When I Survey
H. Hoeksema
Book 4, Chapter 2
Redemption from the Curse of the Law

"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." (Gal. 3:13)

Marvelous power of the cross!

The lifeblood of the crucified One, dripping from His hands and feet, shed voluntarily, obediently, a sacrifice of love on the altar of God's justice, redeems us from the curse of the law!

And when we hear the word of the cross, and experience its power by faith, the oppressing burden of that curse is lifted from our weary souls, and the blessing of the gospel fills our hearts with the peace that passeth all understanding!

That is the power that is attributed to the cross of Jesus by the Holy Scriptures in Gal. 3:10-13: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."

By nature we are all under the curse of the law.

It is true that, in the passages from Galatians, the reference is, primarily, to the Israel of the old dispensation. They were, indeed, the covenant people of God, and heirs of the promise of salvation. However, on Mount Sinai, the law was, so to speak, imposed upon the promise, and although the former could not, and did not, make the latter of none effect, nevertheless, the covenant people were made to bear the burden of the law, and they became obligated to bear the curse of the law if they did not perfectly keep all the words of the law delivered unto them by Moses. And what is more, they had even covenanted with Jehovah to assume responsibility for that curse. For, according to the command of Moses in Deut. 27:11ff., when the people of Israel had crossed over Jordan into the land of Canaan, half of the tribes took their position on Mount Gerizim, and the other half on Mount Ebal. And the Levites read to all the people the blessing and the curse of the law, and both the tribes of Israel responded with a solemn Amen. The curse was divided into a series of individual curses, the last one of which covered the entire law: "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of the law to do them." And from Mount Ebal was heard the solemn response by which the people voluntarily assumed this curse of the law: Amen!

Truly, as many as were under the law, and of the works of the law, were under a curse. For who was able to keep the law of the Lord perfectly? A thousand times, in the course of their history, the people of Israel transgressed, and trampled underfoot the statutes of their God.

Yet, this word is applicable, not only to Israel, but to all men as well. For we, too, are under the law: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Such is our everlasting and unchangeable obligation. But we transgressed. We violated the covenant of God. In Adam, we trampled underfoot God's holy commandment of love. We are born in sin. And that means that we are born under the wrath of God, and under the curse of the law. For always the Word of God against the transgressors of His covenant is: "The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." And, "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (Rom. 5:12) We are, with all the children of our race, born on Mount Ebal, where we hear the dreadful thunder of the law: "Cursed by every one that confirmeth not all the words of the law to do them." Nor is there, on our part, a way out. For we can never meet that obligation of the curse and live. On the contrary, we can only increase our guilt daily. For even while we stand in the fearful darkness of Mount Ebal, and hear the awful voice of God's holy wrath, cursing us into everlasting desolation and death, we continue to hate Him, to love the darkness rather than the light, and to rebel against His holy commandment. We are, by nature, corrupt, darkened in our understanding, perverse of will, obdurate in heart, willing servants of unrighteousness. How, then, could we ever bring the sacrifice that would redeem us from that curse of the law?

Redeemed we must be, purchased free from the curse of the law. The price must be paid. For God is just. He cannot deny Himself. The demand of His law He cannot change: "Love Me, with all thy heart." And there is no mercy without justice. For God is one. His righteousness is His mercy; His mercy and justice are never in conflict with each other. And, therefore, the soul that sinneth must die. And only in the way of death, but then still under the law of love, that is, by way of going through death as an act of obedience to that very law, in love to God, can his soul be delivered.

But the price of redemption he can never pay. The works of the ceremonial law are not sufficient, for the blood of bulls and goats can never blot out the guilt of sin. The works of the moral law of love he cannot, and will not perform; still less can he, under that law, bring his own life a sacrifice for sin.

By the works of the law no man is justified in the sight of God.

The sinner under the law is under the curse.

And let us make no mistake, and imagine that the sentence of the law against us is like the sentence of a human judge that has been pronounced, but the execution of which is postponed until some future day. The law is not a mere code: it is the Word of the living God, the Word which He always speaks, and that, too, a Word of power that accomplishes what it says. When the law pronounces the verdict: "Cursed be everyone that continueth not in all the words of the law to do them", it is the living God that thus speaks His Word of wrath, and pronounces the curse upon us. His own word of wrath and holy anger against the workers of iniquity -- that is the curse. It is the opposite of His word of favor. The latter is His eulogia, His pronouncing blessing upon the righteous, upon those that keep His covenant, and love His statutes to do them. In His favor there is fellowship and friendship, joy and peace, light and life: the enjoyment of all the pleasures there are at His right hand. But His wrath means that we are forsaken of Him, cast out of His fellowship, that His face is against us, that He fills us with terror, misery, and death. And this curse of the Holy One encompasses us on every side, and is within us, in our soul and body, and pursues us in all our earthly existence, throughout all our life. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." (Rom. 1:18) The expression, the operation of that wrath, the curse, becomes manifest in all the evils of this present time, in sickness and pain, in sorrow and death, in strife and confusion, in war and destruction, in an ever more deeply sinking into the foul morass of sin and corruption. It pursues us, this curse of the law, until we sink away into the final desolation of being forsaken in hell.

