ordered that his body should be buried, that the land might not be polluted, because he that was hanged, which was the case with every heinous culprit, was considered accursed of God, De 21:22-23; hence the necessity of removing the accursed THING out of sight.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. Christ hath redeemed us. The apostle had made all who are under the law subject to the curse; from which arose this great difficulty, that the Jews could not free themselves from the curse of the law. Having stated this difficulty, he meets it, by shewing that Christ hath made us free, which still farther aids his purpose. If we are saved, because we have been freed from the curse of the law, then righteousness is not by the law. He next points out the manner in which we are made free.

It is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. Now, Christ hung upon the cross, therefore he fell under that curse. But it is certain that he did not suffer that punishment on his own account. It follows, therefore, either that he was crucified in vain, or that our curse was laid upon him, in order that we might be delivered from it. Now, he does not say that Christ was cursed, but, which is still more, that he was a curse, — intimating, that the curse “of all men was laid upon him” (Isaiah 53:6.) If any man think this language harsh, let him be ashamed of the cross of Christ, in the confession of which we glory. It was not unknown to God what death his own Son would die, when he pronounced the law, “He that is hanged is accursed of God.” (Deuteronomy 21:23.)

But how does it happen, it will be asked, that a beloved Son is cursed by his Father? We reply, there are two things which must be considered, not only in the person of Christ, but even in his human nature. The one is, that he was the unspotted Lamb of God, full of blessing and of grace; the other is, that he placed himself in our room, and thus became a sinner, and subject to the curse, not in himself indeed, but in us, yet in such a manner, that it became necessary for him to occupy our place. He could not cease to be the object of his Father’s love, and yet he endured his wrath. For how could he reconcile the Father to us, if he had incurred his hatred and displeasure? We conclude, that he “did always those things that pleased” (John 8:29) his Father. Again, how would he have freed us from the wrath of God, if he had not transferred it from us to himself? Thus, “he was wounded for our transgressions,” (Isaiah 53:5,) and had to deal with God as an angry judge. This is the foolishness of the cross, (1 Corinthians 1:18,) and the admiration of angels, (1 Peter 1:12,) which not only exceeds, but swallows up, all the wisdom of the world.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(13) Christ hath redeemed us.—Better, Christ redeemed us. The opening of this verse without any connecting particle lends sharpness and emphasis to the contrast. The Law brought a curse. There it stopped short. That was all it could do. The first thing that Christianity does is to undo this result of the Law by deliverance from the curse.

This deliverance is represented under the form of a ransom. Christ “bought off” the human race from the penalty of its sins, the price paid being His death. Comp. 1Co_6:20; 1Co_7:23, “Ye are (were) bought with a price;” 2Pe_2:1, “The Lord that bought them;” Rev_5:9, “Thou wast slain and hast redeemed (bought) us to God by thy blood;” Rev_14:4, “These were redeemed (bought) from among men.” The word used in these passages, as well as in that before us, is the general word for “buying.” But that the “buying” intended is that more definitely conveyed by the idea of “ransom” appears from the use of the special word for ransom in Mat_20:28 ( = Mar_10:45), “The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many;” 1Ti_2:6, “Who gave Himself a ransom for all.” The word commonly translated “redemption” (Rom_3:24; 1Co_1:30; Eph_1:7; Eph_1:14; Eph_4:30; Col_1:14; Heb_9:15) also contains the same special idea of “a ransoming.”

Us.—In the first instance, “the Jews,” but not to be confined too strictly to them. The Apostle is writing to a Gentile (though Judaising) Church, and he does not wish to exclude any of his readers. Though the Gentiles do not come directly under “the curse of the Law,” they came under God’s condemnation. From this they were released, and the blessings of the theocracy hitherto annexed to the Law were thrown open to them by the death of Christ.

From the curse of the law.—From that curse which the Law pronounced upon all who failed to keep its precepts.

Being made a curse.—Being treated as if He were accursed. Comp. 2Co_5:21, “For he hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin”—i.e., treated as sinful One who was not sinful. The idea is somewhat strengthened by the use of the substantive for the adjective. The curse identifies itself with its object: seizes, as it were, upon the person of its victim.

For us—i.e., “on our behalf,” “for our sakes,” not “in our stead.” It is impossible to escape the conclusion that St. Paul, like the rest of the Apostles, regarded the sufferings of Christ as undergone in our stead. The idea is, indeed, distinctly expressed in this very passage; but it must be gathered from the context, not from the use of the preposition. The preposition which means “instead” is found in Mat_20:28; 1Ti_2:6. (See Note on Gal_1:4.)

As it is written.—The way in which the curse of the Law fell upon Christ was through His death. The ignominious death by which He died was one to which the curse of God specially attached. The Law expressly declared that that criminal who died upon the cross or gibbet was an object of the divine wrath. Christ died as such a criminal, and so came under the curse.

It is to be observed, in considering the doctrinal bearings of this passage, that the curse which fell upon Christ was not the same curse as that described above as the consequence of human guilt in failing to keep the requirements of the Law. It is not the accumulated penalty for the whole mass of human disobedience, but rather an incidental defilement, contracted by an in-voluntary breach of a particular ceremonial precept. The death of Christ involved a curse because the manner of it was by suspension from a cross. Nothing more than this is said. Christ, the sinless One, died for sinful men. If He had not died they must have died. And His death acted (in some inscrutable way) so as to propitiate the wrath of God. But it is not said that the actual load of human guilt was laid upon Him. It is not said that His death was the actual punishment of that guilt. The death of Christ removed the necessity for the punishment of men, but it could not be regarded as a punishment in relation to Christ Himself. In this respect it would seem as if the symbolism of the scapegoat (which is sometimes adduced in explanation of the present passage) was imperfectly applicable. In the case of the scapegoat, the high priest was to lay his hands upon his head, and to “confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat;” and the goat was to “bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited” (Lev_16:21-22). No such process as this really took place in the case of our Lord; nor is it applied to Him even in 1Pe_2:24, otherwise than in vague and general metaphor. The literal application derives no countenance from the present passage, but is rather contradicted by it. It expressly distinguishes between the curse which fell upon Christ and the curse which was due to the sins of men, though the incurrence of the one led to the abrogation of the other.

Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.—From Deu_21:23. The Hebrew and LXX. insert “of God”—”He that is hanged is cursed of God”—which St. Paul instinctively omits. The reference in the original is to the exposure of the body upon a stake or gibbet after death.

(13, 14) The Law brought a curse, but the Christian is delivered from that curse. How? Christ has taken it upon Himself. The Crucifixion brought Him under the curse of the Law. At the same time, it abolished the dominion of the Law, and threw open the Messianic blessedness to Gentiles as well as Jews: in other words, to all who gave in their adhesion to the Messiah by faith.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us’. In Gal_3:10 the Apostle has shewn that by the very terms of the Law, all who are under the Law (i.e. all who seek to be justified by their own obedience) are under the curse. To rescue us from that terrible malediction, Christ submitted to an accursed death. He, though sinless, bore, nay became the curse, that on us might come the blessing.

hath redeemed us] ‘ransomed us’, from the thraldom of the curse at the cost of a death of shame and anguish unutterable.

a curse for us] ‘Who’, asks Bengel, ‘would dare to use such an expression without fear of uttering blasphemy, if we had not the example of the Apostle?’ Here, as in 2Co_5:21, we have the abstract noun put for the concrete, to give force and comprehensiveness to the statement. Our Divine Lord in human nature was made sin for us—not a sinner, not even a sin-bearer, or sin-offering. He was identified with that which is the cause of ruin and death to the whole human race, ‘that we might become in Him the righteousness of God.’ So, here, He is said to have become, not accursed, but ‘a curse’. The curse incurred by all, in consequence of sin, was borne by the sinless One in His own Person. He, like the typical scape-goat (Lev_16:5, &c.) was the representative at once of the sin and the curse which it entailed.

for us] ‘on our behalf’. The preposition does not necessarily mean ‘in our stead’. The great doctrine of our Blessed Lord’s vicarious sufferings and death does not rest on the narrow foundation of the exact force of a particle. It is the doctrine of the types and prophecies of the O.T. and of the teaching of our Lord Himself and His Apostles in the N. T. To the passages already referred to may be added Isa_53:5-6; Mat_20:28; 1Ti_2:6; Tit_2:14.

