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.