Such is the curse of the law.

And it is from that curse that Christ has redeemed us.

That is the power of the cross! O precious cross of Christ!

He came down to our level. Not by necessity or compulsion, but by His own voluntary choice and determination, He assumed our nature, soul and body, became flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. For He, let us remember, is the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, God of God, Light of Light, Who is, according to His divine nature, consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and who is eternally in the bosom of the Father. On this truth depends the whole mystery of our redemption from the curse. He is, according to His human nature, of us, but not through the will of man; by His own will the Son of God assumed the flesh and blood of His brethren: He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary. And descending from His glory, reaching down to our level to assume our nature, and to enter into our existence and life, He voluntarily assumed His position under the law, and took the responsibility of fulfilling the law upon Himself. For, "when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Gal. 4:4,5) And so reaching down to our depth, and coming under the law, He took upon His mighty shoulders the responsibility for the curse of the law.

He, too, heard the thunder of God's law, and the terror of it vibrated through His whole being, His soul and body: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all the works of the law to do them." Yea, He heard it, as no one else could hear it. He heard it to the end, even so that it was silenced forever, and that we might hear it nevermore. For, first of all, He heard that curse, and let it vibrate through His soul and body, as the Son of God in the flesh. He was able to bear the curse of the law to the very end, even through the very depth of hell. He was capable of bearing that curse as an act, as a sacrifice of love, so that He could satisfy the justice of God, reply to God's demand with His perfect Yes to blot out the guilt of our rebellious No, remove the curse, and obtain the favor of God, righteousness and life. The mighty Son of God in the flesh was able to fight His way through the curse to the promise, through the oppressing wrath of God to His blessed favor, through death into life, through the depth of hell into the glory of God's heavenly tabernacle.

That is the power of the cross.

For He, the Son of God in the flesh, was in a position to bear this curse in our stead, in our behalf, and to pay the price for our redemption. Not for His own sin did He have to become the object of the curse of the law. He had no sin. He knew no sin. No guile was ever found in His mouth. Being the Person of the Son of God, the sin of Adam could not be imputed to Him: He had no original sin. The dreadful and inexorable line indicated in the twelfth verse of Romans five: "through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed upon all men", was broken by the incarnation, by the coming of the Son of God into our flesh. Nor was His nature polluted, for He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, without the will of the flesh. And being without guilt and without the pollution of sin, yet coming under the law, and assuming the responsibility for the curse of the law freely, He could bear the sin of others. To do this He had the right; yea, that He should do so was the will of the Father concerning Him, for the Son of God, from before the world was, had been ordained the Head of all His own, the Church, that He might represent them in the hour of judgment, bear their iniquities, and redeem them from the curse of the law.

And so He became a curse for us, in our stead, and in our behalf.

All His life, from the manger to the cross, He bore that curse. For He tabernacled and walked among us in a sin-cursed world. He was conscious of His calling to bear the wrath of God. The shadow of the cross cast its gloomy darkness over His entire way. Yet, in that shadow He walked in perfect obedience to the Father. Every step of His life was an act of love. Bearing the wrath of God vicariously, and suffering the sorrow and misery of the curse, He personally remained the faithful Servant of Jehovah, obedient unto death, yea, even unto the death of the cross. He never failed, never wavered, never slipped, never rebelled. Every moment of His earthly existence, the Father could and did say unto Him: "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

Under the burden of the curse, all His life was a descent into the dark depth of the death of the cross.

But on Calvary it was finished.

There He became literally a curse for us. There He bore, and removed, finally and forever, the curse of the law.

Exactly in and through that shameful and bitter death of the cross, Christ became a curse for us. For so it is written: "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." The words are a quotation from Deut. 21:22,23: "And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; for he that is hanged is accursed of God; that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance." The reference in these words, therefore, is not to capital punishment by hanging, but to hanging and public exposure after death had been inflicted upon the guilty party, either by the sword or by stoning. It was especially the hanging on a tree of him that was found worthy of death that was, according to the word of God, an abomination and a curse.