Light is thrown by this passage on the narrative of the Brazen Serpent (Num_21:7-9), which our Lord declares to be a type of His Crucifixion (Joh_3:14). Why was the serpent chosen by God to be the emblem and means of recovery to the Israelites? One reason may be that it was accursed of God (Gen_3:14), and so a fitting type of Him Who on the Cross became a curse for us.

it is written] The Apostle makes good every step of his argument by an appeal to Scripture. By the Law of Moses (Deu_21:23), it was ordained that the body of a criminal, who, after being put to death, was exposed on a tree, should not be suffered to remain all night; and the reason is assigned, “for he that is hanged is accursed of God”. The words, ‘of God’, are omitted by St Paul, not as inconsistent with, but as unnecessary for his purpose. Those who account for the omission of the words by supposing them inconsistent with the acceptance of our Lord’s self-sacrifice by His Father ‘as an odour of a sweet smell’ (Eph_5:2; comp. Gen_8:21), seem to overlook the fact that if in any true sense Christ became a curse for us, it was the curse of God.

It may be objected, that the curse to which our Blessed Lord submitted was not the same curse as that to which all men became subject by their failure to render perfect obedience to the moral law—that it was, so to speak, technical, rather than moral. But a careful consideration of the passage in Deuteronomy will shew that the curse there spoken of applied not to the mere impalement of the malefactor, but to the violation of the Law, for which he had previously been put to death. The body of one who had “committed sin worthy of death” was not to hang upon the gibbet after sunset, lest the land should be defiled, for the curse of God rests upon it. “In the Scripture doctrine of the atonement, the believer is one with Christ, until at length Christ takes the believer’s place, and all that the Christian is, and all that he was, or might have been, are transferred to Christ”. Jowett.

13, 14. Reverting to what he said, Gal_3:10, the Apostle shews how complete this justification is. The curse has been borne, and the Law is silent. The curse has been removed, and the blessing remains; descending in all its fulness on the Gentiles, as well as the Jews, through faith.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,.... The Redeemer is Christ, the Son of God; who was appointed and called to this work by his Father, and which he himself agreed to; he was spoken of in prophecy under this character; he came as such, and has obtained eternal redemption, for which he was abundantly qualified; as man, he was a near kinsman, to whom the right of redemption belonged; and as God, he was able to accomplish it. The persons redeemed are "us", God's elect, both of Jews and Gentiles; a peculiar people, the people of Christ, whom the Father gave unto him; some out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation: the blessing obtained for them is redemption; a buying of them again, as the word signifies; they were his before by the Father's gift, and now he purchases them with the price of his own blood, and so delivers them "from the curse of the law"; its sentence of condemnation and death, and the execution of it; so that they shall never be hurt by it, he having delivered them from wrath to come, and redeemed from the second death, the lake which burns with fire and brimstone. The manner in which this was done was by being

made a curse for us; the sense of which is, not only that he was like an accursed person, looked upon as such by the men of that wicked generation, who hid and turned away their faces from as an abominable execrable person, calling him a sinner, a Samaritan, and a devil; but was even accursed by the law; becoming the surety of his people, he was made under the law, stood in their legal place and stead and having the sins of them all imputed to him, and answerable for them, the law finding them on him, charges him with them, and curses him for them; yea, he was treated as such by the justice of God, even by his Father, who spared him not, awoke the sword of justice against him, and gave him up into his hands; delivered him up to death, even the accursed death of the cross, whereby it appeared that he was made a curse: "made", by the will, counsel, and determination of God, and not without his own will and free consent; for he freely laid down his life, and gave himself, and made his soul an offering for sin:

for it is written. Deu 21:23,

cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree: it is in the Hebrew text, "he that is hanged": which is the very name the Jews (y) commonly call Christ by way of reproach; that is, "everyone that hangeth", as the apostle rightly renders it; which is always the sense of an indefinite phrase, unless a restriction is put: adding out of the same verse, "on the tree", by way of explanation; for which he cannot upon any account be found fault with, since it is manifest one hanged on a tree is meant, "who is accursed of God", or "the curse of God"; the curse of God, in vindicating his righteous law, was visibly on such a person; as it was on Christ, when he hung on the cross, in the room and stead of his people; for he was made a curse, not for himself, or for any sins of his own, but for us; in our room and stead, for our sins, and to make atonement for them: upon the whole, the Jew (z) has no reason to find fault as he does, either with the apostle's sense, or citation of this passage; for whether it be rendered "hangeth", or is "hanged", the sense is the same; and though the apostle leaves out the word "God", it is clear from what he says, that his meaning is, that the curse of God lighted upon Christ as the surety of his people, standing in their legal place and stead, in order to redeem them from the law and its curse; since he says, he was "made a curse" for them, which must be done by the Lord himself: and whereas the Jew objects, that it is impossible that anyone, even an Israelite, should be delivered from the curses of the law, but by the observance of it, this shows his ignorance of the law, which, in case of sin, requires a penalty, and which is its curse; and it is not future observance of the law will free from that: and as for the Gentiles, he says, to whom the law was not given, and who were never under it, they are free from the curses of it, without a redemption; but as this is to be, understood not of the ceremonial, but of the moral law, it is a mistake; the Gentiles are under the moral law, and being guilty of the violation of it, are liable to its curse; and cannot be delivered from it, but through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; by virtue of which, they have a part and portion in the blessings promised as follows.

(y) Vid. Buxtorf. Lexic. Talmudie. col. 2596. (z) R. Isaac Chizzuk Emuna, par. 2. c. 89. p. 469.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

Ver. 13. Christ hath redeemed us] As man he bought us, as God he redeemed us, saith Jerome. For to redeem is properly to buy some things back that were mortgaged. Qui redimit, emit quod suum fuit, et suum esse desiit.

Cursed is every one that hangeth] The tree whereon a man was hanged, the stone wherewith he was stoned, the sword wherewith he was beheaded, and the napkin wherewith he was strangled, they were all buried, that there might be no evil memorial of such a one, to say, This was the tree, sword, stone, napkin, wherewith such a one was executed. {a} Constantine abolished this kind of death out of the empire. But what an odd custom was that of the Tiberenes to hang their best friends in courtesy, Longasque ex iis literas facere quos charos habebant? The death on the tree (saith one) was accursed above all kinds of death; as the serpent was accursed above all beasts of the field. Both for the first transgression, whereof the serpent was the instrument, the tree the occasion. (Sphinx Philos.)

{a} Casaub. ex Maimonide.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

If the law curseth all those who continue not in all things contained in the law, (as the apostle had said, Gal 3:10, and proved from Deu 27:26), it might be objected: How will believers then escape more than others; for none of them continue in all that is written in the law? The apostle here obviateth this objection, by telling the Galatians, that, as to believers, Christ had

redeemed them from this curse. The word generally signifies delivering; here it signifies a deliverance by a price paid. This was by being himself

made a curse for us, not only execrable to men, but bearing the wrath and indignation of God due for sin:

for so it was written, Deu 21:23; He that is hanged is accursed of God; that is, hath borne the wrath or curse of God due to him for his sin. The apostle applying this to Christ, teacheth us, that Christ also, hanging upon the cross, bare the curse of God due to the sins of believers; in whose stead, as well as for whose good and benefit, he died. And indeed he could no other way redeem believers from the curse of the law, but by being made himself a curse for them. Some think, that under the law he who was hanged was made a curse, not only politically, but typically, as signifying that curse which Christ should he made on the behalf of the elect.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13, 14. How do we get from Moses and law to Abraham and faith? Christ, by bearing the curse of the law for us, lets the blessing of Abraham come on us.

The promise—In its fulfilment.

13. Redeemed—The Greek word signifies to buy off; to redeem, as from slavery. Here we are said to be redeemed out from (εκ) the curse of the law. Us—Some commentators (including Alford) limit this us to the Jews, inasmuch as the law here quoted is Mosaic law. But the Mosaic law was the moral universal law brought out with particular manifestation. The decalogue was the absolute universal law itself, and all the Mosaic enactments were either special points of the decalogue, or special provisions for giving the decalogue efficiency. Hence the curse is of the universal law, and the us is all mankind.

A curse—The object cursed, as being an embodiment of the condemnation, is energetically called the curse itself. See note, 2Co_5:21. Very probably, as Prof. Lightfoot remarks, the fewness of adjectives in the Hebrew produces this using the noun for the adjective.

