For as many as are on the principle of works of law are under curse. For it is written, Cursed is every one who does not continue in all things which [are] written in the book of the law to do them;
This verse passes sentence on everyone who takes the law as their ground before God. Its force lies in one phrase: Paul does not say those who have broken the law, but those who rely on works of the law.
The apostle is not measuring how far a person has failed. He is naming the ground a person stands on.
The works of the law are not bad works. They are right works: loving God and our neighbour, and not breaking the commandments that forbid sin. But those who are of the works of the law are under the curse. They stand under the law's obligation to do these works, whether someone else put them there or they put themselves there. He does not say the one who has broken the law is under the curse, or the one who sins, or the one who has done evil. He says the one who is of the works of the law. That is the one who goes on the principle of being under its obligation, bound to keep it.
If the works are good, why does taking them up bring a curse? Because the person taking them up is already a sinner. A perfect standard can only expose him.
Suppose I bring a right and true measure to a man who is in the habit of using a wrong measure — what do I do it for? Not to make him honest, but to prove his dishonesty. It is useless for him to say, "I will change my character"; the thing is already done. The question is, does he have a character? And the measure proves him a dishonest man… God gave His right, perfect, holy law as a rule. But that rule comes to a sinner who cannot keep it. It searches him with all the power of God's holiness. So he stands judged, and comes under its curse.
The quoted sentence demands continuance in everything written. There is no clause allowing for an off day.
Not those who have broken the law, but those who take their stand on legal ground — these are under the curse. Whoever tries to please God on this principle has fallen under it. And why? Because there is such a thing as sin… So that, if I stand on this ground, there is not the slightest provision made for failure.
Commentators picture a man hanging over an abyss by a chain.
If one link of this chain breaks, will the rest of the chain hold him? No, he plunges into the abyss. And so if a person breaks one commandment, he breaks the whole law, and he comes under the curse.
Paul backs his claim with a written quotation. Commentators point to where he found it — and to what is missing there.
The quotation here is from Deuteronomy 27, and it is very striking. There six tribes, Simeon and the others, were to stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people, and six tribes on Mount Ebal to curse. The Levites were then to say with a loud voice to all the men of Israel, "Cursed…" But where are the blessings? They are not to be found in the chapter at all. Why are the blessings from Mount Gerizim not named? Because God knew well that they would never be wanted.
Some say a believer may take the law as a guide and escape its penalty. Commentators answer that the law does not let you pick and choose.
It is useless to talk of using the law for sanctification, or as a rule of life, and not for justification. You cannot use the law for one purpose or another as you please. It will use its rights over you as it pleases… You cannot deal with God's law as you like. If you will have God's law, you must take it with all the consequences God has attached to it.
The argument does not end here. The same chapter shows Christ stepping into the place this verse describes.
Think of the curse as a great sword hanging by a thread over my head. It may fall at any moment and destroy me. Christ came above me, between me and the sword. The sword fell on Him; He received the blow that must have taken us down to hell; He took us out from under the curse.
- Ground, not record. The curse falls on a position, not a score. Paul names those who stand on law-keeping. The good performer and the poor one lie under the same curse.
- Because sin is already there. A perfect measure handed to a dishonest man proves him dishonest; it does not reform him. The law reveals a condition that existed before it arrived.
- "All things" leaves no margin. One broken link drops the whole weight. Law makes no provision for failure — that is what makes it law.
- Deuteronomy's own silence agrees. Six tribes were to bless from Gerizim, yet the chapter records only Ebal's curses. God knew that blessing on that ground would never be wanted.
- Rescue, not repair. Christ stepped between the sinner and the falling sword. He took the blow and carried us out from under the curse.
but that by law no one is justified with God [is] evident, because The just shall live on the principle of faith;
Paul has just said that everyone who stands on law-keeping is under a curse. Now he proves from the Jewish Scriptures themselves that God never cleared anyone on that road, and his proof is one line from the prophet Habakkuk.
One writer weighs the phrase "in the sight of God," then the logic of Paul's one-sentence proof:
Notice first the force of the words, "in the sight of God." Law was a justifier of man with man, as Paul himself is a witness. For a man who counted things by human standards, being a strict and consistent Pharisee was "gain." But the law, once you know its real force, is spiritual, and by nature opposed to the sinful nature in us. So the legal righteousness he had long treasured, and could fairly boast of, turns into unrighteousness when God's light examines it. Notice also how his reasoning works. He states a general truth: "The just shall live by faith." If that is so, no one lives by any other means, because that is the only means by which men are justified.
Writers point out that Scripture speaks of two courtrooms, not one.
Scripture shows us both sides. One is to be justified in the eyes of God (Galatians) by faith alone, which no works of law can achieve. The other is to be justified in the eyes of men through works of faith (James).
The quotation comes from a prophet grieving over a ruined nation. The New Testament uses that one line three times, and the stress falls on a different word each time. (Older translations read "the just"; the ESV has "the righteous.")
