13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. [1]
Positive Hope in Jesus Christ
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”-in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (3:13–14)
Turning again to the positive, Paul reminds the Jewish believers in Galatia of the fact that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having been a curse for us.
Redeemed is from exagorazō, a word commonly used of buying a slave’s freedom. Christ justifies those who believe in Him by buying them back from their slavery to sin. The price He paid was the only one high enough to redeem all of mankind, the “precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:19).
The curse of the Law was the punishment demanded because no man could keep from violating its demands, but Christ took that curse upon Himself as a substitute for sinners and became a curse for us in His crucifixion, for it is written (Deut. 21:23), “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
In ancient Judaism a criminal who was executed, usually by stoning, was then tied to a post, a type of tree, where his body would hang until sunset as a visible representation of rejection by God. It was not that a person became cursed by being hanged on a tree but that he was hanged on a tree because he was cursed. Jesus did not become a curse because He was crucified but was crucified because he was cursed in taking the full sin of the world upon Himself. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24; cf. Acts 5:30).
That truth was extremely hard for most Jews to accept, because they could not imagine the Messiah’s being cursed by God and having to hang on a tree. First Corinthians 12:23 suggests that “Jesus is accursed” was a common, demon-inspired saying among unbelieving Jews of that day. To them, Jesus’ crucifixion was final and absolute proof that He was not the promised Messiah.
But for those who trust in Him, the two words for us become the two most beautiful words in all of Scripture. Because God sent His Son to bear the penalty for man’s sin, every person who puts his trust in the crucified Savior has had the curse borne for him.
Jesus’ sacrifice was total and for all men, in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. On man’s part, the curse is lifted by faith, which God, on His part and by grace, counts as righteousness on the believer’s behalf, and the river of blessing begins to flow as the rushing water of God’s grace engulfs the believer. Jesus Christ bore the curse, Paul affirms, to bring the blessing of Abraham … to the Gentiles. Salvation was for the purpose of God’s blessing the world. All that God desired for and promised to Abraham of salvation and its benefits would spread to the nations. A coordinate purpose clause is added-so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (cf. Acts 1:4–5; Eph. 1:13), who comes as the resident, indwelling Person to bless us with power.
All of this blessing is through faith. Justifying faith involves self-renunciation, putting away all confidence in one’s own merit and works. Like the Israelites who had Pharaoh’s pursuing army behind them and the impassable Red Sea in front of them, the sinner must acknowledge his sinfulness and his total inability to save himself When he sees God’s justice pursuing him and God’s judgment ahead of him, he realizes his helplessness in himself and realizes he has nowhere to turn but to God’s mercy and grace.
Justifying faith also involves reliance on and submission to the Lord. When a sinner sees that he has no way to escape and no power in his own resources, he knows he must rely on God’s provision and power. Finally, justifying faith involves appropriation, as the sinner gratefully receives the free gift of pardon Christ offers and submits to His authority.
Justifying faith does not have to be strong faith; it only has to be true faith. And true faith not only brings salvation to the believer but glory to the One who saves.
When a person receives Christ as Lord and Savior, he receives the promised blessing and the promised Spirit, which Paul describes in Ephesians as being “blessed … with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (1:3). This blessing gives a testimony of praise to “the glory of His grace” (1:6). God receives glory when His attributes are on display, and nowhere is His grace more evident than in the sending of His only Son to be crucified on man’s behalf, the Sinless paying the debt of the sinful. Believers are “raised … up with Him, and seated with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward [them] in Christ Jesus” (2:6–7).
Men are redeemed in order to exhibit God’s majestic being before all creation. His supreme purpose is to demonstrate His glorious grace against the backdrop of man’s sinfulness, lostness, and hopelessness. The very purpose of the church is to “stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” and to praise “the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, … [for His] glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever” (Jude 24–25).[2]
Christ a curse for us (v. 13)
In what is without question one of the most remarkable statements in the New Testament on the death of Christ, Paul says in verse 13, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” ’ (ESV). The cross was a scene of redemption, an idea with which Paul’s first-century readers were more familiar than we are today. To redeem someone (a slave, for example) was to secure his or her freedom by the payment of a price. And it was in order to redeem us, to secure our freedom from the curse of the law, that Jesus died on Calvary.
What a price he paid for it! He redeemed us from the curse of the law, says Paul, by ‘becoming a curse for us’ (v. 13). The penalty of our law-breaking was transferred to him. For a wrath-deserving people he became the wrath-bearer, an accursed one, bearing the curse that should have been borne by us.
