Did God Curse Jesus on the Cross?

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” (Galatians 3:13)

Did God curse Jesus on the cross? Now, that may seem to you quite an odd question, and I am very glad if it does. From a Trinitarian viewpoint — which understands the one God as Three Persons in mutually interpenetrating, mutually indwelling union — the idea of the Father cursing the Son makes that union sound very dysfunctional. Is that what the Scriptures teach?

In recent discussion about the atonement — how the death of Christ on the cross saves the world — a friend of mine took the penal view, that the cross was a divinely imposed penalty Christ paid for us. I agree that what Christ did on the cross, he did for our sake and on our behalf, accomplishing for us what we never could have done for ourselves. But I do not believe it was a matter of paying any sort of divine penalty. In support of his view, my friend offered this passage:

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (Galatians 3:10-14)

For those who believe the penal view of atonement, this may at first sound like God cursed Jesus in order to deliver us from the curse. After all, did not the Law of Moses say, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole?” And did not Jesus hang on a cross, a pole? But let us look carefully at the Scripture Paul quotes, understand it in its own context, and then compare it with how Paul uses it. The line Paul cites is from Deuteronomy 21:22-23.

If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

As we compare this passage with how Paul uses it, there are three important things to note. First, this passage is about someone who has been guilty of a capital offense, been put to death, and their body exposed on a pole or tree. Does this apply to Jesus in the way that it is written? We know that Jesus was put to death and nailed to a cross, but was he guilty of any capital offense — or any offense at all, for that matter? No, not by the Law of Moses, he wasn’t. And though Scripture speaks of Christ bearing the sins of the world, it never holds him guilty of any of them.

The Law of Moses made no provision for putting an innocent man to death, not even for the sake of another. Indeed, the Law always condemns the shedding of innocent blood. So, if the Law had cursed Jesus, it would have violated itself and shown itself to be illegitimate for condemning an innocent man.

Second, in the Deuteronomy passage, the one hanging on the tree is said to be “under God’s curse.” But in Paul’s citation, that idea is conspicuously absent. Had he meant to teach that God cursed Jesus on the cross, this would have been the perfect opportunity for him to do so. Yet Paul deliberately leaves out “by God” when he quotes the Deuteronomy passage. The reason for that should be clear enough. Paul did not believe that God cursed Christ.

This is further supported by a third point: Paul does not tell us that Christ was cursed. Rather, he explicitly states that Jesus became a curse. Notice carefully: Jesus did not become cursed but he became a curse, and that is a very different thing. To understand why, we must look to see what Paul was addressing in the first place. We find that just a few verses earlier, in Galatians 3:10, “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law’” (Paul here quotes from Deuteronomy 27:26).

The Jews had failed to keep all the Law and by that very Law they stood condemned — under the curse. So, Jesus took the part of those who were under the curse of the Law. Yet it was impossible for him to be cursed either by God (because Jesus is God, and the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not a dysfunctional relationship), or by the Law of Moses (which could not condemn an innocent man without condemning itself). The curse had no right to him, so Christ became a curse to the curse.

In Colossians 2:14, Paul tells us what Christ did with the curse of the Law: He “wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (NKJV). Or as the NIV says it, “having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Now, Christ did not curse the Law itself but the indictment it brought, the “handwriting of requirements,” or the “charge of legal indebtedness.” At the cross, he wiped it all out. He did not pay a penalty to satisfy the “requirements,” or pay off whatever was the “indebtedness.” Instead, he cancelled it, rendering it null and void. He condemned it by “nailing it to the cross.” He cursed it with the curse of hanging it on a pole.

Why, then, did Paul quote a line from Deuteronomy that would otherwise seem to indicate the that one on the tree was cursed? It was because he was not offering a grammatical-historical exegesis — the Jewish interpretative tradition did not approach Scripture that way, nor did Paul or any of the other New Testament authors read the Old Testament that way. In Galatians 3, Paul was not explaining the way things were under the Law of Moses but showing what God has done in Christ, and what the true significance of the Law is in light of that. So, he related the two Scriptures he quoted from Deuteronomy on the basis of the word “cursed” — linking Scriptures by a shared word was a common method of Jewish interpretation. Then he picked up on the word “pole” in the latter text to make the very different point that the former curse was itself dealt with by a curse.

Christ was not cursed by God, by the Law or by anything at all. By his death on the cross, he became a curse to the curse that was on the Jews, and in that way not only redeemed them from the curse of the Law but opened the way for the long-promised blessing of Abraham to come upon the Gentiles as well.

