Objection: Christ Did NOT Actually Bear the Deuteronomy 28:15-68 Curse Himself Because He Could Not Have “Borne” Our Mildew, Droughts, Bad Crops, Children Sent to Captivity, and Other Things Mentioned in That Curse
The objector is sure that Jesus did NOT bear the sickness and disease in the Deuteronomy curse (“the curse of the Law”) because there are so many things in that curse that it would have been impossible for Him to bear literally. And when you consider what the objector is saying, there certainly ARE a lot of aspects to the curse that He could not have borne in a personal sense during His atonement. This certainly is food for thought, isn’t it? The objector also claims that the Bible does not really say that He bore that curse for us.
He could not have borne the curse on his livestock because He didn’t own any livestock. (The sheep who heard His voice weren’t the kind that they sheared for wool.) He could not have crop failures because He didn’t run any farms. His carcass was NOT “meat unto all the fowls of the air” when He died. He did not get married (no matter what some silly fictional bestseller might tell you) and have another man lie with His wife. He did not have an ox that was slain before His eyes.
He did not plant a vineyard and have someone else eat its grapes. He did not have sons or daughters who could have been “given to another people.” He was not led forth into other nations. He did not borrow money from the heathen. And the Lord did not bring him into Egypt again with ships.
So it appears that the objector is right that Jesus could not have personally borne everything in the curse of the Law on our behalf.
And the objector is right!
However, his conclusion isn’t. He makes three false assumptions: (1) If Christ could not bear the ENTIRE curse, He could not have borne ANY of it, (2) It is necessary to believe that Christ bore the whole curse as our substitute to believe that healing is in His atonement, and (3) The Bible never says that He bore the curse, therefore He didn’t redeem us from disease.
Regarding the first point, Isaiah specified that Jesus surely bore our sicknesses and carried our pains. Matthew agreed with this understanding of it (Matthew 8:17), and so did Peter (1 Peter 2:24). Paul later wrote that Jesus was made poor so that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). (He lost everything He had before He died; the Romans even took His clothing rather than giving it to His family.) So we see substitution in the areas of disease and poverty. So He did bear the sickness and poverty parts of the curse even though He did not personally experience all of the other parts of it.
We can look at the second and third points together. The objector is actually correct again that the Bible never claims that Jesus bore the entire curse of the Law in our place! Now before you start gasping too much, you should read Galatians 3:13 carefully. It does NOT say that Christ bore the curse of the Law. Isaiah and Peter agree that He bore our SINS, but He did not actually bear the CURSE in its entirety, though it appears that the parts He could bear, He did.
What Paul ACTUALLY said was something far more drastic – Jesus BECAME a curse for us! The Law’s curse didn’t say that God would go off and leave you, but that’s what happened when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34). It’s bad enough to sin, worse to carry sin, but He “became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was cursed on that cross, as it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” So Jesus definitely was CURSED so that we don’t have to be cursed. While He didn’t literally bear every part of the curse such as having someone take His (nonexistent) wife, obviously God deems the way that He was cursed on the cross as a complete payment to redeem us all from “the curse of the Law.” So He DID redeem us from everything in Leviticus 26:14-39 and Deuteronomy 28:15-68! That means that He DID redeem us from EVERY sickness and EVERY plague!
The fact that we ARE redeemed from every sickness does not depend on His literally bearing every detail of that curse Himself, which we all have to admit would have been impossible. It was His BECOMING a curse, not BEARING the curse, that redeemed us from the curse. But either way, we’re still redeemed from it! He surely did bear our sicknesses and carry our pains (Isaiah 53:4), and the only way that makes sense is that He did it as our Substitute. Jesus paid our ransom, made the gift of righteousness available, and freed mankind from having to suffer ANY part of the curse in the Law, including “every sickness and every plague.” Now as righteous new creations, God can bless us as if we’d never sinned and not judge us for failing to follow the Law.
Here are the main things you need to know:
1. Jesus literally DID bear the sickness and pain part of the curse as our substitute because Isaiah, Matthew and Peter agree that His punishment provided healing for us.
2. He did not literally bear all the rest of the curse, but He “became a curse” – “became sin” – and by doing so, He DID redeem us from the entire curse, including “every sickness and every plague” and even the parts that He could not have literally borne personally. He did not have to literally bear them all Himself to redeem you from them at Calvary, and neither I nor the Bible claim that He did.