Winston Churchill once famously said, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ He was speaking of course of the gallant efforts of the British Fighter Pilots who in 1940 defended Britain from invasion. Much was owed by many to few. One must allow poetic licence and hyperbole to a great wartime leader. But if his words are taken in an absolute and literal sense, he is mistaken. For there was one conflict, a mortal conflict which involved one who was truly human like us, where much more was owed by many more to only one.
I am thinking of Christ crucified. He is the one to whom countless many more owe much more. Listen to these words, written in about AD 150:
‘O Sweet Exchange! O unsearchable working! O benefits unhoped for? That the wickedness of multitudes should thus be hidden in the One holy, and the holiness of One should sanctify the countless wicked.’[1]
Perhaps I might paraphrase the sentiment with the vocabulary of Paul. 'O Wonderful redemption! Fancy Christ becoming a Curse for Us. That the Curse of those who’ve not done everything written in the book of the Law might be born by Christ, who was hung on a tree, so that the blessing given to Abraham and his seed Jesus Christ, might be give to us, the Gentiles, through faith in Jesus Christ by the Spirit.'
Today I wish to portray before your eyes Christ Jesus and Him crucified. And in our passage today, Paul makes it easy for me. Because with absolute clarity, he outlines for uswhat Jesus did on the cross.
In verse 1, we see that Paul reminds the Galatians of the centrality of the cross. Let me re-read verse 1:
You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. (NIV)
This was Paul’s central message. When Paul preached to the Galatians, he publicly portrayed a crucified Christ. He painted a word picture of Christ Crucified. He resolved to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. The cross of Christ became his only boast.
Christ Crucified. We think that is normal. After all, we celebrate Good Friday, where we remember Jesus died on a Cross. But for many of Paul’s contemporaries, it was an oxymoron. An oxymoron is not a foolish person with an oxy aceteline torch. It is a two word description which has an internal contradiction. Like ‘hasten slowly’, or ‘going forwards backwards’. And of course, there are all sorts of jokes. ‘Adult Male’, ‘Army Intelligence’, ‘Business Ethics’, ‘Civil Engineer’, ‘Educational TV’, ‘Religious Tolerance’, ‘Unbiased Opinion’, ‘Unsolved Mystery’.
To this laughable list we could have added ‘Christ Crucified’. Christ: the King of the Universe – King of Kings and Lord of Lords - to whom every King will bow and grovel and beg for mercy. That’s Christ. Crucified: humiliated, beaten, whipped, stripped naked, scourged, pierced, killed and, turned into a bloodied lump of human flesh. That’s crucified.
The phrase ‘Christ crucified’ was a paradox to those who heard it. But it is at the very heart of the Christian message. And far from being an oxymoron, it has it’s own internal logic. It is consistent, compelling, and even converting. It is God’s power of salvation for everyone who believes it.
And in verses 10-14, Paul steps us through what happened on the cross. He makes it clear why it was necessary. He has already just said that ‘if righteousness could be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing’ (Galatians 2:21). It is clear that Jesus’ death wasn’t a waste of time.
God is not some reckless, disconnected, first world war General, safely in his protected bunker, far away from the front, and drinking his tea, who not understanding the imminent and certain disaster, orders his foot soldiers, personally unknown to him, mere numbers on a board, to go over the trenches in an hopeless assault on an enemy machine gun nest. God just doesn’t waste the life of his own only Son. God knew exactly what he was doing. And Jesus Christ knew exactly what he was doing. And this is what they did and why they did it.
Paul first tells us ‘why’ God did this. And in so doing, he reminds his readers and us of the danger that we and they face. Verse 10:
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." (NIV)
The Law here is the Law of Moses. It is the Law God placed upon the people of Israel. God gave them this law. He was it’s ultimate author. And it is a good law. It is summarized in the 10 commandments, but of course there is more to it than that. At it’s very heart it involves loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself. So it is profoundly good. It tells us how to be truly human. It tells us how to live consistently with the way God made us. Obeying the law is simply being what we were meant to be.
But good things can be dangerous in the hands of the wicked, the reckless and the incompetent. Cars are good. They are a terrible danger. Chain saws are good. They are terribly dangerous. Nuclear physics, power and technology is good. But it can be a terrible danger.
Likewise, God’s good law has become for us a terrible danger. In fact, it brings us under a curse, if we rely on it to get to heaven. Why? Because of sin. We are sinners. We do not keep the law.
You might say, surely we are not all that bad! Surely the law doesn’t condemn us so thoroughly.
Paul begs to differ. The law requires that we obey not just the bits we like when we like. We can’t just appeal to the parts that suit us at this particular time, only to dispense with it later. The law requires habitual, continual, thoroughgoing, wholehearted, perfect obedience, if you want to have eternal life by it.
Paul will later say:
Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law (Galatians 5:3 NIV).
You cannot just take this bit or that bit. The law is a unity. As James says:
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder”. If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a law breaker. (James 2:10-11 NIV)
Indeed, Paul himself elsewhere points to the last of the 10 commandments. He speaks of the 10th commandment in this way.
I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. … Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me By no means. But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. (Romans 7:7-13 NIV)
We are sinners. But we don’t appreciate how bad we are. We really are truly rotten to the core. The law shows us this. For Paul, it was the 10th commandment. It says, ‘Do not covet’. Do not desire things that are not yours to desire. Do not want them. The commandment that you can break with your hands in your pockets, with your eyes firmly closed, locked in your room by yourself and with no-one else there to provide external temptation. It happens in the privacy of your mind and in the depths of your heart, in the core of your being.
