The Curse Motif of the Atonement

Today on Renewing Your Mind… That moment should be astonishing to us as well when we realize that God is holy, and we are not. Our sin condemns us. Sadly, we've lost that perspective today. Many Christians readily talk about God's grace and mercy without fully appreciating why that grace and mercy is necessary.

Today Dr. R.C. Sproul shows us that we cannot understand the Gospel apart from God's curse. I'd like to read from Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 10 and reading through verse 14. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Beloved when we go to the New Testament and we read not only the narrative event of the cross, but the many didactic expressions that explain to us its meaning and significance, I think we are soon aware that there is no one image or one dimension that can comprehensively explain the cross. But there is one image, one aspect of the atonement that has receded in our day almost into total obscurity.

We heard earlier of those attempts to preach a more gentle and kind gospel. And in our efforts to communicate the work of Christ more kindly, we flee from any mention of a curse inflicted by God upon His own Son. When we speak of the idea of curse today, what do we think of? We think perhaps of a voodoo witch doctor who places pins in a replica doll of his enemy.

We think of an occultist who's involved in witchcraft putting spells and hexes upon people. The very word curse in our culture suggests some kind of superstition. But in biblical categories, dear friends, there is nothing superstitious about it. And the idea of the curse is deeply rooted in biblical history. We need only go to the opening chapters of Genesis to the record of the fall of man that provokes from God His anathema on the serpent who's cursed to go on his belly. And the curse that is then given to the earth itself, it would bring forth thorns and bribes, making it difficult for Adam to live by the toil of his brow.

And it brings the excruciating, and I choose that word carefully, pain given to the woman who would bear a child. But not only do we find this idea of curse there early in Genesis, but if we fast forward to the giving of the law under Moses, we understand that with the covenant God makes with His people at Sinai that He attaches to that covenant, to the stipulations of that law, dual sanctions, a positive sanction and a negative sanction. The positive sanction is articulated there in terms of the concept of blessedness. Let me quickly jump back to Deuteronomy chapter 28 that we read this litany of blessings. And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

Listen to this. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city. Blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. Do you hear what God is saying to Israel? If you keep My word that I'm going to bless you in the city, I'll bless you in the country, I'll bless you when you rise up, I'll bless you when you lie down, I'll bless you in the kitchen, I'll bless you in the bedroom, I'll bless you in the living room, I'll bless your fields, I'll bless your goats, I'll bless your sheep, I'll bless your cows, I'm gonna bless you all over the place that your life will be nothing but an experience in divine benediction and blessedness. But God goes on to say that if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all His commandments and His statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, cursed shall you be in the country, cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl, cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds, the young of your flock, cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, in the garage, cursed. Well, what does that mean? I'd like to take some time to explore the meaning and the significance of this idea of God's divine curse.

And I want to look at it in a couple of different ways. First of all, when the prophets of the Old Testament spoke not their own opinions but the word that God had placed in their mouth so that they could preface their announcements by these words, thus saith the Lord, that the favorite method the prophets used to express the Word of God was the method that was called the oracle. It seems that sometimes the only place we hear of the idea of the oracle is in Greek mythology when we hear of the oracle of Delphi, where people would go and consult the oracle to ask how the future was going to turn out. Will we be victorious?

Will we be defeated in battle? Will I marry Susan, Betty, or Jane? And they were looking to these self-appointed prophets there at Delphi to give a divine pronouncement. Well, there were oracles before there was an oracle at Delphi. There was one called Isaiah, one called Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Ezekiel, Daniel. And they would use this oracular form to communicate the Word of God, and there were basically two kinds of oracles known to the prophets. There was the oracle of Weal, which was an oracle of good news, an announcement of prosperity coming from the hand of God, and then there was also the oracle of Woe, which oracle would be an announcement of doom brought from the hand of God.

And the normal way in which the oracle of Weal would be uttered was by the use of the term blessed. By the pronouncement of a divine benediction, as David begins the psalms, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in that law he meditates day and night, he'll be like a tree planted by rivers of water, bringing forth his fruit in his season, but the ungodly are not so.

They're like the chaff which the wind driveth away. How often did our Lord exercise the function of the prophet and make oracular pronouncements such as he did on the Sermon on the Mount when he looked to his disciples and he said to them, Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my sake, and so on, giving us that section of the sermon that we call the Beatitudes, where Jesus pronounces the blessing of God upon certain people. But the oracle of doom, in contrast, was normally prefaced by the word woe. As you recall Amos pronouncing the judgments of God on the nations, woe, for two transgressions and three, woe unto you Assyrians, woe unto you Damascus, woe unto you Israel. The incredible moment when Isaiah beheld the unveiled holiness of God. He pronounced an oracle of doom upon himself.