The Snare Has Been Broken

Praise be to the LORD,
    who has not let us be torn by their teeth.
We have escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare;
    the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.
Our help is in the name of the LORD,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

(Psalm 124:6-8)

We have escaped, been set free. The snare that held us in bondage has been broken. We need no longer remain there.

It happened at the cross, this escape, almost two thousand years ago. Jesus went up against the principalities and powers, the rulers and authorities. He went up against the works of the devil, all the power sin could muster against him. He went up against death. These all nailed him to the tree and rejoiced against him there.

But they did not understand, or else they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Their imagined victory was actually their demise. For at the cross, the power of God’s self-emptying love, revealed in Christ, broke the snare and shattered the chains that held the world so tightly bound.

The cross of Christ disarmed the principalities and powers, destroyed the works of the devil, and broke the power of him who held the power of death, that is, the devil. By his death, Christ demolished even the power of death itself, for it is impossible that death could ever hold the Lord of life.

At the cross of Christ, the forgiveness of God was fully revealed. As the apostle Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

All those old chains no longer hold us, no longer have any power or authority over us. We have been set free. Let us therefore count ourselves dead to these things, and them to us. Let us, as Paul says, reckon ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. For we have died with Christ at the cross that we may walk in the power of his resurrection. “For as in Adam all died, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Friends, hear and believe the good news of the gospel. In Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven and we have been made alive to God. The snare has been broken and we have escaped. Come walk in this new life.

Random Thoughts

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About faith, divine love, the kingdom of God and new life in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.

• We do not overcome evil with evil — not even with the lesser of two evils. We overcome evil with good.
• Do good and leave the results to God who knows how to redeem every situation.
• The will of God for you and me, in one word: Love — to love and be loved.
• God is love. The will of God being done on earth as it is in heaven is nothing else but the manifestation of love.
• Jesus knew how to multiply five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand. He knows how to multiply His body and his blood to feed His people.
• Wherever the will of God is done on earth as in heaven, there we find the kingdom of God. And there heaven and earth have become one.
• The glory of God is not found in the will to power but in the will to love. The greatness of God is not found in the ability to take but in the ability to pour Himself out for love.
• What counts, the apostle Paul said, is faith expressing itself through love. God is love, and faith in God looks like love.
• Christ did not come to hold us accountable for sin but to set us free from the bondage of sin.
• Love is unconditional, not co-dependent. Or controlling.
• The gospel is not a sin management program.
• The cross was not a management tool for God’s anger issues — and Jesus was not being co-dependent.
• We are not defined by our faithfulness to God but by God’s faithfulness to us.
• Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lead us all into the eternal bliss of Your divine fellowship. Amen.
• We are holy not because of what we do or don’t do but because of whose we are.
• I desire no other reason for doing good then that God is love and Jesus is Lord.
• Christ became a human being that we might become our true selves and know real freedom.
• Christ has irrevocably, inextricably entangled Himself with all humanity — the Incarnation cannot be undone. O Glorious Entanglement that saves the whole world!
• The Cross was the inevitable consequence of the Incarnation, when He who is infinite life joined Himself to a humanity bent toward death — it could only ever result in Resurrection.
• Teach me today, Lord Jesus, for You are my proverb and my psalm, my wisdom and my praise. Amen.
• Christ, the True Light who gives light to everyone, has come into the world. Follow Him.
• Neither death nor evil nor sin have any purpose, any rightful place in God’s creation. They are imposters, detracting from life and good and wholeness. But their power has been broken at the Cross, where they were shown to be the frauds they are, and they are destined for destruction.
• Christ is the True Light who gives light to all the world. Look for His light in everyone you meet.
• Faith in Christ looks like following him.

More random thoughts …

Mary’s Yes Changes the Whole World

The angel Gabriel came to the little village of Nazareth, in Galilee, to a young girl named Mary. He had a wondrous announcement for her: “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked, “since I am a virgin?” It was not a question of doubt but of wonder, for Mary was a ponderer and thought deeply about things.

“The Holy Spirit will come on you,” Gabriel answered, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“Behold the maidservant of the Lord!” Mary said, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Mary said Yes. She said Yes to the angel and his announcement, of course, but more than that, she said Yes to God the Father, who had sent the angel and shown her such favor. She said Yes to the Son, who would be conceived in her womb and to whom she would give birth. And she said Yes to the Holy Spirit, by whom this great miracle would happen.

