Redeemed From The Curse of the Law

(Galatians 3:13-14)

We read in the book of Romans chapter 7 that Paul says, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” (Romans 7:12) And then we see also that Jesus says,

17 “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. 18 For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)

So it seems rather strange that something identified as being holy, just and good, and will also not pass away until all is completed, should also come with a curse. How do we reconcile this and what, if anything can we do about it?

Well, thanks be to Jesus Christ who has given us release from the curse and enabled us to stand apart from the law with it’s curses. He became a curse to bear the curse of the law so that we do not have to bear it.

Blessings and Curses

After Moses had given the law to the people of Israel, he ended it with a series of blessings and curses.

One of the things we learn about the law is that it is an all or nothing thing. You either had to keep all of the law or be guilty of breaking all of it. To clarify, if a person broke one of the laws of Moses, they were guilty of breaking ALL of it, as is discussed in the letter of James,

10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” said also, “Do not kill.” If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law. (James 2:10-11)

So any person who commits ANY sin is guilty of breaking the whole law. And that is the curse.

There is no distinction with sin. A sin, is a sin, is a sin. And a person who is a liar or a thief is as much a sinner as a person who is a murderer.

This is the essence of the curse of the law. As Moses stated the curse he said,

“‘Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ (Deuteronomy 27:26)

When he says, “…by doing them…” what Moses was saying is that you had to do ALL of them. There is no picking or choosing in the law, you had to live under the whole lot of the laws if you were to “do them.” And we should note that there were in excess of 650 laws given in the Old Covenant by which people had to live day to day.

And to compound the issue, it has been identified that no man can live by the laws without breaking them at times. Even the most righteous man to ever live on the earth (Jesus excluded), broke a law every now and then. Fortunately within the law there was the opportunity to be forgiven by following the laws of sacrifice in the temple. The bad news is that the temple and the priesthood who managed the sacrifices no longer exists today.

So what is a person to do today? We are cursed because we cannot live under the law and cannot receive forgiveness under the law as there is no opportunity to offer the appropriate sacrifices.

Freedom from Law

We are greatly blessed today because Jesus came and died to release us from the law. But not only the law, Jesus also released us from the curse of the law.

The curse of the law, as mentioned above, is that all who do not live by the letter of the law are under a curse. But in amongst the curses Moses laid down upon the people was this one,

22 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God…” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)

Now, just as the law is considered to be one and a person who breaks the law is deemed to have broken all of the law, so too the curses of the law are considered as one. A person who becomes accursed under one curse is considered to be accursed under all of the curses. That is, if you are accursed, then you are accursed.

By being hung upon the tree, which Jesus was when He was nailed up to die, He became an accursed thing. Just as He took on all of the sins of mankind in His sacrifice and the shedding of His blood, He also took on all of the curses of the law by being put to death the way that He was. And by so doing He set us free from sin, He set us free from the law, and He also set us free from the curse of the law which said you MUST do what the law requires.

When we are baptised into the death of Jesus and we take on His death as our own, we are released from our sins, released from the law and released from the curse of the law. We have been truly set free from all of the things that have plagued mankind since the fall of Adam and Eve. God has reconciled us back to the place of righteousness by faith that Adam and Eve held before their fall. And God did this in and through the death of Jesus Christ.

Many people often wonder at the cruelty of the death of Jesus. Why did He have to die in the manner He did?

The normal manner of death for those who broke the law of Moses was to be stoned to death. But Jesus was not stoned.

We can see from the information above that Jesus had to die by hanging on a tree as He did, for the purpose of setting us free from the curse of the law. He put on ALL of the curses of the law by becoming a curse on our behalf, so that we could be set free from the curses of the law. Through His suffering, we have been set free.

And this is just one more thing for which we should give Him all praise, all worship and all glory, because it was out of His love for us that He paved the way for our release for the curse of the law.

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