In confirmation of that, Paul quotes yet another Old Testament Scripture (Deut. 21:23): ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’ When a criminal under Old Testament law was put to death by being hanged on a tree it pointed to the fact that he or she was under the curse of God. The nailing of Jesus to the cross symbolized the very same thing. Frequently in the New Testament the cross of Calvary is thought of and spoken of as a tree (Acts 5:30; 13:29; 1 Peter 2:24). That is because the Christ who died there was under the curse of God—redeeming us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.[3]
3:13 / Paul believes that the change in the relationship between law and faith within Judaism results from Christ’s death, which Paul interprets in various ways throughout his letters. As M. D. Hooker has noted, none of the images Paul uses to speak about the cross “is complete in itself” (Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretation of the Death of Christ [Carlisle: Paternoster, 1994], p. 45). Here it serves the apostle’s purpose to interpret Christ’s death as one in which Christ became a curse. This description should be understood in the context of the following scriptural quotation. Paul uses metonymy: Christ did not become as the law is (the curse of the law); Christ took on the position of those under the law—he became accursed. Citing Deuteronomy 21:23, Paul describes Christ’s death as one who was accursed, cut off from his people and from God. This place of curse is one that Paul and others were in until Christ redeemed them. Through his death Christ delivered believers from the “curse of the law” and thereby severed the relationship between faith in him and law. There is no need to follow law, for those who believe in Christ are released from law.
The quotation from Deuteronomy 21:23 contains the word “curse,” as did the first quotation (3:10, citing Deut. 27:26). In the scriptural context of each quotation the word “curse” indicates exclusion from the community. In Deuteronomy 27:26 all the people say “amen” to the curse, thereby affirming their stand against the behavior cursed and their willingness to shun anyone disobeying the law. The context of the Deuteronomy 21:23 quote is instruction about the burial of a criminal’s corpse: when someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and so executed and hung on a tree, the corpse must not remain all night upon the tree but should be buried that day, for “anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” The exposed corpse of a dead criminal would defile the land God gives as an inheritance. The language of curse in relation to Christ’s death serves Paul’s point of emphasizing that through the Galatians’ faith in the death of Christ (3:1) they already are descendants of Abraham (3:7). He affirms that Christ’s death released believers from the curse of potentially being excluded from the people of God and effected inclusion within the people of God for those in Christ.
Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 21:23, in which the cursed person is a criminal deserving death, and his statement that Christ’s death was in our stead (for us), make plain that Paul thinks that Christ died for our sins. Nevertheless, Paul does not say explicitly that Christ died for our sins; he does not state directly that Christ’s death was a “sin offering” (cf. Rom. 8:3–4). The mechanics of salvation are beyond the rational realm. It is probably best to take Paul’s words as metaphorical. He seeks to explain his conviction that Christ’s death has effected the end of the law and opened the way for all to benefit from being the people of God. Paul’s focus is not on the manner in which Christ’s death made salvation available but on the fact that salvation is in Christ, apart from the law, and that those who believe in Christ are now incorporated into Christ.
Paul’s use of the first person plural pronoun us does not indicate that the Galatians had been following the Jewish law before they came to faith in Christ. In fact, we know that they had been pagans (4:8). Rather, Paul is describing the stages of God’s salvation plan, which he will describe in more depth in the subsequent verses. Before Christ everyone, Jew and pagan, was in slavery to the law (cf. 3:23), for whether one was a Jew or a pagan, there was no other way to deal with sin than through the law one knew (cf. Rom. 2:14). The ancient world understood law in a general sense to be that which reflected justice. As Aristotle says, “ ‘The just’ therefore means that which is lawful or that which is equal and fair” (Eth. nic. 5.1.8 [Rackham, LCL]). Law was a way of measuring and achieving justice. By broadening the field to speak about law in general Paul asserts that the Galatians have already followed the law. This is an effective rhetorical strategy, for the conclusion is plain that through believing in Christ crucified (cf. 3:1), the Galatians have already once turned from following law.[4]
The Alternative of Faith (verses 13, 14)
This second alternative introduces Jesus Christ. It tells us that Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross what we could not do for ourselves. The only way to escape the curse is not by our work, but by His. He has redeemed us, ransomed us, set us free from the awful condition of bondage to which the curse of the law had brought us. Verse 13: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. These are astonishing words. As Bishop Blunt put it: ‘the language here is startling, almost shocking. We should not have dared to use it. Yet Paul means every word of it.’ In its context, in which it must be read, the phrase can mean only one thing, for the ‘curse’ of verses 10 and 13 is evidently the same curse. The ‘curse of the law’ from which Christ redeemed us must be the curse resting upon us for our disobedience (verse 10). And He redeemed us from it by ‘becoming a curse’ Himself. The curse was transferred from us to Him. He took it voluntarily upon Himself, in order to deliver us from it. It is this ‘becoming a curse for us’ which explains the awful cry of dereliction, of God-forsakenness, which He uttered from the cross.