The prophet grieved over the ruin of His people. God's dealings puzzled him, because deliverance did not come quickly. God told him that "the just shall live by his faith." The phrase comes three times in the New Testament, and each time for a different purpose. Look at Romans 1 and the emphasis falls on "just"; in Hebrews 10 it falls on the word "live"; in Galatians 3 on "faith."
Here faith is the point at issue, set side by side with a law that could supply neither righteousness nor life.
Here, then, faith is put in the forefront, and Paul did not stop there, although he did not lose sight of its link with righteousness or with life. He put faith side by side with the law, which could give neither the one nor the other.
Law and faith run on opposite principles, and the Jews of Paul's day missed the difference:
They looked on the law as being the means of their justification. They were content with a very shallow obedience to some of its demands. They were "seeking to establish their own" righteousness, as Paul puts it in Romans 10:3. In this they failed completely, because their own Scriptures had already recorded that "the just shall live by faith." And faith is not the principle the law rests on; that principle is works. The whole matter, briefly summed up, stands like this: by law men come under the curse and die. By faith men are justified and live.
The difference is not one of degree but of kind — one road asks you to produce something, the other puts you right.
Doing right is one kind of perfection; being set right is another. The first was what the law uselessly offered. The second is the blessed reality of the gospel, once faith receives it into the heart.
"Justified" is a bigger word than "forgiven":
The "just" or "righteous," in the language of the Spirit, are not only the "forgiven." The single word "justification," as Scripture uses it of God's redeemed people, holds three distinct ideas that cannot be separated. First, it means the sinner's pardon — the forgiveness of his sins. Second, it means deliverance both from the fear of punishment and from the shameful sense of guilt in the sight of God. Third, it means that God credits righteousness to him.
Justification and daily life run on the same track. What clears you is what sustains you:
In this simple statement God denies the idea that men can gain either righteousness or life by their own works. The principle that justifies a man must also be the principle he lives by. And the principle he lives by must be the one that justifies him... Christ cannot be your life without also being your righteousness. He must be both righteousness and life to all — or, if He is neither, then Judge.
Living by faith is not one act at the start. It is a whole way of relating to God:
To live by faith is to walk with God; to cling to Him; to lean on Him; to draw from His endless springs; to find all our resources in Him... to know Him as our only resource in all difficulties and in all our trials.
- Evident — Paul needs no long argument. One line from Habakkuk settles it: if the righteous live by faith, no one is justified any other way.
- Before God — the law could win a man a good name among people. Held up to God's light, that same righteousness turns into unrighteousness.
- Faith — the New Testament uses the same line three times. Romans stresses "just," Hebrews stresses "live," Galatians stresses "faith."
- Justified — the word covers three things: pardon, release from guilt and fear, and righteousness credited to the believer.
- Live — the principle that justifies you is the principle you then live by. Faith is not one topic in the Christian life. It is the whole walk with God.
but the law is not on the principle of faith; but, He that shall have done these things shall live by them.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Christ has redeemed us out of the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, (for it is written, Cursed [is] every one hanged upon a tree,)
Paul has just shown that the law leaves everyone under it cursed. This verse breaks the deadlock — not by cancelling the curse, but by Someone bearing it.
The word behind "redeemed" pictures a price paid and a slave walking free.
The word means to buy us out from the curse, just as a man, in days of old, could buy a slave out from the slave market. The word especially describes buying slaves out of slavery to set them free. So Christ has bought us out from the curse of the law and set us free. What a price He paid! ... This was the price He paid to buy us out — even "Himself." Could He have given more?
The One who paid owed nothing Himself.
The law had no claim against Him. The law could not curse Him. He had never broken it. He had always continued in everything written in it. But He went to the gallows for us by His own free choice. By that same free choice He became a curse, to buy you and me out of the curse that lay on us.
The small phrase "for us" carries the weight of the verse. It can also be read as over or above.
Think of the curse as a great sword hanging by a thread over my head. It may fall at any moment and destroy me. Christ came above me, between me and the sword. The sword fell on Him; He received the blow that must have taken us down to hell; He took us out from under the curse. This preposition — translated "on behalf of," "over," or "above" — really means substitution.
The wording goes one step further than "accursed."
He was not merely made accursed for us; He was made "a curse." Nothing could show more strongly how completely He took that whole condition as His own. The result is that those He represented in grace go completely free from it.
Paul backs the claim with a line from Moses about a body hung on a tree. That old law had always looked odd — until the cross explained it.
In the days of Moses, the curse rested especially on the one who died as a lawbreaker by hanging on a tree. Many people then may have wondered why Deuteronomy 21:23 linked the curse with death on a tree rather than with stoning or the sword. Now we know. At the right time the Redeemer would bear the curse for others by hanging on a tree, and so honour the law.
The curse that fell there was not man's. Deuteronomy traces it to God.