Mary’s was a very powerful Yes , one that changes the whole world. For it is in her Yes — her faith-filled response to God’s Yes — that Christ received his humanity, so that God became flesh and dwelt among us. And it is by the humanity the Lord Jesus received from Mary that he has joined himself to us in our humanity — becoming not only one of us but one with us. It is through Mary’s Yes, then, that God has chosen us in Christ. That changes all of us and is what all creation is longing for.

The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 9:19-22)

Through her Yes to God, Mary became the pathway for the God who became Man and who rescues the world through the cross and the resurrection. Because of Mary’s Yes to giving birth to the Lord of heaven and earth in a lowly stable, the birth-pangs of all creation will be fulfilled.

Merry Christmas to all creation.

How God Chose Us in Christ

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:3-6)

God chose us in Christ, Paul says. He chose us in him from before the world began. He chose us so that we could be his holy people, his special treasure, and blameless in his sight. He decided in advance (at least from our perspective) that in Christ he would adopt us as his very own children. This has always been his pleasure and purpose, his gracious and glory-revealing gift to us in Jesus Christ, so that, as the NKJV puts it, we are “accepted in the Beloved.” And in Christ, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. This is the exceedingly great reality God has given to us in Christ. (See, Chosen in Christ for the Unity of All Things.)

But how did it happen? How has God chosen us in Christ? By what means? It has nothing to do with what we have done. There is nothing we could ever have possibly done to make it so. It is purely something God has done for us, a gift of God’s grace, and it is this that we particularly celebrate at Christmastime. I am speaking of the Incarnation, which the gospel according to John puts this way:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14)

Jesus Christ is the Word — God himself — who became flesh. He did not just come and reveal himself to humanity, he became a human being. In becoming a human being, Christ did not become just one of us, he became one with us, for we are all connected in our humanity. In becoming a human being, then, God joined himself to all of humanity.

It is precisely because of this connection we share with each other that Paul could say, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). And, “Consequently, just as one trespass [Adam’s] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [Christ’s] resulted in justification and life for all people” (Romans 5:18).

This is the good news of the gospel. In the Incarnation, Christ has joined himself to us, and this changes everything. It means that when Christ died on the cross, we died there, too. Paul said, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

The cross was the inevitable consequence of the Incarnation. When he who is infinite life joined himself to a humanity bent toward death, it could only ever result in resurrection. Christ’s connection to humanity also means that when he was raised from the dead, we were born again through his resurrection. The apostle Peter said, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

In Jesus Christ, God has become human. How can this not but transform all of humanity, like leaven in bread? That is how the kingdom of God works, and the leaven of God’s love.

Christ has irrevocably, inextricably entangled himself with all humanity — the Incarnation cannot be undone. O Glorious Entanglement that saves the whole world!

This is the joyful anticipation of Christmas.

A New Song for All the Earth

Sing to the LORD a new song;
    sing to the LORD, all the earth.
Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
    proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
    his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

(Psalm 96:1-3)

A new song has come into the world, a song that reveals God’s salvation come for all the nations, his glory made known throughout the earth. It is the sound of good news, of the coming of Christ. It is the song of the gospel, captured in three words: The Lord reigns. When this new song is sung, the world can no longer remain as it was, for the coming of the King changes everything.

Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”
    The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
    he will judge the peoples with equity.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
    let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
    let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before the LORD,
    for he comes, he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
    and the peoples in his faithfulness.

(Psalm 96:10-13)

In the coming of Christ, the world is set on a firm foundation, for he has disarmed the “principalities and powers,” the unjust authority and systemic evil that lies behind kings and cultures. Their power has been broken by the way of the cross and the life of the resurrection so that no one is obliged to honor them — we are free to live out this new life we have in Christ. For he has come to judge the earth, to heal, to cast out the demonic, to put things right, to make all things new. When he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is in his glory.

This is truly a cause for jubilation, not only for the nations but for the whole universe — cosmic celebration! Our English translations do not capture very well the wild exuberance of joy indicated in the Hebrew text: Let the heavens be lighthearted and merry. Let the earth spin for joy. Let the sea and everything in it roar with delight. Let the fields and everything in them jump for joy. Let all the trees of the forest let out with high-pitched shouts of joy. Creation itself is waiting for the full manifestation of our redemption in Christ.

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)

Even now, this new song is being sung, and has been since the first Christmas. In the season of Advent, we tune our hearts again to its sound that we may sing it afresh.

Joy to the World is a song for every season but has been especially celebrated at Christmas. Here is my arrangement, from my Christmas album, He Come from the Glory.