Written—Deu_21:23. Moses there enacted that when a malefactor was first executed and his body afterwards hung on a tree, he should be taken down and buried before night, “for he that is hanged is accursed of God.” Prof. Lightfoot gives upon this expression a very interesting but extended note. The word “accursed,” being susceptible of an active force, is by most Jewish authorities rendered maledictory, or insulting to God. Paul’s rendering is derived from the Septuagint, and accords with Jdg_9:57. Lightfoot conjectures that the other rendering obtained currency in later times, when the Jewish patriots were often impaled by the Syrians or crucified by the Romans, and kept exposed until they putrefied and disintegrated on the cross. The literalism of the Jews would require, by the Septuagint translation, that all these were cursed; and the other rendering was adopted to avert such appalling consequences. Still later, this last rendering served against Christians, as it enabled the Jews to hold that the crucified Jesus was an insult to God. Nevertheless, notwithstanding Lightfoot’s putting of this last point, Paul’s translation would seem as suitable to the reproachful purpose of the Jews as the other.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law (Cristorasen ejk thv katarav tou nomou); Christ bought us off from the curse of the Law. The position of the word "Christ" in the Greek, heading the sentence, makes it emphatic Christ; he alone; no means offered by the Law hath procured justification for the sinner. "Us;" not merely the Israelites after the flesh, who were visibly under the Law: but either all mankind, Gentiles as well as Israelites, being declared by the Law unclean and unholy, both ceremonially and morally, and thus under its curse (comp. "for us,"; (2Co_5:21) or God"s people, the children of Abraham, prospective as well as present. (comp. Joh_11:50-52 and Gal_4:5) "Redeemed," or "bought us off." The same compound Greek verb occurs (Gal_4:5, "That he might redeem buy off) them who were under the Law;" obviously, buy off from being under it. Another Greek verb, lutrow, ransom, is rendered "redeem" in Tit_2:14; trwsiv, 1Pe_1:18; whence the compound verbal noun ajplou redemption, in Rom_3:24 Rom_8:23; zw 1Co_1:30, etc. The apostle may be supposed to have preferred to use ejxagora here, as pointing more definitely to the price which the Redeemer paid; for in lutrow, redeem, this notion of a price paid often lies so far in the background as to leave the verb to denote simply "deliver." The un-compounded verb ajgorazw, buy, is found with reference to Christ"s death in 1Co_6:20 1Co_7:23, "Ye were bought with a price;" 2Pe_2:1, "The Master that bought them;" Rev_5:9, "Didst purchase unto God with thy blood." In the present passage it is not the blood of Christ, as in 1Pe_1:18, that is regarded as the purchase money, for the notion of expiation with blood of sacrifice is not even glanced at; but rather, as the next words show, his taking upon him the accursedness and pollution which by the Law attached to every one crucified. "From the curse of the Law;" its cursing affects us no more. God"s people are, in Christ. no longer, as they were before, subject to his disapproval or abhorrence, in consequence of transgressing the positive, ceremonial enactments of the Law of Moses. In respect to that class of transgressions, its cursing expended itself, and perished, upon the crucified body of the Son of God. Being made a curse for us (genomenov ujpera); having become on our behalf a curse. The position of katara makes it emphatic. The form of expression, "become a curse," instead of "become accursed," is chosen to mark the intense degree in which the Law"s curse fastened upon the Lord Jesus. Compare the expression, "made him on our behalf sin," in 2Co_5:21. Probably the form of expression was suggested to the apostle by that found in the Hebrew of the passage of Deuteronomy which he proceeds to cite (see next note but one) The preposition uJper, "for, on behalf of," may possibly mean "in place of," as (perhaps) in Phm_1:13; but this idea would have been more distinctly expressed by ajnti: and the strict notion of substitution is not necessary to the line of argument here pursued. For it is written (gegraptai gar). But the more approved reading is oti gegraptai, because it is written; which more definitely marks the writer"s purpose of vindicating the propriety of his using so strong an expression as "becoming a curse." Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (ejpikataratov pav oJ kremamenov ejpilou); or, upon wood. (Deu_21:23) The Septuagint has Kekathramenov or, Kathramenov uJpomenov or, pav oJ kr. xulou, Cursed by God is every one hanging on a tree." The Hebrew is qillath elohim talui, "a curse of God is he that is hanged." The words, "every one" and "on a tree," are additions made by the Septuagint; the latter expression, however, is found in the preceding clause, as also in the preceding verse; so that the sense is given rightly. The apostle departs from the Septuagintal rendering of the Hebrew phrase, "a curse of God," probably because he regarded the rendering as inaccurate; for the phrase, "curse of God," is probably a strongly intensive form of expression, like "wrestlings of God," in. (Gen_30:8) ("great wrestlings," Authorized Version) See note on "exceeding great city" (Hebrew, "a city great unto God") inratov, Jon_3:3, in "Speaker"s Commentary." According to this view, ejpikata) in which the element ejpi is intensive, is a just interpretation; while it also makes the clause more striking as an antithesis to the ejpikataratov, etc., in ver. 10. We are, per haps, justified in adding that it would not have exactly suited the apostle"s purpose to admit the words," by God;" for, though the Law pronounced the crucified Jesus a "curse," God, in the apostle"s feeling, did not in this case ratify the Law"s malediction. To understand the bearing of the verse rightly it is necessary to be quite clear as to the sense in which Christ is here said to have become a curse. The context shows that he became a curse simply by hanging upon a tree. No spiritual transaction, such as that of our guilt being laid upon him, comes into view here at all. It was simply the suspension upon a cross that imparted to him, in the eye of the Law, this character of accursedness, of extreme abhorrent defilement. In other words, the accursedness was the extreme of ceremonial pollutedness ceremonial, with no admixture of guilt or spiritual pollution. It has, indeed, been attempted by critics, Jewish as well as Christian, as Bishop Lightfoot has shown, to justify this aphorism of the Law, by the plea that one thus punished might inferentially be supposed to have merited this form of execution by some especial enormity of guilt. But, plainly, such previous guiltiness might not have been present; the man crucified, or impaled, or hung might have suffered upon a false accusation. But though he bad suffered unjustly, his being gibbeted would, notwithstanding his innocence, constitute him "a curse of God" all the same. Ceremonial pollutedness, as well as ceremonial purity, was altogether independent of moral considerations. And at present the line of thought which the apostle is following relates simply to questions of Levitical or ceremonial purity or defilement. Have Christian believers as such anything to do with these matters? This is the point at issue. The apostle proves that they have nothing to do with them, upon the ground that the crucifixion of Christ did away wholly with the ceremonial Law. It will only confuse the reader if he supposes that the apostle means here to embody the whole doctrine of Christ"s sacrificial atonement; he is at present concerned with stating the relation which his passion bore to the Law. The passage before us illustrates the meaning of the words in Gal_2:19, "I through the Law died unto the Law:" he felt himself disconnected from the ceremonial Law, in consequence of that Law pronouncing Christ crucified "a curse of God." A question arises, how far the crucifixion of Christ, viewed in this particular aspect of its constituting him in the eye of the ceremonial Law an accursed thing, modified for those who believe on him the effect of the malediction which the Law pronounced upon such as violated its moral precepts. The following observations are offered for the reader"s consideration. The Law given in the Pentateuch is uniformly spoken of in Scripture as forming one whole. Composed of precepts, some moral, some ceremonial, some partaking mixedly of both qualities, it constituted, however, one entire coherent system. If a part of it was destroyed, the whole Law as such itself perished. If so, then the cross of Christ, by annihilating its ceremonial enactments, shattered in pieces the whole legislation, so that the disciples of Christ are no longer at all under its dominion, or subjects jurisprudentially (so to speak) to its coercive punitive power. Yet its moral precepts, so far as they embodied the eternal principles of rectitude, would, so far, and because they do so, and not because they were part of the Law given through Moses, continue to express the will of God concerning us. Being, however, "letter" and not "spirit," they were always altogether inadequate expressions of that Divine will a will which is spiritual, "which is evermore changing its form and aspect towards each human soul, according to the ever-varying conditions of its spiritual position. The moral precepts of the Law are for us no more than types or figures, mere hints or suggestions of the spiritual duties which they refer to; they cannot be regarded as definitively regulative laws at all. Thus they appear to be treated by Christ and his apostles; as e.g. Mat_5:21-37; 1Co_9:8-10; and it is in this light that the Church of England regards them, in reciting the Decalogue in her Pre-Communion Office. And, analogously, the curse which the Law pronounces upon those who set any of its precepts at nought, whether moral or ceremonial, may be regarded as a mere type, revealing, or rather giving a slightest most imperfect glimpse of, the wrath with which the Divine justice burns against wilful transgressors of the eternal Law; a hint or suggestion, again, and not its direct denouncement. God"s people, however, by being through faith united to the crucified and risen Christ, become through his cross dead to the whole Law of Hoses, both as regulative and as punitive, freed from it absolutely; not, however, to be without Law unto God; only, the Law they are now under is a spiritual Law, one conformable to the nature of that dispensation of life and of the Spirit, to which through the Risen One they belong. With this view it agrees that the execration which the Law pronounced upon the Son of God as crucified, and by pronouncing which the Law itself perished, is to be regarded as a most significant and impressive symbol of the spiritual import of our Lord"s death. It pronounces to the universe that, for those who by faith are one with Christ, the wrath of Divine justice against them as sinners is quenched quenched in the infinite, Divine love and righteousness of Christ.

