Galatians 3:13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written… 1. The believer's discharge. The law of God hath three parts, commands, promises, and threatenings or curses. The curse of the law is its condemning sentence, whereby a sinner is bound over to death, even the death of soul and body. The chain, by which it binds him, is the guilt of sin, and from which none can loose the soul but Christ. This curse of the law is the most dreadful thing imaginable; it strikes at the life of a sinner, yea, his best life, the eternal life of the soul; and when it hath condemned, it is inexorable, no cries nor tears, no reformations or repentance, can loose the guilty sinner: for it requires for its reparation that which no mere creature can give, even an infinite satisfaction. Now from this curse Christ frees the believer; that is, He dissolves the obligation to punishment, cancels the hand-writing, looses all the bonds and chains of guilt, so that the curse of the law hath nothing to do with him for ever. 2. We have here the way and manner in and by which this is done; and that is by a full price paid down, and that price paid in the room of the sinner, both making up a complete and full satisfaction. He pays a full price, every way adequate and proportionable to the wrong. 3. The nature of Christ's satisfaction. (1) It is the act of God-man; no other was capable of giving satisfaction for an infinite wrong done to God. But by reason of the union of the two natures in His wonderful person, He could do it, and hath done it for us. (2) If He satisfy God for us, He must present Himself before God, as our Surety, in our stead, as well as for our good; else His obedience had signified nothing to us: To this end He was made under the law (Galatians 4:4), comes under the same obligation with us, and that as a Surety, for so He is called (Hebrews 7:22). Indeed, His obedience and sufferings could be exacted from Him upon no other account. It was not for anything He had done that He became a curse. (3) The internal moving cause of Christ's satisfaction for us was His obedience to God, and love to us. That it was an act of obedience is plain from Philippians 2:8, "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."(4) The matter of Christ's satisfaction was His active and passive obedience to all the law of God required. (5) The effect and fruit of this His satisfaction is our freedom, ransom, or deliverance from the wrath and curse due to us for our sins. Such was the dignity, value, and completeness of Christ's satisfaction, that in strict justice it merited our redemption and full deliverance; not only a possibility that we might be redeemed and pardoned, but a right whereby we ought to be so. We pass on to STATE SOME OBECTIONS, and to answer them. The doctrine of Christ's satisfaction is absurd, for Christ (say we) is God; if so, then God satisfies Himself, than which what can be more absurd to imagine? I answer, God cannot properly be said to satisfy Himself; for that would be the same thing as to pardon, simply, without any satisfaction. But there is a twofold consideration of Christ; one in respect of His essence and Divine nature, in which sense He is the object both of the offence, and of the satisfaction made for it. Another in respect of His person and economy, or office; in which sense He properly satisfies God, being in respect of His manhood another, and inferior to God (John 14:28). The blood of the man Christ Jesus is the matter of the satisfaction; the Divine nature dignifies it, and makes it of infinite value. 2. If Christ satisfied by paying our debt, then He should have endured eternal torments; for so we should, and the damned shall. We must distinguish betwixt what is essential, and what is accidental in punishment. The primary intent of the law is reparation and satisfaction; he that can make it at one entire payment (as Christ could and did) ought to be discharged. He that cannot (as no mere creature can) ought to lie for ever, as the damned do, under sufferings. 3. If God will be satisfied for our sins before He pardon them, how then is pardon an act of grace? Pardon could not be an act of pure grace, if God received satisfaction from us; but if He pardon us upon the satisfaction received from Christ, though it be of debt to Him, it is of grace to us: for it was grace to admit a surety to satisfy, more grace to provide Him, and most of all to apply His satisfaction to us, by uniting us to Christ, as He hath done. 4. But God loved us before Christ died for us; for it was the love of God to the world that moved Him to give His only-begotten Son. Could God love us, and yet not be reconciled and satisfied? God's complacential love is indeed inconsistent with an unreconciled state: He is reconciled to every one He so loves. But His benevolent love, consisting in His purpose of good, may be before actual reconciliation and satisfaction. 5. Temporal death, as well us eternal, is a part of the curse; if Christ have fully satisfied by bearing the curse for us, how is it that those for whom He bare it die as well as others? As temporal death is a penal evil, and part of the curse, so God inflicts it not upon believers; but they must die for other ends, viz., to be made perfectly happy in a more full and immediate enjoyment of God, than they can have in the body; and so death is theirs by way of privilege (1 Corinthians 3:22). They are not death's by way of punishment. The same may be said of all the afflictions with which God, for gracious ends, now exercised His reconciled ones. Thus much may suffice to establish this great truth. We proceed to make the following INFERENCES: 1. If the death of Christ was that which satisfied God for all the sins of the elect, then certainly there is an infinite evil in sin, since it cannot be expiated, but by an infinite satisfaction. Fools make a mock at sin, and there are but few souls in the world that are duly sensible of, and affected with its evil; but certainly, if God should damn thee to all eternity, thy eternal sufferings could not satisfy for the evil that is in one vain thought. 2. If the death of Christ satisfied God, and thereby redeemed the elect from the curse, then the redemption of souls is costly; souls are dear things, and of great value with God. 3. If Christ's death satisfied God for our sins, how unparalleled is the love of Christ to poor sinners! 4. If Christ, by dying, hath made full satisfaction, then God is no loser in pardoning the greatest of sinners that believe in Jesus; and consequently His justice can be no bar to their justification and salvation. He is just to forgive us our sins (1 John 1:9). What an argument is here for a poor believer to plead with God! 5. If Christ hath made such a full satisfaction as you have heard, how much is it the concernment of every soul, to abandon all thoughts of satisfying God for his own sins, and betake himself to the blood of Christ, the ransomer, by faith, that in that blood they may be pardoned? It would grieve one's heart to see how many poor creatures are drudging and tugging at a task of repentance, and revenge upon themselves, and reformation, and obedience, to satisfy God for what they have clone against Him: And alas! it cannot be, they do but lose their labour; could they swelter their very hearts out, weep till they can weep no more, cry till their throats be parched, alas, they can never recompense God for one vain thought. For such is the severity of the law, that when it is once offended, it will never be made amends again by all that we can do; it will not discharge the sinner, for all the sorrow in the world. (John Flavel.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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: |
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