He Became the Curse

Paul sets two ways of being counted right before God side by side in this chapter, you keep the law for it, or you trust Him for it, and note what he actually names, the works of the law, not obedience itself, and one of them puts you under a curse, and the other sets you free.

The lexicons give the word for curse here as katara, and I picture it as a thing pronounced against a man and spoken over his head. Hold that word, and watch what Christ does with it.

Here is the trouble with working for it, the Law never said keep most of it, it said keep all of it, cursed is every one that continueth not in all things, all, not almost, so the Law holds up God’s standard, and in the same breath it shows me I cannot reach it on my own. And Paul says elsewhere where the weakness actually sat.

Weak through the flesh. So I will say it his way. The weakness is in me.

Then Paul changes the ground under our feet, and the words he uses are not his own, he is reaching back.

The just shall live by his faith. Not the just shall live by doing. The just shall live by trusting.

You are not counted right because you performed it perfectly. You are counted right because you believed. Faith is confidence in what God has promised and what God has already done, and not in what my hands can do.

And now see the two roads.

One road asks you to climb, the other asks you to trust the One who came down.

And here is the wonder of it, and Paul says it in four words. Being made a curse for us. The curse was real, and it was ours, and He was made it.

Christ hath redeemed us, and the word for redeemed is exagorazo, to buy out, to purchase and take away. And the picture I hold with it is a man bought out of a slave market and walked out through the door, and that picture is mine. He did not lower the price, He paid it. He took the very curse the Law pronounced over me, and He carried it up the tree, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree, and He hung there, and Paul says plainly what He redeemed us from, the curse of the law.

And do not stop there, because Paul does not. He wrote a so that of his own, and it is the next verse.

That the blessing might come. That we might receive the promise of the Spirit. He did not only take something away, He had a thing in view He was bringing.

So put it plainly, the way a child could hold it. The Law showed the problem, I could never be good enough. Faith showed the answer, God would make me right through His Son. Jesus was made the curse, and Paul says the blessing of Abraham came through Him.

Do, and live, and I will fail every time. Believe, and the just shall live by faith, and that is Paul’s own sentence. So stop climbing, and start trusting, for the price is already paid, the tree already bore the curse, and the just shall live by faith.