Vers. 13, 14.

Fifth argument our salvation is by Christ made curse for us.

Two thoughts are here brought into contrast the Law condemned us; Christ redeemed us: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us.

I THE NATURE OF THE REDEMPTION. He "redeemed us.

1. This language does not countenance the theory that there was nothing in Christ"s work but a mere deliverance from the power of sin. That is certainly involved in his death; for he came to "redeem us from this present evil world", (Gal_1:4) and "to redeem us from all iniquity". (Tit_2:14)

2. Neither does it countenance the idea that Christ redeemed us by entering into union with man and living a sinless human life, which is reproduced in us by means of fellowship with him. Neither of these theories makes any provision for the rectification of man"s relation with God, which is only effected through Christ being made a curse for us.

II HOW CHRIST ACHIEVED THE REDEMPTION. He "became a curse for us." This is an unfathomable thought. Yet let us try to interpret it in the light of Scripture. We are not redeemed by Christ"s Divine doctrine, nor by his marvellous holiness of character, but by his entering into our very position before God, becoming" a curse for us." The Lord visited upon him what the Law awarded to us, and by that substitution our redemption was secured. We are not to suppose that the Son of God was less the object of Divine love at the very time that he was, in an official aspect as his righteous Servant, an object of Divine wrath. His Father always loved him. The assertion is made, first, that the curse of the Law rests upon transgressors; then, that we are liberated from that curse; then, that this result was achieved by Christ becoming a curse for us. The passage shows what Christ was in God"s account, not what he was in the eyes of men who despised him.

III HOW HIS DEATH TOOK UPON IT THIS CHARACTER OF CURSE. "For it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree". (Deu_21:22, Deu_21:23) The allusion hero is not specially to Christ, but to a command that those executed by Jewish law should not remain hanging on the tree all night. It does not refer to death by crucifixion, which was not a Jewish punishment, but to the exposure of the body after death, on crosses or stakes. But how was such a person accursed? Not because he was hanged upon a tree, but he was hanged upon a tree because he was accursed. The apostle does not mean to attach the idea of shame to the mode of Christ"s death; for he was not made a curse by his mere hanging on a tree, but he hung there because he was made a curse for us.

IV THE ULTIMATE DESIGN OF THE REDEMPTION. "That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles in Christ." That is, the curse-bearing prepared the way" for the blessing, which was henceforth to stream forth upon the whole world.

1. The blessing was justification of life, not mere temporal blessings, which were restricted to the Jews.

2. It was to reach the Gentiles "in Christ," who was made the curse for "us both "Jews and Gentiles not through the Law, which demands a perfect obedience.

3. It was designed for Gentiles as welt as Jesus. The stream was destined to flow through Jews to the Gentiles, freed from all the limitations of the old dispensation.

V THE RESULT OF THE BLESSING. "That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." There is here an obvious return to the question of the second verse, and a definite answer is now given to that question. It was not through the Law, but through faith, we realize the promise of the Spirit. This was the special subject of promise (Act_1:4, Act_1:2; Eph_1:13) Our Lord has placed us in the dispensation of the Spirit, and has opened all blessings to men out of his cross and his tomb.

The curse of the Law and the curse of the cross.

I THE LAW BRINGS A CURSE. It is not itself a curse, though it is a heavy burden. It was not sent for the purpose of injuring us, nor, rightly obeyed, would it cause any evil to fall upon us. It is the breach of the Law that is followed by the curse. But we have all broken the Law. So long, then, as we continue to live under the Law the curse hangs over us. Instead of hankering after a religion of Law, as the Galatians were doing, we should regard it with horror as for us sinners only a prelude to a fearful doom. The curse is the wrath of God, banishment from God, death.

II CHRIST REDEEMS FROM THIS CURSE. This great truth implies three things.

1. Christians are set free from the curse of the Law,

(1) by the free forgiveness that stays the curse from falling on those who have incurred it in transgressing the Law; and

(2) by removal from the dominion of Law for the future, so that its requirements no longer apply, and principles of love resulting from grace have full sway. Obligations to righteousness are not thereby diminished, but increased; the motive for fulfilling them, however, is no longer the terror of a curse, but the spontaneous devotion of love.

1. This liberation is effected by Christ. We cannot fling off the yoke of Law nor dispel the curse. If done at all it must be done by One mightier than us. Hence the need of a Saviour. The gospel proclaims, not only deliverance, but a Christ who accomplishes it.

2. The deliverance is at a cost. It is redemption. The cost is Christ"s endurance of a curse.

III CHRIST SUFFERED THE CURSE OF THE CROSS. He was not cursed of God. It is significant that that expression is omitted in the quotation from the Old Testament. (see Deu_21:23) We have no evidence of any mysterious spiritual curse falling upon Christ. On the contrary, we are told in what the curse consisted. It was the endurance of crucifixion itself. That was a death so cruel, so horrible, so full of shame, that to suffer it was to undergo a very curse. Christ was crucified, and therefore the curse fell upon him. Moreover, this curse is very directly connected with the breach of the Law by us.

1. Death is the penalty of transgression. Christ never deserved this penalty of violated Law, yet, being a man and mortal, he suffered the fate of fallen men.

2. It was mans wickedness, i.e. nothing else than man"s violation of God"s Law, that led to man"s rejection of Christ and to Christ"s death. The world flung its curse on Christ. By a wonderful act of infinite mercy that act of hellish wickedness is made the means through which the world is freed from the curse of its own sins.

IV CHRIST"S ENDURANCE OF THE CURSE OF THE CROSS LIBERATES US FROM THE CURSE OF THE LAW. He freely endured the curse. He endured it for our sakes. He became "a curse for us.

1. His endurance of the curse gave weight to his propitiatory sacrifice of himself. This was the most extreme surrender of himself to God in meek submission. As our Representative, he thus obtained for us Divine favour and grace of forgiveness in answer to that most powerful intercession, the giving of himself to a death that was a very curse rather than abandon his saving work.

2. Christ"s endurance of the curse for us is the grand inducement for us to leave the "beggarly elements" of Law and devote ourselves in faith and love to him who died fur us. W.F.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ - Christ alone. The abruptness of the sentence shows an holy indignation at those who reject so great a blessing. Hath redeemed us - Whether Jews or gentiles, at an high price. From the curse of the law - The curse of God, which the law denounces against all transgressors of it. Being made a curse for us - Taking the curse upon himself, that we might be delivered from it, willingly submitting to that death which the law pronounces peculiarly accursed. Deut. xxi, 23.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

VERSE 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.

Jerome and his present-day followers rack their miserable brains over this comforting passage in an effort to save Christ from the fancied insult of being called a curse. They say: "This quotation from Moses does not apply to Christ. Paul is taking liberties with Moses by generalizing the statements in Deu 21:23. Moses has ’he that is hanged.’ Paul puts it ’every one that hangeth.’ On the other hand, Paul omits the words ’of God’ in his quotation from Moses: ’For he that is hanged is accursed of God.’ Moses speaks of a criminal who is worthy of death." "How," our opponents ask, "can this passage be applied to the holy Christ as if He were accursed of God and worthy to be hanged?" This piece of exegesis may impress the naive as a zealous attempt to defend the honor and glory of Christ. Let us see what Paul has in mind.

Paul does not say that Christ was made a curse for Himself. The accent is on the two words "for us." Christ is personally innocent. Personally, He did not deserve to be hanged for any crime of His own doing. But because Christ took the place of others who were sinners, He was hanged like any other transgressor. The Law of Moses leaves no loopholes. It says that a transgressor should be hanged. Who are the other sinners? We are. The sentence of death and everlasting damnation had long been pronounced over us. But Christ took all our sins and died for them on the Cross. "He was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isa 53:12.)

All the prophets of old said that Christ should be the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, blasphemer that ever was or ever could be on earth. When He took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, Christ was no longer an innocent person. He was a sinner burdened with the sins of a Paul who was a blasphemer; burdened with the sins of a Peter who denied Christ; burdened with the sins of a David who committed adultery and murder, and gave the heathen occasion to laugh at the Lord. In short, Christ was charged with the sins of all men, that He should pay for them with His own blood. The curse struck Him. The Law found Him among sinners. He was not only in the company of sinners. He had gone so far as to invest Himself with the flesh and blood of sinners. So the Law judged and hanged Him for a sinner.