Paul now adds a scriptural confirmation of what he has just said about the cross. He quotes Deuteronomy 21:23: for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree’ (verse 13b). Every criminal sentenced to death under the Mosaic legislation and executed, usually by stoning, was then fixed to a stake or ‘hanged on a tree’ as a symbol of his divine rejection. Dr. Cole says the quotation means ‘not … that a man is cursed by God because he is hanged, but that death by hanging was the outward sign in Israel of a man who was thus cursed’. The fact that the Romans executed by crucifixion rather than hanging makes no difference. To be nailed to a cross was equivalent to being hanged on a tree. So Christ crucified was described as having been ‘hanged on a tree’ (e.g. Acts 5:30; 1 Pet. 2:24), and was recognized as having died under the divine curse. No wonder the Jews at first could not believe that Jesus was the Christ. How could Christ, the anointed of God, instead of reigning on a throne, hang on a tree? It was incredible to them. Perhaps, as Bishop Stephen Neill suggests, when Christ crucified was preached, Jews would sometimes shout back ‘Jesus is accursed!’, which is the dreadful ejaculation mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:3.
The fact that Jesus died hanging on a tree remained for Jews an insurmountable obstacle to faith, until they saw that the curse He bore was for them. He did not die for His own sins; He became a curse ‘for us’.
Does this mean that everybody has been redeemed from the law’s curse through the sin-bearing, curse-bearing cross of Christ? Indeed not, for verse 13 must not be read without verse 14, where it is written that Christ became a curse for us, that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. It was in Christ that God acted for our salvation, and so we must be in Christ to receive it. We are not saved by a distant Christ, who died hundreds of years ago and lives millions of miles away, but by an existential Christ, who, having died and risen again, is now our contemporary. As a result we can be ‘in Him’, personally and vitally united to Him today.
But how? Granted that He bore our curse, and that we must be ‘in Him’ to be redeemed from it, how do we become united to Him? The answer is ‘through faith’. Paul has already quoted Habakkuk: ‘he who through faith is righteous shall live’ (verse 11). Now he says it himself: ‘We … receive the promise of the Spirit through faith’ (verse 14).
Faith is laying hold of Jesus Christ personally. There is no merit in it. It is not another ‘work’. Its value is not in itself, but entirely in its object, Jesus Christ. As Luther put it, ‘faith … apprehendeth nothing else but that precious jewel Christ Jesus.’ Christ is the Bread of life; faith feeds upon Him. Christ was lifted up on the cross; faith gazes at Him there.
Conclusion
The apostle sets the alternatives before us in the starkest contrast. He tells us of two destinies, and of two possible roads by which to reach them. He speaks like a kind of New Testament Moses, for Moses said: ‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse’ (Dt. 30:19).
- The two destinies
Like Moses, Paul calls the two destinies of man ‘blessing’ and ‘curse’. It is very striking to see them contrasted in verses 13 and 14, where it is written that Christ became a curse for us, that we might inherit a blessing. So far we have concentrated on the curse; what is the blessing? It is termed ‘the blessing of Abraham’ (verse 14), partly because it is the blessing which Abraham himself received when he believed, and partly because God said to him: ‘I will bless you …; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed’ (Gn. 12:2, 3, rsv mg.). As it is unfolded in these verses, the promised blessing includes justification (being put into favour with God), eternal life (being received into fellowship with God) and ‘the promise of the Spirit’ (being regenerated and indwelt by Him). This is the priceless threefold ‘blessing’ of the Christian believer.
- The two roads
By what roads do we attain to the ‘curse’ and the ‘blessing’? The first road is called ‘the law’; those who travel by it are those ‘who rely on works of the law’ (verse 10); they are ‘under a curse’. The second road is called ‘faith’; those who travel by it are ‘men of faith’ (verses 7, 9); they inherit the ‘blessing’. The first group trust in their own works, the second in the finished work of Christ.
The challenge of this passage is straightforward. We must renounce the proud folly of supposing that we can establish our own righteousness or make ourselves acceptable to God. Instead we must come humbly to the cross, where Christ bore our curse, and cast ourselves entirely upon His mercy. And then, by God’s sheer grace, because we are in Christ Jesus by faith, we shall receive justification, eternal life and the indwelling Spirit. The ‘blessing of Abraham’ will be ours.[5]
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ga 3:13–14). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[2] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1983). Galatians (pp. 78–79). Chicago: Moody Press.
[3] Campbell, D. (2009). Opening Up Galatians (pp. 56–57). Leominster: Day One Publications.
[4] Jervis, L. A. (2011). Galatians (pp. 91–92). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book.
[5] Stott, J. R. W. (1986). The message of Galatians: Only one way (pp. 80–83). Leicester, England; Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
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