Galatians 3:13: He Took the Curse

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 (NIV)

He Took the Curse

The greenhouse is too warm by eight in the morning. Two people are working down a tray of tomato seedlings, lifting each one into a pot of its own. They’re talking about a dog that got into a neighbor’s garden. The radio on the shelf is playing something neither of them likes enough to get up and change.

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.” Paul writes that to people who were being told that belonging to God meant keeping the whole law, and that whoever came up short of any of it stood under a curse. A curse here is a verdict. Christ walked into the place where the verdict was going to fall and took it there.

The words Paul keeps using are for us. Christ became a curse for us, and he did it so the blessing promised to Abraham could reach people who had never been given the law at all. Most of them weren’t born when he did it, and it held for them anyway.

The woman in the greenhouse is under no curse this morning, if she belongs to Christ. Nothing her hands do to that tray adds to it, and nothing she forgets takes it off her. It was settled before she pulled her boots on, and it will still be settled tonight when she’s too tired to think about any of it. She has never had a morning when it was half true. If you belong to Christ, the verdict that was coming to you fell on him, and there’s nothing left of it with your name on it.

The last seedling goes into a pot of its own. “He got in twice,” one of them says. “The second time, she was standing right there watching him do it.”