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.
Redemption as a Purchase
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.
"For Us" — the Language of Substitution
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.
Why Death on a Tree
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).
The Curse Borne, Not Just the Law Kept
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.
Who Is "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.
The Practical Warning
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.
Summary
- 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.