Hence, the death of Christ must assume the form of crucifixion. For He must become a curse for us. He might not die a natural death; had He died of some disease, or of the infirmity of old age, His death would have been of no avail. Nor might the enemy simply stone Him to death, as they sometimes intended to do, or cast Him from a precipice, before His hour had come; nor might their final intention, with the help of the traitor, to take Him by subtility and secretly put Him out of the way, meet with success. All these attempts were frustrated; and when the hour had come, the Father so directed the course of events that the only and inevitable outcome was the death of the cross. For Christ had to become a curse for us, and the death of the cross was accursed of God.

The cross was and is to us the symbol, the expression, the very embodiment of the curse, and it was such for Christ. The victim of crucifixion was made a public spectacle of shame and contempt. He was an abomination, an outcast. No room there was for him in all the earth: he was lifted up from the earth. In heaven he was not received: suspended he remained between heaven above and the earth below. Men did not want him; God did not receive him. Of God and men he was forsaken. Such is the meaning of the cross of Christ. Suspended on the accursed tree of Calvary, He had no name or position left to Him. He was utterly despised by men, and forsaken of God. By the symbolism of the cross, conceived as God's, not as man's cross, we are assured that Christ became a curse for us.

Yet, for Christ the cross was more than a mere symbol. It was also the medium through which the cursing Word of God was conveyed to His consciousness, and He was made to taste the horror of that curse with His whole being. For also this word: "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree", is a Word of God, not of man. It is, therefore, not man's but God's own interpretation of the cross that places the victim of crucifixion in the category of those that are accursed of God. In the category, I say, for the word from Deuteronomy allows for no exception. Also that central cross on Calvary, together with the two others, therefore, belong to that category, according to the Word of God. On Calvary, through the cross, God spoke His own Word to the crucified Christ: "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree; cursed art even Thou as Thou standest in the place of sinners!"

That is the word of the cross to Jesus!

And our Lord heard that Word of God.

O, how He heard it! No one else could have heard it as He. And hearing it, He trembled, became amazed and utterly astonished, exceedingly sorrowful, filled with terror, unspeakably miserable. The Word of God's righteous and holy anger against sin was in that cross, and it vibrated through His whole soul and body. As the slow moments of His dying hours were measured by the equally slow trickle of His blood from His hands and feet, He felt the oppressing hand of God's wrath become increasingly heavy. And as every passing moment was more heavily laden with the wrath of God, He responded with loving obedience that filled every drop of blood pressed out of Him, and by Him was sprinkled upon God's altar, and upon the mercy seat in the sanctuary. Accentuated was the Word of God's curse by the darkness that presently spread its horrible wings over the scene of judgment on Calvary; and, in the darkness, the Savior completely withdrew Himself, wholly occupied, with all His heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, with the task of bearing the curse, and of responding to it in loving obedience, by His dripping blood. Before the darkness set in, He could still divide His attention between His own suffering and the misery of others, in loving sympathy for His own. But during the three hours of darkness, He is completely silent. His intense suffering, the offering of the perfect sacrifice, the laying down of His life in obedience to the Father, the amazing experience of the fierce wrath of God, and the superhuman task of meeting this dreadful expression of God's holy anger without complaint, without rebellion, yea, in the love of God -- these now require all His attention, every ounce of His strength.

Thus He descended into the lowest parts of the earth, into the deepest darkness of woe and desolation, ever pursued by the cursing wrath of God, yet constantly bearing it in perfect obedience.

And thus we can somewhat understand that, at the moment when God's oppressing curse pressed Him into the very desolation and agony of hell, at the same time that His love and obedience are most perfectly and mightily expressed, His sudden outcry should become a question of amazement, wrung from His sorely vexed soul: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Christ is become a curse for us!

That is the word of the cross!

And when we hear that word of the cross, we recognize it as a power of God redeeming us from the curse of the law. Then we stand by faith at the cross of Calvary, and tremble with terror in the consciousness of our sins and of God's holy wrath, and cry out: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Then we know, through the same word of the cross, that it is all finished, that our Savior took our place on the Ebal of Calvary, that He bore the curse of the law even unto the end, fulfilled all its obligations, and removed it forever. Yea, then we look through the darkness of Calvary into the glorious light of His resurrection, and are assured that God accepted His sacrifice, that the law can curse us no more, that we have eternal righteousness and peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of being children of wrath, we are now the objects of God's favor, and hear His blessed word: "I will walk with you, and be your God; and ye are my sons and my daughters."

That is the power of the cross!

Hallelujah!