Were they man's curses that fell on the blessed Jesus on the cross? No. Turn to Deuteronomy 21:23, and you will find that "a hanged man is cursed by God" — for the believer can say, "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6).
Christ kept the law perfectly. Yet keeping it was not what dealt with our breaking of it.
He could not have been a substitute to bear the judgment of a broken law, unless He perfectly kept it in His own heart. But His keeping the law did not undo man's breaking it. It was necessary therefore that He bear upon the cross the curse deserved by us.
The pronoun shifts between verse 13 and verse 14.
Here the "us" means the Jewish believers, because Paul speaks of the Gentiles straight afterwards — "in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles." Then he puts them all together — "so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith." ... The "us" in verse 13 is emphatic. The "we" in verse 14 is not emphatic at all. Paul uses it in a general way of all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles.
The blessing reaches people who never had the law at all.
Paul's words are plain: blessing could not have come to the Gentiles if Christ had not borne the curse of the law.
So what happens when a believer goes back under the law?
If a believer then goes back to the law and puts himself under that law, tries to live by it, he puts himself under the curse. He slights the precious work of Christ, who took the curse upon Himself, so that it can no longer fall upon us.
- Curse — The law had no claim on Christ; He had never broken it. Yet He took its curse by His own free choice.
- Price — "Redeemed" means bought out, as a slave is bought out of the market; the price was Christ Himself.
- Substitute — "For us" means over us. He stepped between the falling sword and our heads. He was made not merely accursed but a curse.
- Tree — Deuteronomy's old rule waited for the cross to explain it. The curse there was God's, not man's.
- Blessing — With the curse borne, Abraham's blessing could reach the nations. Going back under law slights that work.
that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Verse 13 said Christ became a curse for us, and this verse gives the result. But what is Abraham's blessing, and why is the Spirit called the promise?
The verse opens with "so that." It ties back to Christ becoming a curse in verse 13. The blessing moves only after God removes that curse.
The result is that those He represented in grace are completely delivered from the curse. And more: the blessing, once flowing, bursts far beyond the old channel. So he says, "As it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree' — so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles." First of all, God must remove the curse out of the way. He did this in holiness for these believing Jews. Then the same cross of Christ overflows with mercy to the Gentiles.
Verse 13 says "us" — the people who had the law. This verse says "the Gentiles" — people who never received it. So did the curse Christ bore have anything to do with them?
So Christ did not bear the curse of the law for Jews alone, or for those under law. The apostle is plain here. He says that blessing could not have come to Gentiles if Christ had not borne the curse of the law. This is as simple as possible, once we see what the curse really is.
The phrase "the blessing of Abraham" could sound like a family privilege passed down the generations. One writer traces the blessing back to its only cause.
For God blesses only in the way of faith; His delight being always in those who rest their souls on His word. But it is a personal faith, not one handed down from others, that gets the blessing. The very strength of the natural Jew's claim of superiority over the Gentile was that Israel was the seed which God had blessed. The apostle here sets that unreal pre-eminence aside conclusively, by tracing His blessing to its true and only cause. Flesh takes no blessing, and finds no entrance into the kingdom of God.
So how does anyone come into this blessing? By hearing with faith — the same way Abraham did.
On the other hand, the hearing of faith is the one simple means that the Holy Spirit uses for all real peace and blessing. It was so long ago for Abraham himself. Through redemption this holds good not only for the proud but accursed Jew, but even for the poor Gentile. The Gentile is now expressly included in the blessing, and in the richest part of it, the promise of the Spirit.
Could keeping the law have earned the same gift? One writer answers by asking what the law actually promised.
The law holds no promise that, if it is kept in obedience, God would send His Spirit into the heart of man. It never promised that the Spirit would live there as a guest and make the obedient law-keeper the temple of the Holy Spirit. The law does not promise even the Spirit.
Many people expect this blessing to arrive as money, land and comfort. One writer asks the question straight out.
True, we read in Galatians 3 that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive — what? Blessings in the city and in the field? Blessings in our basket and our kneading bowl? No; but "the promised Spirit through faith."
The gift is real now, but it points forward. Abraham's own life is read as the pattern.
We notice further that this blessing brought with it the eventual possession of the promised land. For the present, though, it meant life as a stranger in that land... In receiving the Spirit we have the deposit that guarantees the heavenly portion that is ours. But for now we remain strangers in the place where we are. Our portion lies there in the age to come. Our life as strangers is here in the present age.
- Curse — The curse had to go first. The cross removed it, and then the blessing could flow.
- Overflow — The blessing then burst past its old channel. It reached nations that never had the law.
- Faith — No one inherits this blessing from a parent. Personal faith is the only way to receive it.
- Spirit — The richest part of the blessing is the Spirit, not wealth. The law never even promised Him.
- Deposit — The Spirit guarantees a portion in the age to come. Those who have Him still live as strangers here.