Big Healing Book - The Only Sense in Which Jesus Was Cursed Was That He Died

Objection: The Only Sense in Which Jesus Was Cursed Was That He Died a Cursed Death by Being Hung on a Cross

Galatians 3:13 does NOT merely say that Jesus died a cursed death. It says that He became a curse for us. The objector tries to tie the phrase “being made a curse for us” to “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” in such a way that Jesus’ manner of death was what counted. This is understandable given that it’s hard to comprehend what “becoming a curse” would be mean, yet the Bible also says that He “became sin,” which is probably just as hard to comprehend. But you don’t have to comprehend the gospel to believe it. (Do you comprehend the Trinity? I hope that you believe that God is Three in One anyway!)

If you back up 3 verses, Galatians 3:10 tells us that as many as are under the works of the Law are under the curse because cursed is everyone who does not keep the whole Law. When Jesus took your sins upon Himself, He was counted before God as if He had NOT kept the whole Law, but was a lawbreaker as you were. Thus, He was counted as cursed, not just because He was nailed to a tree, but because He was counted as unrighteous. Your sins brought that unrighteousness on Him. Because anyone who sinned merited the curse, He had to be cursed.

Parts of the Deuteronomy curse would not be able to be applied to a single person, such as having your city besieged and having nationwide crop failures and foreign exile. So Jesus did not bear the entire “curse of the Law” but rather the parts of it that were possible for one person to carry. His body was made a shambles before He even went to the cross. If merely dying on a tree were enough to be cursed in our place, God could have been much more humane to His Son and let Him stay in perfect health until the nails went through Him. The bodily punishment Jesus took was not a waste of time! His body was broken and His blood was shed. His body was broken for our healing and His blood was shed for our redemption from sin. He did not merely shed His blood, but He bore OUR diseases (see Isaiah’s Prophecy of Redemption) – the ones that we deserved as lawbreakers according to the Law.

I believe that this bearing of things the Bible calls a curse is what Paul referred to when He said that Jesus BECAME a curse, as opposed to just BEING cursed because He hung on a cross.

There is more to say here, but I’d be repeating the same things I said in the discussion Why Jesus Was Beaten, so I encourage you to read that.