Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 873
Delivered on Sunday Morning, MAY 30, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.”- Galatians 3:13.
The Apostle had been showing to the Galatians that salvation is in no degree by works. He proved this all-important Truth of God, in the verses which precede the text, by a very conclusive form of double reasoning. He showed, first, that the Law could not give the blessing of salvation, for, since all had broken it, all that the Law could do was to curse. He quotes the substance of the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy, “Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them.” And as no man can claim that he has continued in all things that are in the Law, he pointed out the clear inference that all men under the Law had incurred the curse.
He then reminds the Galatians, in the second place, that if any had ever been blessed in the olden times, the blessing came not by the Law, but by their faith—and to prove this, he quotes a passage from Habakkuk 2:4 in which it is distinctly stated that the just shall live by faith—so that those who were just and righteous did not live before God on the footing of their obedience to the Law, but they were justified and made to live on the ground of their being Believers. See, then, that if the Law inevitably curses us all, and if the only people who are said to have been preserved in gracious life were justified not by works, but by faith—then is it certain beyond a doubt that the salvation and justification of a sinner cannot be by the works of the Law, but altogether by the Grace of God through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
But the Apostle, no doubt feeling that now he was declaring that doctrine he had better declare the foundation and root of it, unveils in the text before us a reason why men are not saved by their personal righteousness, but saved by their faith. He tells us that the reason is this—that men are not saved by any personal merit but their salvation lies in Another—lies, in fact, in Christ Jesus, the representative Man who alone can deliver us from the curse which the Law brought upon us. And since works do not connect us with Christ, but faith is the uniting bond, faith becomes the way of salvation.
Since faith is the hand that lays hold upon the finished work of Christ—which works could not and would not do, for works lead us to boast and to forget Christ—faith becomes the true and only way of obtaining justification and everlasting life. In order that such faith may be nurtured in us, may God the Holy Spirit this morning lead us into the depths of the great work of Christ! May we understand more clearly the nature of His substitution and of the suffering which it entailed upon Him. Let us see, indeed, the truth of the stanzas whose music has just died away—
“He bore that we might never bear
His Father’s righteous ire.”
I. Our first contemplation this morning will be upon this question, WHAT IS THE CURSE OF THE LAW HERE INTENDED? It is the curse of God. God who made the Law has appended certain penal consequences to the breaking of it and the man who violates the Law becomes at once the subject of the wrath of the Lawgiver. It is not the curse of the mere Law of itself—it is a curse from the great Lawgiver whose arm is strong to defend His statutes. Therefore, at the very outset of our reflections, let us be assured that the curse of the Law must be supremely just and morally unavoidable.
It is not possible that our God, who delights to bless us, should inflict an atom of curse upon any one of His creatures unless the highest right shall require it. And if there is any method by which holiness and purity can be maintained without a curse, rest assured the God of Love will not imprecate sorrow upon His creatures. The curse then, if it falls, must be a necessary one—in its very essence necessary for the preservation of order in the universe and for the manifestation of the holiness of the universal Sovereign.
Be assured, too, that when God curses, it is a curse of the most weighty kind. The curse causeless shall not come, but God’s curses are never causeless and they come home to offenders with overwhelming power. Sin must be punished and when by long continuance and impenitence in evil, God is provoked to speak the malediction, I know that he whom He curses is cursed, indeed. There is something so terrible in the very idea of the Omnipotent God pronouncing a curse upon a transgressor that my blood curdles at it and I cannot express myself very clearly or even coherently. A father’s curse, how terrible! But what is that to the malediction of the great Father of Spirits?
To be cursed of men is no mean evil, but to be accursed of God is terror and dismay! Sorrow and anguish lie in that curse! Death is involved in it and that second death which John foresaw in Patmos and described as being cast into a lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). Hear the Word of the Lord by His servant Nahum and consider what His curse must be—“God is jealous and the Lord revenges. The Lord revenges and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries and He reserves wrath for His enemies…The mountains quake at Him and the hills melt and the earth is burned at His Presence, yes, the world and all that dwell herein. Who can stand before His indignation? And who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are thrown down by Him.”