When the Cursed Get Blessed

The message that the Lord put on Pastor Ellery’s heart today was about a dilemma that the Galatians faced back in Paul’s day: adding the Law to the gospel. And this same quandary has burdensome implications today if we do not take heed to the same admonishment that Paul delivered to those early Christians in Galatia. The text was from Galatians 3:6-14. The problem was that “teachers” were telling the Galatians that in addition to believing that Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead to take away their sins and in exchange give them the righteousness of God, they also had to obey the Old Testament Law as given in the Torah, the first five books of the bible.
The inherent problem with this is the fact that they quite simply could not live up to the standard that God's Law put forth. We cannot do it today, either.

No matter how long we think we are doing everything absolutely perfect in actions and motives, that moment we entertain that one bad thought , say the slightest little thing against someone, do what we know isn’t quite right, or don’t do what we know we are supposed to do; right then and there we instantly nullify all of our supposed good works. That is why in verse 10 is says that all who rely on works of the Law are cursed. No one can abide - stay, endure and dwell - within all of the Law 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the rest of their lives.

This is why Christ had to come and do it for us. He came to redeem us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us because we had no ability to break ourselves free from the curse. The only thing we can do is the same thing that Abraham did: he believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. When we believe that Jesus died and paid for our our sins, and that He took on our curse so we can receive His righteousness, we are forever free from the curse. And the beauty of it is that we had nothing to do with it. We had no opportunity to muddle His perfect plan.

   rooted in the depth of human nature is an innate aversion to the reality that we had no part in God's plan of redemption

Yet for some reason, we have a tendency to forget this and we revert back to a regiment of to-do and to-don’t lists in order to make us “more holy” or worthy of God’s grace. I believe rooted in the depth of human nature is an innate aversion to the reality that we had no part in God's plan of redemption, so we conjure up rules and formulas in order to appease our skewed sense of worthiness. This in turn distorts the true gospel of Jesus into a man-made religion based on transactions. If we “give our hearts to God”, then we expect Him to fulfill His end of the deal, as it were, with perfect health, abundant wealth, and anything else we think we should deserve as a child of the Most High. We seem to think there some things that God is obligated to give us because we are sons and daughters of God - with all the rights, rank, and privileges therein contained - in some sort of biblical fine print that is apparently available only to the Christian elite - the ones who work the hardest and best for it.
The true gospel is that Jesus did it all for us. That is the blessing. He became the curse for us so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham - believing in what Jesus did for us and His righteousness being accounted to us - can come to all of us by faith. We, the cursed, have been given the greatest blessing ever imagined: He took our curse and gave us His perfect righteousness. In my book, and I pray in yours too, there is no greater news than this.

John Clark

John Clark is a husband to Julie, a father of one son living in Valrico, Florida. He has an Associate Degree of Theology from Life Christian University, and serves at Life Center of Brandon where he is a teacher and writer.