A Curse for Us

There is a line in the law of Moses about dead bodies. If a man was executed for a capital crime and hung on a tree, his body was not to be left there overnight: you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:23). The corpse on the tree was a public sign — here is someone under God's curse — and leaving it out past sundown would defile the land. Down it had to come, by evening.

It is one of those statutes we would read straight past. Paul does not. He sets it at the dead center of the gospel.

The law makes a demand and enforces it with a curse: Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them (Galatians 3:10). Not most things. All of them, all the time. And no one is justified before God by the law (Galatians 3:11). It was never a ladder to climb, only a mirror, and the verdict it returns we cannot answer.

Then the sentence Paul has been driving at: 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” (Galatians 3:13). When Jesus hung on a cross and was taken down before sundown (John 19:31), he was standing where Deuteronomy said the cursed man stands. Not play-acting the place. Occupying it, in our place.

This is the great exchange: our curse onto him, his blessing onto us.¹ So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:14). What is left for us is not a record to repair but a Person to trust. The body came down by evening. The curse stayed in the grave. We walked out blessed.