In separating Christ from us sinners and holding Him up as a holy exemplar, errorists rob us of our best comfort. They misrepresent Him as a threatening tyrant who is ready to slaughter us at the slightest provocation.

I am told that it is preposterous and wicked to call the Son of God a cursed sinner. I answer: If you deny that He is a condemned sinner, you are forced to deny that Christ died. It is not less preposterous to say, the Son of God died, than to say, the Son of God was a sinner.

John the Baptist called Him "the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Being the unspotted Lamb of God, Christ was personally innocent. But because He took the sins of the world His sinlessness was defiled with the sinfulness of the world. Whatever sins I, you, all of us have committed or shall commit, they are Christ’s sins as if He had committed them Himself. Our sins have to be Christ’s sins or we shall perish forever.

Isaiah declares of Christ: "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." We have no right to minimize the force of this declaration. God does not amuse Himself with words. What a relief for a Christian to know that Christ is covered all over with my sins, your sins, and the sins of the whole world.

The papists invented their own doctrine of faith. They say charity creates and adorns their faith. By stripping Christ of our sins, by making Him sinless, they cast our sins back at us, and make Christ absolutely worthless to us. What sort of charity is this? If that is a sample of their vaunted charity we want none of it.

Our merciful Father in heaven saw how the Law oppressed us and how impossible it was for us to get out from under the curse of the Law. He therefore sent His only Son into the world and said to Him: "You are now Peter, the liar; Paul, the persecutor; David, the adulterer; Adam, the disobedient; the thief on the cross. You, My Son, must pay the world’s iniquity." The Law growls: "All right. If Your Son is taking the sin of the world, I see no sins anywhere else but in Him. He shall die on the Cross." And the Law kills Christ. But we go free.

The argument of the Apostle against the righteousness of the Law is impregnable. If Christ bears our sins, we do not bear them. But if Christ is innocent of our sins and does not bear them, we must bear them, and we shall die in our sins. "But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Let us see how Christ was able to gain the victory over our enemies. The sins of the whole world, past, present, and future, fastened themselves upon Christ and condemned Him. But because Christ is God He had an everlasting and unconquerable righteousness. These two, the sin of the world and the righteousness of God, met in a death struggle. Furiously the sin of the world assailed the righteousness of God. Righteousness is immortal and invincible. On the other hand, sin is a mighty tyrant who subdues all men. This tyrant pounces on Christ. But Christ’s righteousness is unconquerable. The result is inevitable. Sin is defeated and righteousness triumphs and reigns forever.

In the same manner was death defeated. Death is emperor of the world. He strikes down kings, princes, all men. He has an idea to destroy all life. But Christ has immortal life, and life immortal gained the victory over death. Through Christ death has lost her sting. Christ is the Death of death.

The curse of God waged a similar battle with the eternal mercy of God in Christ. The curse meant to condemn God’s mercy. But it could not do it because the mercy of God is everlasting. The curse had to give way. If the mercy of God in Christ had lost out, God Himself would have lost out, which, of course, is impossible.

"Christ," says Paul, "spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." (Col 2:15.) They cannot harm those who hide in Christ. Sin, death, the wrath of God, hell, the devil are mortified in Christ. Where Christ is near the powers of evil must keep their distance. St. John says: "And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." (1Jn 5:4.)

You may now perceive why it is imperative to believe and confess the divinity of Christ. To overcome the sin of a whole world, and death, and the wrath of God was no work for any creature. The power of sin and death could be broken only by a greater power. God alone could abolish sin, destroy death, and take away the curse of the Law. God alone could bring righteousness, life, and mercy to light. In attributing these achievements to Christ the Scriptures pronounce Christ to be God forever. The article of justification is indeed fundamental. If we remain sound in this one article, we remain sound in all the other articles of the Christian faith. When we teach justification by faith in Christ we confess at the same time that Christ is God.

I cannot get over the blindness of the Pope’s theologians. To imagine that the mighty forces of sin, death, and the curse can be vanquished by the righteousness of man’s paltry works, by fasting, pilgrimages, masses, vows, and such gewgaws. These blind leaders of the blind turn the poor people over to the mercy of sin, death, and the devil. What chance has a defenseless human creature against these powers of darkness? They train sinners who are ten times worse than any thief, whore, murderer. The divine power of God alone can destroy sin and death, and create righteousness and life.

When we hear that Christ was made a curse for us, let us believe it with joy and assurance. By faith Christ changes places with us. He gets our sins, we get His holiness.

By faith alone can we become righteous, for faith invests us with the sinlessness of Christ. The more fully we believe this, the fuller will be our joy. If you believe that sin, death, and the curse are void, why, they are null, zero. Whenever sin and death make you nervous write it down as an illusion of the devil. There is no sin now, no curse, no death, no devil because Christ has done away with them. This fact is sure. There is nothing wrong with the fact. The defect lies in our lack of faith.

In the Apostolic Creed we confess: "I believe in the holy Christian Church." That means, I believe that there is no sin, no curse, no evil in the Church of God. Faith says: "I believe that." But if you want to believe your eyes you will find many shortcomings and offenses in the members of the holy Church. You see them succumb to temptation, you see them weak in faith, you see them giving way to anger, envy, and other evil dispositions. "How can the Church be holy?" you ask. It is with the Christian Church as it is with the individual Christian. If I examine myself I find enough unholiness to shock me. But when I look at Christ in me I find that I am altogether holy. And so it is with the Church.

Holy Writ does not say that Christ was under the curse. It says directly that Christ was made a curse. In 2Co 5:21 Paul writes: "For he (God) hath made him (Christ) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Although this and similar passages may be properly explained by saying that Christ was made a sacrifice for the curse and for sin, yet in my judgment it is better to leave these passages stand as they read: Christ was made sin itself; Christ was made the curse itself. When a sinner gets wise to himself he does not only feel miserable, he feels like misery personified; he does not only feel like a sinner, he feels like sin itself.

To finish with this verse: All evils would have overwhelmed us, as they shall overwhelm the unbelievers forever, if Christ had not become the great transgressor and guilty bearer of all our sins. The sins of the world got Him down for a moment. They came around Him like water. Of Christ, the Old Testament Prophet complained: "Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off." (Psa 88:16.) By Christ’s salvation we have been delivered from the terrors of God to a life of eternal felicity.

Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.

This is the apostle’s fifth and last argument, to prove that we are justified by faith; and that notwithstanding the threats of the law, a believer is freed from the curse and malediction of the law, by Christ’s bearing the curse for him. Christ hath redeemed us, &c.

Where note, 1. The believer’s happy discharge from the most dismal and dreadful thing imaginable; namely, the condemnatory sentence and curse of the law, whereby a sinner is bound over to death, even to death of soul and body.

Note, 2. The person that doth, and only can deliver the sinner from this condemnatory curse and sentence, and that is Jesus Christ. He discharges the believer from his obnoxiousness to wrath, dissolves his obligation to punishment, looses all bands and chains of guilt: so that the curse of the law has nothing and shall have nothing to do with him for ever.

Note, 3. The way and manner in and by which Jesus Christ effecteth all this for us; namely, by his being made a curse for us; not that Christ was made the very curse itself, or changed into a curse, but he took the curse upon himself, our sin became his by voluntary susception of the punishment; and Christ underwent that death, the death of the cross, which by the law was accursed, to free us from the curse of the law; as Christ was made sin for us, so was he made a curse for us. Now as he was made sin, not by contracting the guilt of sin, but by suffering the punishment of sin; so he was made a curse, by undergoing that death which the law styles accursed.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13, 14. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse. From the curse of the law Christ hath redeemed us by suffering for us. Being made a curse for us. He took our curse on himself and suffered in our stead. For it is written. In Deut. 21:23. Compare Matt. 20:28; 1 Tim. 2:6; 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; Titus 2:14, etc.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Paul reminds these believers again that keeping the law could not save a person and that the law did not add a new condition to the promise by faith given to Abraham.

from the curse of the law

The noun "curse" can be expressed with the verb "curse." AT: "from being cursed because of the law" or "from being cursed for not obeying the law"

by becoming a curse for us

The noun "curse" can be expressed with the verb "curse." AT: "by being cursed for us" or "when God cursed him instead of us" (See: Abstract Nouns)

from the curse of the law ... becoming a curse for us ... Cursed is everyone

The word "curse" here is a metonym for God condemning the person whom he has cursed. AT: "from us having God condemn us because we broke the law ... having God condemn him instead of us ... God condemns everyone" (See: Metonymy)

hangs on a tree

Paul expected his audience to understand that he was referring to Jesus hanging on the cross.

so that the blessing of Abraham might come

"because Christ became a curse for us, the blessing of Abraham will come"

so that by faith we might receive

"because Christ became a curse for us, by faith we will receive"

we

The word "we" includes the people who would read the letter and so is inclusive. (See: Inclusive "We")

translationWords

Christ

redeem

curse

law

written

hang

Gentile

Jesus

Holy Spirit

faith

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

13. Χριστὸς. The absence of a connecting particle emphasises the greatness of this glad contrast (Col 2:20 note). Cf. Tit 3:4-7. Probably “Christ” here has its full meaning of “Messiah,” if, as it seems, St Paul is thinking of Jews.