He understood who God was, and for the first time in his life he understood who Isaiah was, and he cursed, not God, but he cursed Isaiah, woe is me. I'm coming apart. I'm undone. I'm ruined because I have a filthy mouth, and I'm not alone. Not only am I exposed to the woe, but I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips who are equally exposed to the judgment of God. And so we see these statements in the Bible, these oracular statements of blessing and curse, will and woe. But if you really want to understand what it meant to a Jew to be cursed, I think the simplest way is to look at the famous Hebrew benediction in the Old Testament.

You all know how it goes. Those of you who are clergy use it for your final benediction countless times. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you His peace. Now what is so important for us to understand the curse is to understand first of all how the Jew understood blessing.

How did he understand it? May the Lord bless you. What he meant by that is to be blessed by God is to be bathed in the revulsion glory that emanates from His face.

May the Lord bless you means may the Lord make His face to shine upon you. Is this not what Moses begged for on the mountain when he said, Oh God, I've seen what you mortals have ever seen. I saw the plagues that you brought to Egypt. I saw the river turned to blood.

I was there between Migdal and the sea when you dried up the sea and let us walk through. But now let me have the big one. Please let me see your face.

You know what happened. I said, Moses, you don't know what you're asking. Since you read the book you wrote that no man can see me and live, Moses, I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll carve out a niche in the rock over here and I'll place you there in the cleft of the rock and I will allow my backward parts to pass by and I'll give you an instantaneous glance of my backward parts. But my face shall not be seen. And when Moses had that brief glance of the backside of God, his face shone for an extended period of time. But what the Jew longed for was, oh God, just let me once, just once see your face. You see, his ultimate hope is the same hope that is given to us in the New Testament, the final eschatological hope of the beatific vision. Behold, what manner of love is this, John says, that we should be called the children of God. We don't know yet what we will be, but this much we know that we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Don't you want to see Him? The hardest thing about being a Christian is serving a God you've never seen. And so the Jew asks for that benediction, oh God, bless us to the degree that you would make your face shine upon you. Last week, Charlton Heston died, Moses, Ben-Hur. How many of you ever saw Ben-Hur?

Let me see, almost everybody, good. You remember that scene in Ben-Hur where he's been reduced to slavery, and he is being dragged behind his captive, and they finally come to this well in the midst of the desert. And he comes there, and he's in the sand, and his lips are parched, and he's overcome with thirst, and all of a sudden you see the shadow of a human being.

You never see this person's face. But whoever it is who meets Ben-Hur stoops over and gives to him a cup of cold water. And the point of view of the camera is from the gaze of Ben-Hur who looks up into the face of the one who is giving him this drink of water, and instantly Ben-Hur's face begins to shine, and you don't have to be told who it was who gave him the drink of water.

Because the Lord Jesus made his face to shine upon this slave. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you his peace. Every time I hear that benediction in church, I get to show a bunch because it so incorporates my highest dream to see his face. But my purpose this afternoon is not to explain the blessing of God, but its polar opposite, its antithesis, which again can be seen in vivid contrast to the benediction. It would be the supreme malediction that would read something like this, May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever. That puts God's grace and mercy in perspective, doesn't it? We don't have to experience God's wrath as the apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 3.15, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. I hope you'll join us again tomorrow as we conclude this message from Dr. R.C.

Sproul. As we prepare for Easter this week, we've heard several messages from R.C. pointing us to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and helping us understand why it was necessary. If we don't understand why Christ had to die, then we don't understand what we're being saved from. Dr. Sproul's series, The Atonement of Jesus, is a wealth of wisdom on this topic, and we'll send you all ten messages on an MP3 CD when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries.

You can find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us at 800-435-4343. In this series, R.C. helps us consider important questions surrounding Christ's atoning work. Why did Jesus have to die?

Did He die for all people? And what does it mean that Jesus gave His life as a ransom? You'll learn why our hope as believers is anchored to the finished work of Jesus on the cross. So, again, request The Atonement of Jesus when you go online to renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343.

And in advance, let me thank you for your generous financial gift. Well another important question that we need to consider is what exactly did Jesus experience on the cross? The light of His countenance is turned off. The blessedness is removed from His Son for Jesus to become the curse. He has to be utterly, totally, and completely forsaken. Please make plans to join us Thursday for Renewing Your Mind.