Christ Became A Curse For Us (Galatians 3:1-14)

[Read Galatians 3:1-14]

I have to admit, I wanted to start this sermon by shouting, “You boneheads!,” but then I decided against it. I think you can get away with that sort of thing when speaking with teenagers, but I had a feeling that if I did that this morning, we would be having a conversation tomorrow night at council. 

Yet, can you imagine if I had begun my sermon that way. Can you imagine if I actually got up in the pulpit, looked out at you with frustration welling up within me, and shouted, “You mindless people!” I can imagine that you would be shocked, angry, hurt, and I would probably be rebuked for acting in an unChristian manner. 

Yet, this is how Paul is speaking to the Galatian church. Like I’ve mentioned a number of times, he’s fired up. He is not happy with this congregation and the things that are going on within it. So, he shouts at them, calling them mindless—without a brain. Pretty harsh, isn’t it? He also says, “Who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1, NIV). “Who has cast a curse upon you? There’s no way that you could possible fall into such an error without being foolish and without someone casting a curse upon you. What’s going on?!?” 

In order to get a better understanding of why Paul is so wound up in this passage, we need to spend some time looking at the Old Testament, understanding the covenants. As we look at the entirety of Scripture, in a broad sense, there are only two covenants. No, they are not the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Some call them the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. Others call them the Promise Covenant and the Law Covenant. For this sermon, I’ll be referring to them as the Promise Covenant and the Law Covenant. 

Now, a covenant is simply an agreement arrived upon by two different parties. It’s really that simple. It was a very common thing in ancient times. Two parties would enter into an agreement, make promises to one another, and then agree on benefits and consequences of that agreement. If you follow the agreement, these benefits will come to you. If you break the covenant, these consequences will come to you. 

We do this sort of thing all the time as parents, right? You are leaving the house to run some errands around town. As you leave you look at your children and say, “While I’m gone you need to clean up the living room, bring your dirty laundry down, and start a load of wash. Alright?” The child response by saying, “OK Mom.” Then you remind your child, “If I come back and this isn’t done, there’s going to be a lot more chores coming your way. If I come back and you’ve got it all done, and have done it well, we may go do something fun today. Alright?” “Ok.” You’ve entered into a covenant with your child. There are benefits to obeying and there are consequences for disobeying. 

Right away in the beginning of our Bible we see God enter into this type of covenant with Adam. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”” (Genesis 2:15–17, NIV). Here’s the covenant with Adam, boiled down to its core: Obey God’s laws and you will receive eternal life; Disobey God’s laws and you will die. There are benefits to obeying and consequences to disobedience. This is the Law Covenant. 

This Law Covenant comes up again at Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments are given to Israel. They are given a law from God to obey and then it is said, “If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.” (Deuteronomy 28:1–6, NIV). So, the covenant says: you obey and you will blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. Yet, it also says, “However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.” (Deuteronomy 28:15–19, NIV). If you do not obey, you will be cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed. This is the Law Covenant. 

There was even a gruesome ritual that went with the agreement of these covenants. The two parties would take bulls, goats, birds, etc. and cut them in half. Then, with slaughtered animals spread out around them, on either side of them, they would stand in the middle and make their agreement. The symbolism was understood to say, “If I break this covenant, let me become like these slaughtered animals that are strewn around us. Let me be chopped into pieces.”

Now, take a moment to connect this with my last sermon. In my last sermon, I said that we cannot be saved by following the law. Paul says that it’s impossible. One reason is that there’s not a single person in all the earth or all of history—besides Jesus—who can obey the Law Covenant. Not a single one. That means that every single person in all of history and all the earth lies under the curse of God. “However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.” (Deuteronomy 28:15–19, NIV). There’s another reason that we cannot be saved by the Law Covenant: it was never designed to save us. It was designed to point us to another covenant. 

Some people get frustrated with this. I’ve had people angrily say, “Well, why would God enter into a covenant with us that he knew we could never fulfill?” It’s a valid question, right? The answer is that this Law Covenant was designed to point us—to lead us—to the covenant where we can truly find salvation. That’s it’s ultimate purpose. The covenant where we can find salvation is the Promise Covenant. 

This Promise Covenant shows up even with Adam and Eve. After they disobey God and break the Law Covenant, God begins to explain the consequences of that disobedience—cursing. The serpent is cursed. The woman’s childbearing is cursed. The man’s working of the ground is cursed. Yet, there is a promise that occurs in the midst of this cursing: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV). There is a promise that the serpent’s head will be crushed by one of the offspring of Eve. There will be some redemption coming that is completely disconnected the Adam and Eve’s obedience. This is the Promise Covenant. 

Then, we see this Promise Covenant pop up again with Abraham. This is one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Old Testament. In order to see its beauty, you need to keep in mind everything that I have said about covenants in mind. God has called Abraham and gave him a promise: “The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”” (Genesis 12:1–3, NIV). A few chapters later, Abraham is asking God how he can be certain that God will fulfill this promise. How will he KNOW that God will do what he said he would do? Then we have this beautiful passage:

“So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking brazier with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram…” (Genesis 15:9–18, NIV). Do you see what happened here? Everything was set for the covenant ceremony, slaughtered animals were strewn around, everything was ready for God and Abraham to meet in the middle to seal the deal. Yet, God—in the form of a smoking pot—was the only one to pass through the animals. God passed through he animals saying, “May I be like these animals if I do not fulfill this promise to you.” God was the one who would bear the curses in order to fulfill this covenant with his people. 

Now, turn to our passage in Galatians. “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 tree.”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 3:13–14, NIV). Isn’t this amazing?! This is the fulfillment—the epitome—of the Promise Covenant. Christ hangs on a tree, bears the curse of the Law Covenant, identifies himself with the curse of the Law Covenant, in our place in order to redeem us—in order to fulfill the Promise Covenant. He has rescued us from having to live under the threat of curses for every little bit of disobedience that pops up in our lives. He has carried that curse for us and redeemed us from the curse that rest upon us. 

Those who are saved believe in this Promise Covenant like Abraham. “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6, NIV). Or, as our passage in Galatians says, “So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” (Galatians 3:9, NIV) and “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 3:14, NIV). The Law Covenant is about works. The Promise Covenant is about faith. 

This is why Paul is flabbergasted. He says, “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”” (Galatians 3:10, NIV). Why in the world would anyone place themselves back under the Law Covenant and the curses that come along with it? Why in the world would you once again submit yourself to those curses when Jesus Christ became a curse to free you from those curses? Besides, why in the world would you rely on the Law Covenant to do something that it was never intended to do? It was never intended to save us, but was intended to point us to the Promise Covenant where we can truly find salvation.

Let me end with a famous verse that ties all of this together. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16–18, NIV). Jesus did not come to condemn the world because the world was already condemned—under the curse for breaking the Law Covenant. Jesus came to fulfill the Promise Covenant and to bring salvation through faith. Whoever believes in him shall not perish by have eternal life. If you try to add to that by your own works, you place yourself under the curse of the law and reject the promise. Look to Jesus Christ in faith, believe, and receive eternal life.