This law, from one point of view, was intended to bring life. Paul found, rather, that it brought death. Because he heard the command, “Do not covet”. But then he thought of or saw something that he wanted that was not his. And so ‘Do not covet’ kept killing him.
The law is good. But we are bad. The law gives life to those who keep it. But we discover when we look seriously and intently into God’s law, that we haven’t kept it.
So God’s good law curses us. And this curse is God’s curse. It is God’s anger against sin and disobedience that we face. We need to be saved not just from sin, though that’s true, not just the law, though that’s true, but from God’s wrath and anger. We need to be saved from God’s wrath, his personal, retributive vengeance against our lawbreaking and sin. We need to be saved from God. God needs to save us from himself and his own anger.
In verses 11 and 12, Paul lays down the principle, that no-one is justified by law. Verses 11 and 12:
Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them." (NIV)
Paul shows us that we cannot and will not be justified by law.
The first reason for this is that God has always said that the righteous will live by faith. That is the point of verses 6 to 9. God has always been justifying people by faith, not by works of the law. God justified Abraham by faith. He was not justified by works of the law, but by trusting God’s promises.
That’s the point of Genesis 15:6. "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." All Abraham did to receive this gift of righteousness was took God at his word. He trusted God’s promise, and received a gift of righteousness, or right standing before God, the standing that comes to someone who has kept the whole law and never stumbled at any point. Even though he had stumbled at more than one point, he is given this righteousness, because he trusted God.
And the second reason is that doing works of the law and trusting God’s promises are two very different things. Trusting God’s promise and receiving a gift of righteousness like this is very different from doing the works of the law. We read in verse 12 that ‘the law is not based on faith’. The law has a contrary rationale. The law is based not on believing, but on doing.
Do you want to receive eternal life by the law? OK, you must do them. You must do all of them. You must do all of them without fail all the time. Because whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
So we are guilty sinners. We have not kept the law. The law requires perfect obedience if we wish to receive eternal life through it. But none of us has or can render this to the law’s demands. We need to be saved from God and his anger toward us.
So what did God do about this? Verse 13:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (NIV)
God sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was born under the law. But unlike us, he kept the whole law in it’s entirety. Out of the whole human race, only one man has rendered God his due. Only one man obeyed God as he should. Even Moses, the Moses of the Law of Moses, died outside the promised land because he did not obey God as he should have.
But Jesus Christ is different. Of the whole human race, there was only one man who could be justified before God by the law. Jesus Christ. Jesus knew no sin. So when Jesus looked at the law, he did not see condemnation and death because of his sin, and therefore the curse of God. He had no sin. He never coveted. He kept the whole law. He had loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his neighbour as himself. He loved and kept the law. Jesus looked into the law and only saw his Father’s perfect, holy, righteous will. Jesus looked into the law and saw his delight, not curse and condemnation.
The law says, “do this and you shall live”. And Jesus could say, "I have done this. My delight is to do your will, O God".
Yet Jesus Christ did not live. He kept the law, but did not live. He died. Good Friday, again. There’s that oxymoron, again. Christ crucified. The one who lives by the law dies. The blessed one is cursed.
Why? Why did the only one of us humans who kept the law, die? Why did the only one who deserve to live die death? And not just any death, but the death of a cross? Why? Verse 13 again:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree". (NIV)
The answer is ‘for us’. ‘For us’ is the reason why Jesus Christ became a curse for us.
For the law does not just say, ‘Do this and you shall live’. It also says, ‘Don’t do this, and you will die’. 'The soul that sins shall die.'
And here is the wonderful exchange Here is the benefit unhoped for. That the one who earned life by his life of law keeping would give up that life for lawbreakers.
He redeemed us. His life, a life marked by faithful obedience to God, was the costly price of our release from the curse. He deserved life but accepted death. We deserve death, but because of his death, are given life. Christ became a curse for us.
The Law said that anyone who is hung out on a tree, who is strung up on a four-by-two, on a Roman gibbet, is cursed of God (Deuteronomy 21:23; cited in Galatians 3:13).
It was hard to deny. After all, who would wish such a horrible death? But Jesus bore this accursed death to take our place and bear the curse that we deserved. He who lived the blessed life willingly took our place and bore our cursed death. This is redemption. He bears our curse. And we go free, and live the blessed life.
Verse 14:
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (NIV)
The blessed one was cursed so that the cursed multitudes might be blessed. God promised this blessing to Abraham. Way back in Genesis 12, God said to Abraham "All nations will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3; Galatians 3:8-9). People from every nation would be blessed through Abraham. And Jesus Christ is Abraham’s seed. He is the one who fulfills the promise to Abraham.
And now everyone who puts their trust in Christ receives the blessing given to Abraham. We receive the righteousness that Abraham had by faith. We can approach God without fear because of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection for us.
The Galatian Christians received the Spirit. How? Not as a result of their works of the law. They didn’t receive the Spirit through observing circumcision, food laws, special days, or even through keeping the 10 commandments. They simply believed the gospel. The believed that Jesus was the Christ, and that he was in fact crucified. And when they believed this message, they received the Spirit.
So put your faith in Christ and you will receive the blessing of the Spirit. Trust in Christ. He lived the life you should have lived but didn’t. He died the death you deserve to die, but now don’t have to. He rose again to remove God’s curse from us. Please, please, please, put your trust in Christ, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s pray.
[1] Epistle to Diognetus, in M Staniforth & A Louth (translator and editors), Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Rev Ed: London: Penguin, 1987), 148