ἡμᾶς. This also by its position has a secondary emphasis. He means “us Jews” (he thinks of Gentiles in Gal 3:14, as in Gal 4:5) who as being ἐξ ἔργων νόμον were under a curse (Gal 3:10).

ἐξηγόρασεν ἐκ τ. κατάρας τ. νόμον. Gal 4:5 note; Col 4:5 note. The prepositions lay stress on the fact that we were in the curse.

γενόμενος (“by becoming”) ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα. We should not have dared to apply such a term to Christ, and our tendency still is to minimize its meaning. But while we must be careful not to extend this unduly we cannot exaggerate its intensity. Christ did know in awful reality the effect of sin in separating from God (Mat 27:46). Elsewhere St Paul says that He was made ἁμαρτία (2Co 5:21). He became an awful example of the inexorable rigour of the Law.

ὑπὲρ not ἀντί, though Christ Himself says that He came to give τ. ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λὐτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν (Mar 10:45 || Mat 20:28), and St Paul says that He gave Himself ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων (1Ti 2:6), these being the only places in the N.T. where ἀντί is used in any combination with reference to the atonement (see below). Thus St Paul avoids here and elsewhere the question, so dear to Protestant controversialists, of the manner in which the redemption acted. ἀντὶ ἡμῶν would more readily have suggested (though it would not have required) the meaning that He bore the exact equivalent of the punishment due to sinners. “A curse for our sake” is vaguer, and perhaps more suitable to our limited intelligence of the stupendous self-sacrifice on the cross.

Epiphanius says οὐκ αὐτὸς κατάρα γέγονεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀνεδέξατο κατάραν (Haer. LXXVII. p. 424: in Suicer, s.v. κατάρα). Chrysostom draws out the meaning of the Apostles’ language when he writes: καθάπερ τινὸς καταδικασθέντος ἀποθανεῖν, ἒτερος ἀνεύθυνος ἑλόμενος ἀποθανείν ὑπὲρ ἐκείνου, ἐξαρπάζει τῆς τιμωρίας αὐτόν· οὕτω καὶ ὁ Χριστὸς ἐποίησεν.

On the possibility, however, that ὑπέρ may contain some thought of “instead of” see note at Phm 1:13, with its illustration from the papyri, and Ell. here, also Gal 1:4, Gal 2:20 notes. Meyer says that this does not lie in the preposition but in the circumstances of the case. See further A. T. Robertson, Short Grammar, p. 124.

ὅτι. Proof that κατάρα is true. γέγραπται Ἐπικατάρατος (Gal 3:10) πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου. From the LXX. of Deu 21:23, which however has ὑπιὸ θεοῦ after ἐπικατάρατος in accordance with the Hebrew. The curse must have been in fact ὑπὸ θεοῦ for it to have been of any validity, but St Paul naturally shrinks from saying so. Of course Deu 21:23 does not refer to crucifixion or impaling alive, but to the hanging or impaling of a dead body (Jos 10:26; 2Sa 4:12) as an additional disgrace. St Paul, however, does not quote the passage to illustrate the mode of death, but the place on which a person hangs.

The above rendering of the Hebrew (lit. “he that is hanged is a curse of God”) is essentially also that of Aquila and Theodotion (κατάρα θεοῦ κρεμάμενος), and is doubtless right, but it is possible for the Hebrew to mean “is a curse, i.e. an insult, to God.” So many Jewish authorities. Rashi, for example, says “It is a slight to the King, because man is made in the likeness of His image.” The same objective construction underlies the words of Josephus, Ant. IV. 8. 6 (§ 202), ὁ δὲ βλασφημήσας θεὸν καταλευσθεὶς κρεμάσθω διʼ ἡμέρας καὶ ἀτίμως καὶ ἀφανῶς θαπτέσθω. See further Lightfoot’s additional note, p. 150, and Driver on Deut.

ἐπὶ ξύλου. So Act 5:30; Act 10:39; Act 13:29; 1Pe 2:24.

Elsewhere in the N.T., with the exception of its use in the phrase [τὸ] ξύλον [τῆς] ζωῆς, ξύλον always means dead wood. And so probably here, in accordance with Jewish law for a gibbet (see Jewish Encyclopedia III. 557).

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13.] But this curse has been removed by the redemption of Christ. The joyful contrast is introduced abruptly, without any connecting particle: see an asyndeton in a similar case in Col 3:4. The ἡμᾶς is emphatic, and applies solely to the Jews. They only were under the curse of ver. 10,—and they being by Christ redeemed from that curse, the blessing of Abraham (justification by faith), which was always destined by God to flow through the Jews to the Gentiles, was set at liberty thus to flow out to the Gentiles. This, which is Meyer’s view, is certainly the only one which suits the context. To make ἡμᾶς refer to Jews and Gentiles, and refer ἡ κατ. τοῦ νόμ. to the law of conscience, is to break up the context altogether.

ἐξηγόρ.] See, besides reff., 1Co 6:20; 1Co 7:23; 2Pe 2:1; Rev 5:9. Ellicott remarks, ‘the ἐξ- need not be very strongly pressed, see Polyb. iii. 42 2, ἐξηγόρασε παρʼ αὐτῶν τά τε μονόξυλα πλοῖα κ.τ.λ.… The tendency,’ he continues, ‘to use verbs compounded with prepositions without any obvious increase of meaning, is one of the characteristics of later Greek: so Thiersch, de Pentat. vers. alex. ii. 1, p. 83.’

The form of the idea is,—the Law (personified) held us (Jews) under its curse; (out of this) Christ bought us, becoming (emphatic, standing first) a curse (not ἐπικατάρατος, concrete, but κατάρα, abstract, to express that he became not only accursed, but the curse, coextensive with the disability which affected us) for us (the Jews again. Not, as many older Commentators, and Rück., Olsh., Peile, &c., ‘instead of us,’ but ‘on our behalf.’ It was in our stead; but that circumstance is not expressed by ὑπέρ used of Christ’s death for us—see reff. and Ellic.’s note; and Usteri, Paulin. Lehrbegriff, p. 115 ff.).

ὅτι γέγρ. κ.τ.λ. is a parenthesis, justifying the formal expression γενόμ. ὑπ. ἡμ. κατάρα. The citation omits the words ὑπὸ θεοῦ of the LXX. They were not to the point here, being understood as matter of course, the law being God’s law. The article ὁ is not in the LXX. The words are spoken of hanging after death by stoning; and are given in I. c. as a reason why the body should not remain on the tree all night, because one hanging on a tree is accursed of God. Such formal curse then extended to Christ, who died by hanging on a tree.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. Χριστὸς ἡμᾶς ἐξηγόρασεν ἐκ τῆς κατάρας τοῦ νόμου “Christ delivered us from the curse of the law.” “The curse of the law” here spoken of can consistently with the context be none other than that which is spoken of in v. 10, viz., the curse which the legalistic passages of O. T. pronounce on those who do not perfectly obey its statutes. As pointed out above on v. 10, this is not the judgment of God. To miss this fact is wholly to misunderstand Paul. But if the curse is not an expression of God’s attitude towards men, neither is the deliverance from it a judicial act in the sense of release from penalty, but a release from a false conception of God’s attitude, viz., from the belief that God actually deals with men on a legalistic basis. The work here ascribed to Christ is, therefore, of the same nature as that spoken of in Rom 3:21 ff., and there said to be accomplished by Christ in his death, viz., a revelation of the way of achieving acceptance with God, a demonstration of the divine character and attitude towards men.

The verb ἐξαγοράζω, found in late writers only from the Lxx (Dan 2:8 only) down, is used in two senses: (1) “to buy up,” or, figuratively, “to secure” (by adroitness): Diod. Sic. 36. 2:2; and (2) “to redeem, to deliver at cost of some sort to the deliverer.” The middle occurs once in Eph. and once in Col. in the former sense in the phrase ἐξαγοράζεσθαι τὸν καιρόν. The active occurs in the same sense in Dan 2:8. The active is found in the second sense in Gal 4:5, ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμου ἐξαγοράσῃ. The meaning here is evidently the same as in 4:5, “to deliver, to secure release for one,” probably with the implication conveyed in the etymological sense of the word (the simple verb ἀγοράζω means “to buy,” and is frequently used in this sense in the Lxx) that such deliverance involves cost of some kind (effort, suffering, or loss) to him who effects it. The question to whom the price is paid is irrelevant, unless demanded by the context, intruding into later usage of the word an idea left behind in its earlier development.

It requires no argument to show that in the phrase ἐκ τῆς κατάρας τοῦ νόμου the apostle has in mind some phase, aspect, or conception of the law of God, not civil law or law in an inclusive sense of the word. It has been maintained above that he refers to law legalistically understood, and to deliverance from the curse which God is falsely supposed to pronounce upon men on the basis of such a law. In support of this interpretation and against the view, that the law here spoken of is law in any other sense of the word (see detached note on Νόμος, esp. V 2a, b, c, d), or that the deliverance is the forgiveness of the individual, are the following considerations.

(a) Throughout this passage Paul is speaking of law legalistically understood, law as a body of statutes for failure to obey any of which men are under a curse. This is especially clear in vv. 10-12 (q. v.). In the phrase κατάρα τοῦ νόμου itself there is, indeed, no insuperable obstacle to taking νόμος in the abstract-historical sense (cf. Rom 2:13, and detached note on Νόμος V 2 b), and understanding by it the condemnation which God actually pronounces upon those who not simply fall short of perfect obedience to the statutes of the law, but hold down the truth in iniquity (Rom 1:13), who disobey the truth and obey iniquity (2:8), who though they may be hearers of the law are not doers of it (2:13). κατάρα would in that case represent substantially the idea expressed by ὀργή in Rom 1:10, Rom 2:8, to which it is practically equivalent. Nor is an abrupt change to law in another sense in itself impossible. It might easily occur if the change of sense were made evident, as it is in Rom 3:21 and in various other passages, or if the argument were such and the two meanings so related that the logic of the passage would be but little affected, whether the meaning be retained or changed, as in Rom 2:12, Rom 2:13. But in the present passage these conditions do not exist. The continuity and validity of the argument depend on the word in the present verse meaning the same as in the preceding verses. Indeed, there is no place in the whole chapter for a change in the meaning or reference of the word νόμος. Yet, it must also be recognised that the law of which the apostle speaks is not legalism in the abstract, but a concrete historical reality.It came four hundred and thirty years after Moses (v. 17); its fundamental principle is expressed in a definite passage of O. T. (v. 10).

(b) The tense of the verb ἐξηγόρασεν is itself an argument for taking the deliverance referred to not as an often repeated individual experience but as an epochal event. But there are other more decisive considerations. Thus (i) it is achieved by Christ on the cross; (ii) its primary effect is in relation to the Jews; for the use of the article with νόμου in v. 13, excluding a qualitative use of the noun, and the antithesis of ἡμᾶς in v. 13 to τὰ ἔθνη in v. 14, necessitate referring the former primarily to the Jews; and (iii) the purpose of the redemptive act is to achieve a certain result affecting the Gentiles as a class. These facts combine to indicate that the apostle is speaking not, e. g., of the forgiveness of the individual, his release from the penalty of his sins, but of a result once for all achieved in the death of Christ on the cross. It is, therefore, of the nature of the ἀπολύτρωσις of Rom 3:24 rather than of the λύτρωσις of 1Pe 1:18.

But the fact that the deliverance is an epochal event confirms our judgment that it is law in a legalistic sense that is here referred to. Condemnation for failure to fulfil law in the ethical sense is not abolished by the death of Christ. Cf. chap. 5:13ff. Rom 2:1-16, Rom 8:1-4. Nor can the reference be to the law as a historic régime, the Mosaic system as such. For though Rom 10:4 might be interpreted as meaning that Christ is the end of the law in this sense, and though the apostle undoubtedly held that those who believe in Christ are not under obligation to keep the statutes of the Law of Moses as such, yet (i) release from obligation to obey statutes is not naturally spoken of as release from the curse of the law, and (ii) the idea of the abolition of statutes is foreign to this context. It remains, therefore, to take the term in its legalistic sense, yet as referring to an actual historically existent system.

Yet the release from the curse of the law can not be the abolition of legalism in the sense that the divine government before Christ having been on a legalistic basis is henceforth of a different character Against any interpretation that makes the curse of the law a divine condemnation of men on grounds of legalism, in force from Moses to Christ, it is a decisive objection that the apostle both elsewhere and in this very chapter insists that God had never so dealt with men, but that the principle of faith established before law was not set aside by it (see esp. v. 17).

Neither can we suppose that Paul, though admitting that legalism had historic existence in the O. T. period and concrete expression in O. T., denied to it all value and authority, as if, e. g., it were a work of the devil. For he elsewhere declares that the law is holy and righteous and good (Rom 7:12) and in this chap. (vv. 19f.) implies that it had its legitimate divinely appointed function. Exalting the older principle of faith above the later law, the apostle yet sees value and legitimacy in both.

The only explanation that meets these conditions is that in the historic legalism of O. T. Paul saw a real but not an adequate disclosure of the divine thought and will, one which when taken by itself and assumed to be complete gave a false notion of God’s attitude towards men.

The curse of the law is the verdict of a reality, of the law isolated from the rest of the O. T. revelation. But so isolated it expressed, according to Paul, not the truth but a fraction of it; for the law, he held, was never given full possession of the field, never set aside the previously revealed principle of faith (3:17). Its function was never that of determining the standing of men with God. The curse of the law was, therefore, an actual curse in the sense that it expressed the verdict of legalism, but not in the sense that he on whom it fell was accursed of God. It was a disclosure of the status of a man on a basis of merit estimated by actual achievement, not of God’s attitude towards him. The latter, Paul maintained, was determined by other than legalistic considerations, by his faith (v. 6), by his aspiration, his striving, the fundamental character of his life and conduct (Rom 2:6-11).

But if this is the meaning of the phrase, “the curse of the law,” and if deliverance from it was an epochal event accomplished by the death of Christ on the cross, it must have been achieved through the revelatory value of the event, by that which God through that event revealed; and this either in the sense that God thereby announced the end of that system of legalism which in the time of Moses came in to achieve a temporary purpose, or in that he thereby revealed his own attitude towards men, and so gave evidence that legalism never was the basis of his judgment of men. It is the first of these thoughts that Paul has apparently expressed in Rom 10:4, and it is not impossible here. Yet it is more consonant both with the fact that Paul speaks of deliverance from the curse of the law rather than from the law, and with what follows (see below on γενόμενος … κατάρα, etc.) to suppose that, as in Rom 3:25, Rom 3:26, Rom 3:5:8, he is speaking of a disclosure of the unchanged and unchangeable attitude of God.

If, indeed, and in so far as the law is thought of as brought to an end, it is probably in the sense that this results from the revelation of God’s character rather than by anything like a decree in terms abolishing it. This is also not improbably the thought that underlies Rom 10:4.

γενόμενος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν κατάρα, “becoming a curse for us.” κατάρα, literally “a curse,” “an execration,” “an expression or sentence of reprobation” (as in the preceding clause and v. 10), is evidently here used by metonymy, since a person can not become a curse in a literal sense. Such metonymy is common in Paul. Cf. the use of περιτομή for the circumcised, and ἀκροβυστία for Gentiles in 2:7, 9 and Rom 3:30. Cf. also 1Co 1:30, “who became wisdom to us from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”; but esp. 2Co 5:21 “Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν), that we might become righteousness of God in him.” As there ἁμαρτία stands in a sense for ἁμάρτωλος and δικαιοσύνη for δίκαιος, so doubtless here κατάρα stands for [ἐπι]κατάρατος as the ἐπικατάρατος in the following quotation also suggests. More important is the fact, which the close connection with the phrase ἐκ τῆς κατάρας τοῦ νόμου indicates, that κατάρα here refers to a curse of the law, which, as we have seen above, is not to be understood as a curse of God. γενόμενος is probably a participle of means, the whole phrase expressing the method by which Christ redeemed us from the curse. ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν means “on our behalf.” It can not be pressed to mean “in our place” (ἀντί.) See further on 1:3, ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν. Precisely in what sense and how Christ came under the curse of the law, and how this availed to deliver us from that curse, must appear from a consideration of the quotation by which Paul supports his affirmation.

The following are conceivable meanings of the phrase γενόμενος … κατάρα, taken by itself: (1) Christ became a curse in that he was the object of divine reprobation, personally an object of divine disapproval. (2) He became the actual object of divine reprobation vicariously, enduring the penalty of others’ sins. (3) He experienced in himself God’s wrath against sinners, not as himself the object of divine wrath, but vicariously and by reason of his relation to men. (4) He was the object of human execration—cursed by men. In this case γενόμενος would be a participle not of means, but of accompanying circumstance, the phrase suggesting the cost at which Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law. How he did so would be left entirely unsaid. (5) He fell under the curse of the law, not of God or of men. The first of these five interpretations is easily excluded by its utter contrariety to Paul’s thought about God’s attitude towards Christ and the righteousness of his judgments. The second, though often affirmed, is not sustained by any unambiguous language of the apostle. The third is probably quite consistent with the apostle’s thought. As in 2Co 5:21 he says that “him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us, that we might become righteousness of God in him,” not meaning that Christ actually became sinful, but that by reason of his relation to men he experienced in himself the consequences of sin. so by this language he might mean that Jesus by reason of his sympathetic relation with men experienced in himself the curse of God upon men for their sin. But there is no expression of this thought in the context, and it is, on the whole, inharmonious with the meaning of the word κατάρα throughout the passage. The fourth is equally possible in itself, but, like all the preceding, is open to the objection that it does not, as the context suggests, make the curse that of the law. The fifth, though without support in any other passage of the apostle’s writings, is most consonant with the context, if not actually required by it.

ὅτι γέγραπται, “Επικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου,” ‘because it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” The quotation, from Deu 21:23, is introduced to support the statement that Christ became a curse, not that he hereby “delivered us from the curse of the law,” or that it was “for us.” The original passage refers to the body of a criminal which, after the man had been put to death, was hanged upon a tree. In such a case it is said, “Thou shalt surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is the curse of God, that thou defile not thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” Between this passage and the fact of which the apostle is speaking there seems to be only a superficial connection. On the question whether the apostle found a more real connection, see below.

Deu 21:23, which in the Lxx reads ὅτι κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου, may be supposed to furnish support to Paul`s previous statement that Christ became a curse for us in several ways: (1) γενόμενος κατάρα being understood to have any of the first three meanings suggested above, the O. T. passage may be quoted purely for its verbal resemblance to the assertion which the apostle has made; there is manifestly nothing in its real meaning to support the assertion that Christ, who died not for his own sins but as an innocent man, came in any sense under the curse of God. Its use for this purpose would be verbalism pure and simple. (2) If γενόμενος κατάρα be supposed to refer to the reprobation of men, the passage may be used to explain that reprobation, men naturally looking upon one who died the death of a criminal as actually such and under the curse of God. (3) If κατάρα refers to the curse of the law, then the quotation may be understood to define precisely how and in what sense he became a curse of the law. Inasmuch as the law affirms that whoever is hanged on a tree is accursed, and Jesus died on the cross, he falls under this verdict and the curse of the law. But inasmuch as this verdict is manifestly false and monstrous, in it the law does not so much condemn Christ as itself, and thereby, since false in one it may be so in all, it emancipates us from the fear of its curse. Or, (4), with somewhat less of literalism κατάρα may be supposed to refer to the curse of the law, the O. T. quotation, however, being cited not solely with reference to the fact of hanging on the tree, but to all that the crucifixion represents. Law and he who takes his stand on law, must say that Christ, having died on the cross, is a sinner—i. e., that under law no one could come to such a death who was not himself guilty of sin—as vividly the law says in the words of the quotation. But in that verdict of legalism it condemns itself, and in the fact that Christ the righteous died the death of the cross it is evident that the government of God is not one of legalism, but of love and of vicarious suffering, the righteous for the wicked.

Of these various interpretations the last two alone comport with the fact that it is the curse of the law of which Paul is speaking throughout the passage, and the last is preferable because more consonant with the fact that for Paul generally the cross signifies not the outward fact that Jesus died by crucifixion or on a tree, but all that the fact stood for as a revelation of God and the principles of his dealings with men. See 1Co 1:17, 1Co 1:18, 1Co 1:23. So understood, the quotation serves the same purpose as those in vv. 10, 12, viz., to show the impossible position in which the logic of legalism lands its advocates. The argument is akin, also, to that of 2:21, in that it uses the fact of the death of Christ to refute the legalist, Paul there saying that legalism makes that death needless, here that it proves Christ accursed. The omission of ὑπὸ θεοῦ is probably due, as Ltft. suggests, to a shrinking of the apostle from the suggestion that Christ was the object of God’s reprobation.

If both the latter interpretations be rejected because it seems impossible that under these words there lies so much thought not directly expressed (though this objection will hold against any interpretation that seeks to ascertain the real thought of the apostle) our choice of a substitute would probably be among the following combinations of views already separately objected to: (1) The curse of the law may be supposed to be a real curse, the death on the cross a penal expiation of it, and the O. T. passage a proof of its penal character. The serious objection to this interpretation is not that the O. T. passage is related to the fact which it is supposed to sustain in a purely verbal and external way, for in view of 3:16, 20 and 4:24 (on which, however, see the possibility that these are early scribal glosses) it can not be assumed that Paul was incapable of such a use of scripture, but that in making the curse of the law a real curse (of God) this interpretation makes the apostle directly contradict the very proposition which he is maintaining in this chapter, viz., that men are not judged by God on a basis of legalism. Or (2) we may suppose that the phrase “the curse of the law” bears the meaning required by the context, but that after the first clause of v. 13 the apostle abandons thought for words, and seeks to substantiate his assertion that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by affirming that Christ took upon him the curse of our sin, and that he sustains this statement by an O. T. passage which supports it in sound but not in sense. As in the preceding case, the real difficulty of the interpretation lies in the method of reasoning which it imputes to Paul. Having in Χριστός … νόμου affirmed our release from the curse of the law, according to this interpretation he substantiates this statement by affirming that Christ became a curse in a quite different sense of the words, and one really remote from the context. That the scripture that he quotes supports this statement only in appearance is a secondary matter. It remains to consider as a final possibility (3) the view that the apostle follows up his affirmation that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, not with proof or explanation, but with a statement intended to suggest the cost at which he achieved the deliverance of men from the curse of the law, γενόμενος … κατάρα, referring to the reprobation of Christ by men. Cf. Heb 12:2; see (4) on p. 172. The O. T. passage then explains why the death on the cross led men to look on him with reprobation as one accursed. To this interpretation the only serious objection is that the transition from the idea “cursed by the law” to “cursed by men” is expressed only negatively, and it would seem inadequately, by the absence of any limiting phrase after κατάρα; the omission of the ὑπὸ θεοῦ of the Lxx naturally implies the carrying forward of a reference to the law. In order of probability this view stands next after the fourth in the preceding list.

The choice between interpretations must be made, not on the ground that one does and the other does not supply unexpressed elements of thought, or that one does and the other does not take O. T. scripture in its historic sense, but on the answer to the question whether it is more consistent with the apostle’s usual methods of thinking to argue illogically, dealing in words rather than thoughts, or to express reasonably consistent thought in brief and obscure language.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hath redeemed [εξηγορασεν] . P o. Better redeemed. Comp. Gal 4:5; Eph 5:16; Col 4:5. In LXX once, Dan 2:8. See on Col 4:5.

Us Referring specially to Jews.

Being made a curse [γενομενος καταρα] . Better, having become. See on chapter Gal 2:20.

It is written. From LXX of Deu 21:23, with the omission of uJpo qeou by God after cursed. Paul, as Lightfoot justly says, instinctively omits these words, since Christ was in no sense accursed by God in his crucifixion. The statement does not refer to Christ 's enduring the curse in our stead, but solely to the attitude in which the law placed Christ by subjecting him to the death of a malefactor. The law satisfied its demand upon him, and thus thrust him out of the pale of the legal economy. We, by our fellowship with him, are likewise cast out, and therefore are no longer under curse.

Upon a tree [επι ξυλου] . Originally wood, timber. In later Greek, a tree. In Class. used of a gallows (Aristoph. Frogs, 736). Often of the stocks (Aristoph. Clouds, 592; Lysistr. 680; Knights, 367). So Act 16:24. Of the cross, Act 5:30; Act 10:39; 1Pe 2:24. Ignatius (Smyrn. 1) says that Christ was nailed up for our sakes - of which fruit are we. That is, the cross is regarded as a tree, and Christians as its fruit. Comp. Trall. 2. See the interesting remarks of Lightfoot on the symbolism of the tree of life in Paradise (Apostolic Fathers, Part 2, Volume 2, page 291).

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.